The Normal and the Revolutionary: Kuhn’s Conversations with Rorty

ABSTRACT

In this paper I examine Thomas Kuhn’s epistolary and in-person exchanges with Richard Rorty, and their significance to the former’s work on the nature of scientific development during the years 1976–1986. Accordingly, it corresponds to a significant evolution of Kuhn’s thought from the position expounded earlier in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. These letters show how Kuhn’s philosophy of science evolved towards a greater emphasis on a key aspect of his former work—the nature of ‘the essential tension’—and that his more linguistically-oriented perspective in these latter years has that emphasis as its goal—at least as a significant part.

KEYWORDS:

• Kuhn
• Rorty
• epistemology
• tradition
• revolution
• lexicon
• incommensurability
• solidarity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Megan Watkins for her edition of my English in this paper. I am indebted to Vasso Kindi, to Yafeng Shan and to two anonymous referees for all their help in improving the first draft of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The draft was posthumously published in Poroi (see Kuhn 2014), together with a short text by Schiappa (2014).

2 Rorty’s opinions on Kuhn after the latter’s death were published in 1997 (see Rorty 1997).

3 On Kuhn’s Foerster Lecture (TSKP 5.13 1922–1996), see Mayoral Forthcoming, which has its edition as an appendix to the same volume.

4 In this paper, I shall not focus on Stegmüller’s or on Sneed’s own views, and I shall not discuss Kuhn’s understanding of them, either. Their role in my account is only contextual, as shall be evident.

5 I will not examine that full response at this moment, only a part of that lengthy (34 pp.) letter—which acts, rather, as a summary of future essays.

6 He would often repeat his own account of the learning of terms in science that he first expounded in print in that essay. Again, see Kuhn (2022, 227 ff.).

7 ‘Paradigm’ is a concept whose meaning is clarified in the same essay (see Kuhn 1974, 293–298, 306–307; see also Kuhn 2012, 181–190).

8 For his own critical approach to correspondence rules, see Kuhn (1974, 302–305, 312–318).

9 His final position about meaning is clear in The Plurality of Worlds (see Kuhn 2022, 176 ff., and Part II).

10 That importance is further emphasised in his last book; see Kuhn on ‘differentiae’ (2022, 210 ff.). There are, for sure, variations that depend on the kind of term we are talking about, and he would pursue them in future essays; see Kuhn (1993, 230–233) and the previous reference to his posthumous last book.

11 On Kuhn’s concept of ‘phenomenal world’, see Hoyningen-Huene (1993, esp. Ch.2); Kuhn (1987, 20; 2022, 61, 155).

12 I have omitted Kuhn’s numeration of sentences and paragraphs in order to make the extract more readable.

13 There is a parallelism between this core/periphery distinction and that of Sneed–Stegmüller, and Kuhn acknowledges his debt to Sneed in that regard (1976c, 10). There is surely an echo of Lakatos as well, but Kuhn remains silent about that—and, actually, I do not believe that Kuhn has that connection in mind. In any case, Kuhn had already talked about a similar kind of core in his Lowell Lectures (see Kuhn 1951, lectures VII-VIII; see Kuhn 2021). At that point, the idea of a ‘core’ is related to the nature of meaning rather than to knowledge.

14 Because of lack of space, I shall not comment on that letter here.

15 Kuhn is, of course, referring to p. 15 of the edition in the London Review of Books.