Beyond Kuhn—Scientific Explanation, Theory Structure, Incommensurability And Physical Necessity

Relativism is but one way, and not the best, to interpret Kuhn, claims Hung (philosophy, U. of Waikato, New Zealand). He explicates and develops the paradigm view of science that Thomas Kuhn loosed upon the world in 1962, not as a subjectivist and relativist view, but as a philosophy that interpret science as an objective and rational study of nature. He introduces the concept of representational spaces to describe generic theories such as the corpuscular theory and the wave theory of light, as a substitute for Kuhn's concept of paradigm, which he finds rather vague and subjective. Time will tell whether representational-spaces shift will find its way into automobile commercials. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Edwin H.-C. Hung is Reader/Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He studied philosophy at Oxford University, where he obtained his doctoral degree (D.Phil.). He has been an honorary fellow of Linacre College (Oxford), a research associate at the Center of Philosophy and History of Science of Boston University, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, MIT, and the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science. He has published widely in the fields of philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic and philosophy of language, including the book, The Nature of Science: Problems and Perspectives (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997, 502 pages).