Descriptions of Scientific Revolutions: Rorty’s Failure at Redescribing Scientific Progress

The twentieth century saw extended development in the philosophy of science to incorporate contemporary expansions of scientific theory and investigation. Richard Rorty was a prominent and rather controversial thinker who maintained that all progress, from social change to scientific inquiry, was achieved through the redescription of existing vocabularies. However, this theory fails to describe revolutionary scientific progress. Thomas Kuhn’s theories of paradigm change, as first described in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, better portray this process. I attempt to show this by applying Kuhn’s and Rorty’s views to examples of scientific progress and comparing the results. Richard Rorty was arguably one of the most controversial thinkers of the latter twentieth century. His embrace of neo-pragmatism inspired a renewed interest in the pragmatic tradition of the philosophical community at large and precipitated countless debates in contemporary philosophical studies. Among his many problematic claims is his assertion that any type of progress is achieved through redescription of previous vocabularies. I will argue that this theory has dangerous implications when applied to revolutionary scientific advance. Redescription ultimately fails to account for the change that occurs during such periods in scientific practice, and is ultimately disingenuous towards that progress. Thomas Kuhn’s theories, as they first appear in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions