Sources for Familiarity and Strangeness
It is worth differentiating between the terms commensurable, incommensurable, incomparable and incompatible. It is clear that we use the term incommensurable rather than incomparable precisely because we are attempting a comparison. Bernstein (1983: 90) reminds us that
[w]e are not confronted with forms of life that are so self-contained that we cannot compare them. If this were really the case, the appropriate response would be silence.
More careful treatment is necessary when differentiating between incompatibility and incommensurability. Strictly speaking: “commensurable” is a mathematical term. It refers to the kind of point-by-point comparisons which can be made between congruent triangles, left and right-hand gloves and the like. But logic, axioms and neutral language—the stuff of mathematics are precisely the luxuries Kuhn and Feyerabend were determined to deny to science and the humanities. Writing fourteen years after the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn (in Bernstein, 1983: 80) reveals that
[i]n applying ‘incommensurability’ to theories, I intended only to insist that there was no common language within which both could be fully expressed and which could therefore be used in a point-by-point comparison between them.
Bernstein, Richard. J. (1983) Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Phila delphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.
THOMAS KUHN ggg American Philosopher of Science [1922-1996]
Kuhn’s somewhat flexible notion of “paradigm shift” is a powerful tool for unraveling the transformative aspects of learning. Kuhn (1970: 150) writes that “the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds” and
just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.
Kuhn’s “Gestalt switch” (1970: 112) is “a revolutionary transformation of vision” where
at times of revolution, when the normal-scientific tradition changes, the scientist’s perception of his environment must be reeducated—in some familiar situations he must learn to see a new gestalt. After he has done so the world of his research will seem, here and there, incommensurable with the one he had inhabited before.
Kuhn, Thomas (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
PAUL FEYERABEND hhh Austrian Philospher of Science [1924-1994]
Feyerabend (1988: 82-84) insists that incompatibility should be reserved for “deductive disjointedness.” He wants to make a specific point in variance with the view that scientific progress is cumulative and linear. He distances himself from the “Logical Empiricist school” which holds that original (less comprehensive) theories always can be derived from later (more comprehensive) ones. The incommensurability thesis takes into account the overlap between rival paradigms that allows rational debate in the first place. It aids clarification of the ways we make comparisons, and examines critically the standards and subtleties by which we interpret rival paradigms. A close reading of Feyerabend (1970: 219-220) reveals that “[t]he replacement of one comprehensive theory by another involves losses as well as gains.” He reminds us that to ask whether or not two paradigms are incommensurable “is not a complete question” because they will be commensurable in some interpretations and incomparable in others. This is what makes the Gestalt switch necessary. Feyerabend (1970: 227) contends that, when taken in their entirety, “[i]ncommensurable theories can only be refuted by reference to their own respective kinds of experience.”
Feyerabend, Paul (1970) Consolations for the Specialist. From Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
If we inhabit different worlds after experiencing an all-or-nothing paradigm shift, a prelude of liminality seems necessary. This concept is appropriated from Dutch anthropologist Van Gennep’s work on ritual in primitive societies. In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner pays tribute to Van Gennep who has shown that “all rites of passage are marked by three phases: separation, margin (or limen, signifying ‘threshold’ in Latin) and aggregation.” Recognizing the significance of liminality for his own work among the Ndembu, Turner (1969: 94) himself writes that
[t]he attributes of liminality are necessarily ambiguous... Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremonial.
Turner, Victor W. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago : Aldine Publishing Company.
VICTOR TURNER jj Scots Anthropologist [1920-1983]
HANS GEORG GADAMER German Philosopher [1900-2002]
It is Gadamer's (1994: 295) assertion that “Hermeneutic work is based on the polarity of familiarity and strangeness.”
Gadamer, Hans Georg (1994)Truth and Method. Second Revised Edition Revised translation by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum. (Originally published as Warheit und Methode, 1960.)