But I haven't found much of what I've read very edifying. Some people accuse paradigms of being relativism, focusing on the concept of incommensurability and claiming that it weakens the concept of independent scientific truths since concepts are only evaluable for truth value within paradigms and not between them. Others strenuously insist that it isn't like that at all, that incommensurability doesn't mean there can't be means for comparing paradigms one to the other and choosing the best one (this makes sense to me because certainly that's what physicists actually do - pick the model that's appropriate for the problem). But if there is a basis for choosing between paradigms, what's the big deal?
no subject
But I haven't found much of what I've read very edifying. Some people accuse paradigms of being relativism, focusing on the concept of incommensurability and claiming that it weakens the concept of independent scientific truths since concepts are only evaluable for truth value within paradigms and not between them. Others strenuously insist that it isn't like that at all, that incommensurability doesn't mean there can't be means for comparing paradigms one to the other and choosing the best one (this makes sense to me because certainly that's what physicists actually do - pick the model that's appropriate for the problem). But if there is a basis for choosing between paradigms, what's the big deal?
I was a lot more comfortable with Popper.