Incommensurability and "multicultural science"

Hugh Lacey

pp. 225-239

in: Howard Sankey (ed), Incommensurability and related matters, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

Responding to criticisms made by Siegel of Kuhn's views on incommensurability, I argue that "multicultural science" is possible. More exactly, values derived from different cultures underlie the salience of questions (e.g., about seeds) that arise when phenomena are considered explicitly as objects of human experience and social value, and that are open to empirical address but side-lined in mainstream modern scientific inquiry. Attention to such values thus points to the potential importance of identifying alternative approaches to systematic empirical inquiry that may involve interesting developments of approaches deployed in gaining "traditional" knowledge, e.g., in agriculture — as we see when we contrast mainstream approaches to agricultural research (those, e.g., that use biotechnological methods) with practically incompatible competing agroecological approaches.