Taxonomic characterization

Taxonomic characterization allowed Kuhn to postulate his no-overlap principle, since, if the taxonomic categories are divisions in a logical sense then this implies that the relations established between these concepts and the rest are necessarily hierarchical. It is for exactly this type of relationship that the changes in categories are holistic, as the modification of a category necessarily implies the modification of the surrounding categories, which explains why once the change takes place the taxonomies can not be comparable - they are isomorphic.

This characterization was already present in Kuhn’s writing along with remnants of semantic characterization, which he developed in full towards the end of the 1980s in his taxonomic characterization. An advantage of this characterization is the belief that the criteria that allow the identification of a concept with its references are many and varied, so that a coincidence of criteria is not necessary for successful communication except for those categories that are implicated. Kuhn saw the relations between concepts as existing in a multidimensional space, the categories consist of partitions in this space and they must coincide between the communicators, although this is not the case for the criteria that establish a connection between this space and the associated reference.

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