[coldtea]

>I'm not sure but I think he uses the word "incommensurability", which implies an absence of indicators of progress (if not him then certainly some interpretations of his book use that very word). (...) Rather, pragmatists like me have resolved to ignore him and enjoy our iPhones and lasers.

Well, Kuhn was concerned with science and epistemology, so not progress in the general sense if I'm not mistaken.

Technological progress (from simpler to more complex technologies) could hardly be refuted, even from Kuhn.

But whether iPhones and lasers are progress in the value sense, that (with a logic similar to Kuhn's thoughts on science) depends on our value framework. They're not irrefutable progress even for all of us in today's cultural climate (some e.g. consider them regressions regarding experiencing the world directly, intimacy with others, privacy, etc, and think we'd be better off without them, even if we lose portable social media apps, global internet access from our pocket, etc).

Even less so for other cultural contexts (and we don't even have to go to the past; would the Amish, for example, consider an iPhone "progress"?)