The Extraepistemological Influence of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions

The text begins with Richard Rorty's assessment that Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, along with Rawls's A Theory of Justice, is the most important philosophical book written in the English language in the twentieth century. The author endorses this assessment, for it is impossible to think of a work in the fields of philosophy or scientific history which had such a dramatic agitating & inspiring impact on the public for which it was originally not intended. Namely, although Kuhn addressed in his work primarily philosophers & scientists engaged with natural sciences, the work was a source of major & fruitful discussion which involved, or could not be overseen by, anthropologists, sociologists, culturologists, political scientists, philosophers of morality, linguists, legal experts & many others. The author puts forward some of Kuhn's epistemological ideas which were creatively elaborated, reworked & recontextualized by non-epistemologists. The text is divided in two parts. In the first part, the author briefly sketches Kuhn's key concepts expounded in Structure... (paradigm, normal science, revolution). In the second part, he sets forth Richard Bernstein's interpretation of Kuhn's epistemology. The author opts for this interpretation because Bernstein, in his judgment, demonstrated better than any other philosopher that precisely the concept of incommensurability is to be given credit for Kuhn's enormous influence even beyond the boundaries of philosophy & scientific history. Together with Bernstein, the author concludes that incommensurability becomes a first-rate category of political thought due to the fact that it stresses in a conceptually adequate & analytically rigorous fashion the phenomenon of mutual understanding which overrides the imperative of choosing some unique superior scientific theory. Adapted from the source document.