Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This article investigates the enduring philosophical challenge of understanding scientific theories across paradigms, focusing on the nature and possibility of interpretation amid taxonomic incommensurability. Building on Thomas Kuhn’s mature distinction between translation failure and interpretive bilingualism within scientific lexicons, the study elaborates on how local clusters of interdefined scientific terms resist exact semantic equivalence across conceptual schemes. To address the tension between preserving meaning and enabling intelligibility, Jacques Derrida’s notion of iterability is employed. Derrida’s insight into the repeatability and contextual displacement of signs reveals that interpretation necessarily involves re-inscription, transforming rather than simply transferring meaning, owing to the non-saturability of context and the dynamic deferral of meaning (différance). By dialoguing Kuhn’s historically grounded epistemological analysis with Derrida’s structural linguistic framework, the article advances a model of transformative interpretation. This model defines cross-paradigm understanding as a historically and conceptually constrained practice that balances preserving original conceptual relations with necessary alteration, thus avoiding both naive equivalence and radical relativism. It also sets forth criteria for interpretive accountability, including textual fidelity, historical sensitivity, structural coherence, and epistemic openness. The synthesis presented here enriches philosophical hermeneutics and translation theory within the philosophy of science, offering a robust conceptual foundation to explicate how scientific revolutions constitute a dynamic negotiation of meaning across sometimes incommensurable conceptual worlds. This approach fosters a nuanced, epistemically responsible engagement with scientific innovation and its complex continuity and rupture.
Source: Research Square
Author: Ivana Nikolic
Institution: University of Zadar
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7213347365