Frank Kogan

vii: "the new in the vocabulary of the old"
viii: "the two attach to nature differently"
ix: "univocal reading"

I noted this same passage in toto, blissfully failing to notice the words "attach" and "nature." "Consider the compound sentence, 'In the Ptolemaic system planets revolve about the earth; in the Copernican they revolve around the sun.' Strictly construed, that sentence is incoherent. The first occurrence of the term 'planet' is Ptolemaic, the second Copernican, and the two attach to nature differently. For no univocal reading of the term planet is the sentence true." I glumly remarked, "That the reading can't be univocal doesn't make the sentence incoherent; otherwise no sentence that used contested terms and tried to show anything about the contest would be 'coherent.'" I'm sure when I dive into my pile of old Kuhn stuff I'll find that I elaborate for pages and pages on this point, that multivocal writings and readings are a fact of everyday language and basic linguistic competence.

x: "Only a small part of it... can be considered here, and even about it I shall be schematic."

Ah! But the two sentences right before this are even more crucial:

"No example so schematic can more than hint at what is involved in revolutionary change. I therefore turn at once to some fuller examples...

In other words, definitions and abstractions and schema and lists of attributes will FAIL us here. What we need here are EXAMPLES, adequate examples, or we will not get it.

xi: "My account will invert historical order and describe [what is] required to reach [a concept]."
xii: "The route... travelled backward with the aid of written texts... [the route] travelled forward with no text but nature to guide..."

So traveling backward involves a revolution [in understanding] just as much as traveling forward does, and if you travel backwards with me this can provide you with an example or model or whatever of what a scientific revolution is.