rosmini, ratzinger, and kuhn - Theological Studies

50 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
plicitly or implicitly, as properly mediating revelation. The CDF, then,
acknowledges what Kuhn had argued for against Russell, seemingly Wittgenstein
of the Tractatus, and the logical positivists, namely, the unlikelihood
of a theory-free atomistic language.
Of course the problem with any wholesale endorsement of theory-laden
interpretation (and the precise extent of Kuhn’s endorsement is always the
subject of debate) is that if every observer is indeed theory-laden, biased
from the outset with his or her own preunderstanding, then how can “facts”
or “criteria” serve to determine which theory is closer to the truth than
another? On what basis is such a judgment made? Are all independent
standards of rationality thereby undermined? It is these questions that give
rise to reflection on the thorny relationship between “facts” and “theory.”
FACT/THEORY
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn states clearly that one of
the salient themes of his book will be to show that “fact and theory . . . are
not categorically and permanently distinct” (66). And throughout his work,
he is eager to demonstrate that a simple distinction between observable
facts and their theoretical interpretation cannot be made, that we must
beware of a naïve understanding of accessible “facta bruta.” Kuhn is, for
example, quick to reject the “layer-cake” thesis noted above, i.e., what
changes with a new paradigm or conceptual system “is only the scientist’s
interpretation of observations that themselves are fixed once and for all by
the nature of the environment and of the perceptual apparatus” (120). At
the same time, he hardly argues for the claim that we are so entirely
theory-laden that “facts” and “observations” are entirely protean and fluid.
He insists, for example, that “observation and experience can and must
drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief, else there would
be no science” (4).
As with so much in Kuhn, commentators have understood him in a
variety of ways. Alexander Bird, for example, interprets him sympathetically,
while tending to support some distinction between fact and theory.
Bird notes, for example, that Kuhn agrees with several elements of the
earlier positivist program, one of which is that “judgment in science is
founded on the observations we make (e.g., hypotheses are tested against
observational evidence).” 12 Building on this, Bird argues that knowledge of
the earth’s rotation does not likely affect the vision one has at dawn. It still
appears, on the observational level, that the sun is rising, as both Ptolemy
and Tycho Brahe had argued. And for both Lavoisier and Priestley, the jar
on the table still appears to be one filled with gas, although each scientist
12 Bird, Thomas Kuhn 97.