Philosophy of Science

Criticism of Kuhn from Feyerabend's Point of View

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Ali Azizi 1
Mostafa Taghavi 2

1 M.A Student in Philosophy of Science, Sharif University of Technology

2 Assistant Professor, Faculty Member of Philosophy of Science Department, Sharif University of Technology

Abstract
The viewpoints of Kuhn and Feyerabend, as two philosophers of science, are similar in many aspects, even the same in certain problems. They do not believe in any objective and universal rationality, hence, their views are regarded relativistic by many other philosophers. These two philosophers, belong to the second half of the twentieth century and are considered as a response to positivism and negativism. Despite the extensive correspondences, there are some significant differences between them. In this paper, we have tried to derive and analyze the criticisms of Feyerabend to Kuhn's viewpoint on science, such as critisizing the Kuhn's ideological approach to history, the domain of his incommensurability, the ambiguity in normativeness and descriptiveness of his ideas, unjustifiable transition from tenacity to proliferation, failure in discriminating between science and non-science via theoretical entities such as paradigm and normal science, and finally restricting the scientists’ freedom throughout the normal science.

Keywords

Kuhn
Feyerabend
incommensurability
Paradigm
normal science
tenacity
proliferation
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dillinger

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