Are Physical Theories Incommensurable?

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of incommensurability in scientific theories, analyzing its different aspects and arguing that the unifying framework in physics does not eliminate but supports incommensurability.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of incommensurability in scientific paradigms and critically examines physicists' arguments against it, especially through the unifying cube of physics.

Findings

Incommensurability exists across methodological, observational, and semantic aspects.

The unifying cube of physics does not resolve incommensurability.

The unifying cube actually supports the persistence of incommensurability.

Abstract

This paper examines the incommensurability thesis - one of the most important and controversial ideas to emerge from the simultaneous work of Kuhn and Feyerabend. In the first half, I discuss three aspects of incommensurability - methodological incommensurability (the view that each paradigm supplies different standards of evaluation), observational incommensurability (the view that the theories we accept alter how we see the world), and finally, semantic incommensurability (which claims that as paradigms change, the very meanings of central theoretical terms also change). In the latter half, I tackle the general arguments of physicists against incommensurability by primarily considering the so called unifying cube of physics. I show that the cube of physics does not get rid of incommensurability, but rather favours it.