The thesis, associated with Kuhn and Feyerabend, that scientific theories in different paradigms are not fully comparable — key terms change meaning across paradigms, making direct translation or rational choice between them impossible.
Against cumulative progress: the standard view held that science accumulates truths, replacing false theories with true ones measured on the same scale. Kuhn's incommensurability: during revolutionary change, the meaning of key terms (mass, time, space) changes so fundamentally that theories across paradigms cannot be evaluated on a common standard. They are 'talking past each other.' Feyerabend's stronger version: no neutral observation language exists; theory choice is underdetermined by evidence. Provoked the 'science wars' and debates about relativism.
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