Echevarria uses Kuhn's controversial incommensurability thesis as a claim to relativism and therefore a defense of engagement in the war of ideas. Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996), one of the most influential twentieth century philosophers of science, published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), one of the most cited publications, in which he developed the thesis of incommensurability thesis. He argued that, "theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability." The central idea is that the development of science is driven by adherence to paradigms. If a particular paradigm cannot solve an anomaly, a crisis in science may result. An existing paradigm may be superseded by a rival paradigm. There may be no common measure for assessing the competing scientific theories. They are 'incommensurable'.
