ABSTRACT
Alasdair Maclntyre’s essay is included as an example of the types of responses to Kuhn’s work made by those resistant to an entirely historicist position. Maclntyre, a contemporary philosopher, argues against Kuhn’s notion of paradigms as completely incommensurable. He suggests that epistemological crises are resolved when one is able to construct a narrative. A narrative in this sense means a story which goes beyond the period of crisis. For Maclntyre the fact that we continually construct and reconstruct scientific narratives does not mean that science is not progressive. Rather, Maclntyre suggests that narratives become more and more adequate representations of the phenomena we hope to explain. In this perspective, historicism, putting truth in context, does not necessarily undermine the modern project but rescues it.
