THE INCOMMENSURABILITY THESIS AND THE MYTH OF OBJECTIVITY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES

Abstract

Science has become a powerful impulse in human society by virtue of its significant contributions in shaping the activities and lives of humans, and this image of science is mainly due to its method which has, no doubt, yielded profitable theories that have
achieved appreciable outcomes for the benefit of humans. As a result of these benefits, the image of science is held with high esteem, and science is seen as a colossus of advantaged outcomes for human benefit. This image of science is derived from the potentials attributed to the general corpus of scientific theories. The problem here is that such an image of science is a product of the assumption that there is a common measure for all scientific theories since all scientific theories are derived following the same scientific method. This implies the claim that scientists can discuss a range of, if not all, scientific theories using a shared nomenclature that allows direct comparison of theories to determine which theory is more valid or useful. In the sequel, using the analytic method, this paper argues for the counterclaim called incommensurability of scientific theories which has become one of the most controversial theses to emerge in the philosophy of science, leading to the rejection of a fixed scientific method and thus, proposing a post-positivist or historical philosophy of science. Though there are different theses of incommensurability, the
paper argues for methodological incommensurability given the absence of common standards of theory appraisal. It further illustrates this point with reference to Kuhn’s paradigm shift. It concludes that if truly scientific theories are in large part
methodologically incommensurable then the objectivity of scientific theories and science, in general, is a myth.