Incommensurability occurs in science where two theories lack a common measure, a standard
reference, or an external criterion that could have served as grounds for comparison. Yet, although
incommensurability appears to stem from the absence of a world beyond theory, I will claim that
there would be no place for the notion of incommensurability in our epistemology were we not giving
our theories realistic interpretations. In other words, in order to assume that theories are
incommensurable, we have to assume that each theory works as a conceptual net through which the
world is seen differently. We have to assume that a theory employing the term 'star' sees an object
through this term; and each theory can give the term 'star' a different realistic interpretation, that is,
identify the term with another celestial body. Incommensurable theories, while each sees the star
differently, all represent stars. Without realism towards theories and towards the entities they assume,
theories would have been straightforwardly intertranslatable and commensurable.
The
purpose of the present paper is to explore this particular interpretation of incommensurability in terms
of the question of realism in art. Incommensurability between theories means that while a given
theory assumes it can 'grasp' an object, the theory is also caught in the impossibility of really
grasping it in any exhaustive way. In a similar sense, in assuming that art can realistically represent,
both the artist and critic view an object through the mode of representation chosen while being caught
in the impossibility of grasping the object in any exhaustive way. In art, as in science, each school
and even each particular artwork, is fixated on a specific object, and is fixated on representing it in
a specific way. Yet the object of representation is always also the object that escapes representation
and we need the conviction of a representing agent (scientist or artist) to believe in the presence, a
tentative and elusive one though, of the object through representation. To pursue this argument, I will
first present a rather lengthy exposition of the concept of incommensurability in the philosophies of
Kuhn and Feyerabend, an exposition that should provide the basis for the ensuing discussion of
realism in artistic representation.
Incommensurability in the
philosophy of science
Incommensurability is associated with Thomas
Kuhn's philosophy of science, although it can be shown to figure in other versions and formulations
in the work of earlier philosophers. According to Kuhn incommensurability by definition undermines
any claim to the growth of human knowledge or any claim that scientific propositions will gradually
converge unto truth. The reason for this lack of validation procedure has to do with the fact that
paradigms of science are discontinuous, each constructing a world differently. Scientific lexicons,
even though repeatable from one paradigm to the next, are also incompatible because each scientific
lexicon relates terms to phenomena in a different manner. After a scientific revolution, names and
terms are often guarded intact, but the objects and phenomena assembled under them have changed
(compare the sun, moon and stars as items in the scientific lexicon before and after
Copernicus.)
|
Page + 1