Abstract
Mario Bunge has repeatedly discussed contributions to philosophy and to science that are worthless at best and dangerous at worst, especially cases of pseudo-science. He clearly gives his reason in his latest essay on this matter: “The fact that science can be faked to the point of deceiving science lovers suggests the need for a rigorous sifting device”. Moreover, this sifting has its rewards, as “sometimes intellectual gold comes mixed with muck”. Furthermore, the sifting device is a demarcation of science, which answers interesting questions: what is valuable in science and what makes it tick? The question is under dispute. So before coming to it we should admit a few preliminary ideas that are more difficult to contest than ideas that purport to demarcate science.
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Notes
See (Locke [1690] 1979), p. 3, “Epistle to the Reader”:
The Commonwealth of Learning, is not at this time without Master-Builders, whose mighty Designs, in advancing the Sciences, will leave lasting Monuments to the Admiration of Posterity; But every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such Masters, as the Great—Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some other of that Strain;’tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge.
Within popular science it is public service to wage war against all kinds of folk advice, medical, psychological, economic, educational. Faraday refuted spiritualism. (He showed that participants in séances lift the tables that they believed spirits move). He found it boring. Some Darwinists never tire of demoting silly religious dogma. They are militants. Locke wanted to remove the rubbish “that lies in the way to Knowledge”. Wittgenstein considered his work important although (unlike Locke) he was not interested in corrections of factual errors (Wittgenstein 1953, §109). He was deeply offended when his adjutant John Wisdom found a lecture of his boring (letter to Wittgenstein, February 15, 1940, Wittgenstein and McGuinness 1995, p. 315). Wisdom proudly viewed his own garbage-removal as boring. See his preface to his collection of essays.
Carnap exposed Heidegger’s stilted German texts as grammatical blunders. Oddly, Quine expressed appreciation in his Homage to Carnap (Quine 1971), reprinted in (Quine 1966, pp. 40–43). Michael Friedman, a leading Carnap fan, suggests that it “may now strike us as more than slightly absurd” (Friedman 2000, p. x). See my review of Friedman’s book in (Agassi 2005).
Wittgenstein fans wish to remove scholarly rubbish rather than popular beliefs. They rely on western commonsense. The Japanese version of commonsense espouses the idealism that Moore, Wittgenstein and their fans despised.
Occasionally, some ambitious guardians of culture denounce whole trends. This is of little value, but it may entertain and it may even include worthy aperçus, as is (Shaw 1908).
Sir Francis Bacon said, ideas procured by following the right rules of induction are valuable. Whewell was the first to disagree. He said, we need not justify the way an idea was produced, only the view of it as valuable.
For Locke’s possible service to Newton see G. A. J. Rogers (1978). Note 6 there is a survey of the literature on this and a verdict: “Locke may well have modified Newton's views on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.” This possible influence is marginal to a marginal interest of Newton.
Locke’s Essay’s attack on the concept of substance (hypokeímenon) is aimed at Descartes, as the very sub-title for its Bk. 2, Ch. 23 §4, clearly indicates: “No clear Idea of Substance”.
The obvious response to Wittgenstein is that what he loudly declared nonsense he tacitly deemed meaningful when read as elliptic or as metaphorical. This devalues his analyses as partial and anti-metaphysics as baseless.
Of course, the situation is a bit more complex. Removing rubbish may involve some interesting new ideas. Yet on the whole, clearly the refutation of a good idea is intellectually much superior to the refutation of popular rubbish that is educationally much more valuable. This is so particularly if the refutation comes with the recognition of the superiority of the rubbish at least in its being popular. Also, the study of intellectual fashions is quite interesting and significant.
The question, what is the view of the scientific community may be contested. In such cases different parties can employ different expert witnesses to express their opinions on the matter. Who is expert witness on the scientific community? Let me suggest that those who count as sociologists of science recognized as experts in their field are less reliable than philosophers of science recognized as experts in their field if this is possible.
The one exception—quoted repeatedly in the scientific literature of the Enlightenment—is “truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion”; (Bacon 1620, Book II, Aphorism 20). Robert Leslie Ellis, the editor of and best commentator on the philosophical works of Bacon, considered this an admission of bankruptcy, since everywhere else Bacon showed concern with the avoidance of error.
The opening of the third paragraph of "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description" (Russell 1918) reads: “When we ask, what are the kinds of objects with which we are acquainted, the first and most obvious example is sense data. When I see a colour or hear a noise, I have direct acquaintance with the colour or the noise.”
Robert Boyle instituted these rules early in the days of the Royal Society of London. He spoke of moral certainty, namely, of normal, commonsense certitude. His appeal to court procedures is suspect, however, as he lived in the days of witch trials (See Gibson ed. 2006).
See (Quine 1988): an “observation sentence … is an occasion sentence, indisputable on the occasion of its assertion. Its dated report is a standing sentence, and theoretical; hence fallible.” This is contrary to the scientific tradition that Quine prominently intended to respect.
The novelty of Einstein’s rule can be seen from perusing Book 3 of Newton’s Principia and seeing how hard and unsuccessfully he struggled with this problem (the problem that he solved better in his System of the World. See my “Newtonianism Before and After the Einsteinian Revolution” in Agassi (2008, pp. 482–500).
This idea Popper shared with Frege and also with Peirce whom Bunge does not castigate. Bunge declared that Popper had no ontology. This is requires explanation, as his three domains belong to ontology proper.
Sadly, Bunge makes Popper share Hayek’s advocacy of unbridled market economy (Bunge, op. cit., 258). More lamentable is his denial “that classical mechanics is falsified”: to declare refuted a good approximation to the truth, he sadly says, is “utterly false” (Bunge, op. cit., p. 282). Utterly false? Not even approximately true?
To try to appeal to the uninterested is unbecoming and smacks of competition for customers.
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Agassi, J. Between the Under-Labourer and the Master-Builder: Observations on Bunge’s Method. Sci & Educ 21, 1405–1418 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-011-9386-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-011-9386-8