Abstract
By using Ian Hacking’s distinction between “truth” and “truthfulness” and Nicholas Jardine’s idea of “scene of inquiry,” coupled with a case study in economics, this paper tries to reinterpret Kuhn’s controversial philosophical notion of “world change” as a middle-way realist position by maintaining that Kuhn’s position is conceptually objective but is relative in practice. The paper presents a meta-analysis of its own reinterpretation of Kuhn’s position and discovers that if we regard this reinterpretation as one that is strongly influenced by the ideas of previous generations of scholars, then this interpretation itself cannot escape the influence of historical turn that is revealed in Kuhn’s magnum opus (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Whether one refers to the discourse in the paper or to the arguments proposed by other philosophers and historians of science such as Hacking or Jardine, one can regard them all as indicating a series of changes in the focus of research—changes triggered by the influence of Kuhn’s book: initially focus on research in the philosophy of science, and then turn to explore the history and philosophy of science, and finally shift to research in the field of science, technology, and society.