Abstract
Romanticism is right to object to the traditional Enlightenment, but wrong to object on grounds of too much reason. What is wrong with the traditional Enlightenment is not too much reason but, quite to the contrary, not enough. The traditional Enlightenment is a characteristic kind of irrationality masquerading as rationality. In order to develop the profound Enlightenment idea properly of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress, at least two crucial steps must be got right. First, the progress-achieving methods of natural science must be correctly identified. Second, these progress-achieving methods must be correctly generalized and applied to the task of making social progress towards an enlightened world. The traditional Enlightenment got both steps wrong. They failed to appreciate that there are problematic metaphysical assumptions inherent in the aims of science which need to be improved as science proceeds. They failed to generalize this idea properly, so that it becomes a meta-methodology for improving problematic aims whatever we may be doing. And they failed to apply this aim-improving meta-methodology to the social world, to politics, industry, agriculture, economics, international relations, so that in all these fields we may begin to make social progress on analogy with intellectual progress achieved by science. The philosophes developed social inquiry as social science, when the basic idea requires that social inquiry is developed as social methodology—progress-achieving methods being got into social and institutional life. These blunders are still with us today.
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Notes
- 1.
For the influence of Newton on the Enlightenment see Gay (1973) pp. 128–152. For a brief consideration of the question of whether Newton himself espoused the kind of inductivist view the philosophes of the Enlightenment tended to attribute to him, see note 14 in this chapter.
- 2.
See Gay (1973) p. 149, p. 165 and pp. 176–180.
- 3.
As I indicted in Chap. 2, standard empiricism is the paradigmatic core of knowledge-inquiry.
- 4.
As I have indicated, standard empiricism may allow that considerations of simplicity, unity or explanatory power influence choice of theory in science as long as this does not amount to making a permanent assumption about the world. Again, standard empiricism may allow that choice of theory is biased in the direction of some paradigm or ‘hard core’, upheld for a time independently of empirical considerations, as described by Kuhn and Lakatos, as long as in the long term empirical considerations determine the choice of such paradigms or ‘hard cores’: see Kuhn (1962), Lakatos (1970), pp. 91–195. Both Kuhn and Lakatos, like Popper, defend versions of standard empiricism.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Popper (1963), p. 54.
- 8.
- 9.
For more detailed expositions of this argument see works referred to in note 8, especially The Comprehensibility of the Universe, Understanding Scientific Progress and In Praise of Natural Philosophy. For replies to criticisms of this argument, see Maxwell (2015), pp. 5–31.
- 10.
- 11.
For a more detailed exposition of this conception of science see works referred to in note 8, apart from the first one. The argument of Understanding Scientific Progress is especially decisive. I there show that aim-oriented empiricism not only suffices to solve the long-standing problem of induction (and other major philosophical problems of scientific progress); it is required to solve this problem. (The problem of induction, which goes back to David Hume over 278 years ago, is the problem of how theories can be verified, or even just selected, by means of evidence.) Philosophers, however, ignore this work up to the date of the publication of this book (2019): see Maxwell (2019).
- 12.
See works referred to in note 8 (apart from the first one).
- 13.
- 14.
It is probably true to say that those who created modern science—Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Huygens, Leibniz and others—did not believe in standard empiricism. Belief in out and out empiricism was confined to philosophers, such as Francis Bacon and John Locke; it was not upheld by working natural philosophers.
How then did standard empiricism become the orthodox view among scientists? It happened because the philosophes of the Enlightenment perceived Descartes to be a system-builder, a thinker who attempted to arrive at knowledge of nature by reason, independently of experience, but perceived Newton to be an inductivist, a natural philosopher who based his results exclusively on experience. With the downfall of Cartesian science and the triumph of Newtonian science came the downfall of Cartesian rationalist methodology and the triumph of Newton’s perceived radical empiricist methodology. There was the added point that it seemed inconceivable that reason alone could establish anything about the nature of the universe. Kant’s attempt, in his Critique of Pure Reason, to establish synthetic a priori judgements—items of knowledge about the experienced world established independently of experience—did not convince. In addition to this, those who claimed to establish factual propositions about the (observable) universe by means of reason alone, such as Descartes, Leibniz and Kant, did not agree among themselves as to what these propositions should be, and furthermore were contradicted by the advance of science itself when, for example, acceptance of general relativity led to the rejection of Euclidean geometry as an accurate description of the nature of physical space.
Newton, as perceived by his followers at least, played a key role in this saga of confusion. His derivation of his universal law of gravitation from the phenomena by induction, as set out in his Principia, became, subsequently, the very paradigm of proper scientific reasoning and method. Subsequent scientists, such as Coulomb and Ampère, did their best to imitate Newton’s inductivist method.
Did Newton himself, then, believe in a version of standard empiricism? On the one hand, Newton did, famously, claim to have arrived at his universal law of gravitation by induction from the phenomena. At the beginning of Book Three of his Principia, Newton specifies four rules of reasoning in philosophy (i.e. in natural philosophy or science); the fourth of these rules specifies that propositions arrived at by induction from phenomena are to be regarded as “very nearly true” until contrary evidence arises. All this lends support to the Enlightenment view that Newton advocated inductivism. One might conclude from this that Newton believed in the key tenet of standard empiricism, namely that in science “no substantial thesis about the world must be accepted independent of evidence”.
On the other hand, Newton’s first rule of reasoning asserts: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” And Newton goes on to explain: “To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes” Newton (1962) All this suggests strongly that Newton held that natural philosophy needs the substantial assumption that Nature is simple—an assumption upheld independently of evidence. Newton’s second and third rules of reasoning bear out this interpretation. In some respects, in other words, Newton, like other creators of modern science, believed in a view that is closer to aim-oriented empiricism than to standard empiricism.
An additional point to note is that Newton could not possibly have derived his law of gravitation from the phenomena. Newton’s “phenomena” are Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, already, incidentally, quite speculative and theoretical, and thus only “phenomena” in a rather stretched version of the meaning of that word. Whereas Kepler’s laws are restricted to the solar system, Newton’s Law of gravitation is about all objects everywhere, at all times and places: Newton’s law vastly exceeds the content of Kepler’s laws. Furthermore, and much more important, Newton’s law of gravitation actually contradicts Kepler’s laws, as Newton himself showed. (Given Newtonian theory, Kepler’s laws are only correct if the sun does not move, and the planets do not attract each other; Newtonian theory contradicts both points.) An argument that ends in the conclusion contradicting the premises does not establish the conclusion; it has the form of a reductio ad absurdum, and establishes, merely, that the premises cannot be correct. Newton’s derivation of his law of gravitation, far from being a model of rectitude in scientific reasoning, is deeply flawed. (This point was first noted by Pierre Duhem in his The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, 1962, first published in 1906.).
For a much more detailed discussion of the origins of modern science in natural philosophy, the demise of natural philosophy and the rise of science and standard empiricism, and the role of Newton in all this, see Maxwell (2017b), especially Chap. 2.
- 15.
See Maxwell (1993), pp. 275–305.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
Popper’s conception is given by the first two rules; I have added rules (iii) and (iv). Popper was too hostile to specialization to see the need for it, and hence the need for rules which interconnect specialized and fundamental problem-solving, that is, rules (iii) and (iv). For my own earlier expositions of this problem-solving conception of rationality see: Maxwell (1980), pp. 19–81; From Knowledge to Wisdom, ch. 3; (1992), pp. 205–227.
- 19.
And so, of course, is the problem of creating a civilized world.
- 20.
“Rationality”, as the term is being used here, is not opposed to, but includes “empiricism” or “learning from experience”. Philosophers have, unfortunately confused the issue by using the term “rationalism” to stand for the view that knowledge can be acquired independently of experience; philosophers thus juxtapose “rationalism” and “empiricism”: see, for example, Cottingham (1984). Long ago, Popper pointed out how confusing and misleading this traditional philosophical terminology is (Popper (1966), vol. 2, note 1 to ch. 24, p. 352): his comments have been ignored.
- 21.
There are algorithms, such as utility theory, which take as input the desires or utilities of the agent in question; these lie beyond the scope of the rules of such algorithms.
- 22.
For further discussion of the conception of rationality being appealed to here, see: Maxwell, From Knowledge to Wisdom, Ch. 5.
- 23.
The solution to the first great problem of learning is scientific method—aim-oriented empiricism. The solution to the second great problem of learning is the generalized version of this, to be discussed in the next section, namely aim-oriented rationality. Or rather, the solution is to build into institutions, into our entire social world, the aims-improving, progress-achieving methods of aim-oriented rationality so that we may make social progress towards a more enlightened, civilized world.
- 24.
See Maxwell, The Comprehensibility of the Universe, ch. 2. The solution to the problem of induction, as I have already remarked, is to be found in my Understanding Scientific Progress. (Earlier attempts are to be found in “Induction and Scientific Realism, Part I”, The Comprehensibility of the Universe, Is Scientific Neurotic?, and From Knowledge to Wisdom, 2nd ed., 2007, ch. 14.).
- 25.
All problem-solving is aim-pursuing and, in sense, all aim-pursuing is problem-solving—except that the extraordinarily difficult problems that need to be solved if we are to realize even the simplest of our aims, such as to walk across a room or answer the telephone, may be solved by our brains without our even being aware of it, so that we are not conscious of there being any problem at all. Even the most sophisticated robots, however, find such problems extraordinarily difficult to solve. Construing rationality in terms of aim-pursuing rather than problem-solving has the great advantage that it provides a framework within which, modifying or changing the problems being tackled becomes something that can be assessed rationally, in that aims being pursued can be rationally modified or changed.
- 26.
Thus during the first five decades of the last century it was mostly assumed that technological, industrial and economic growth is a desirable aim to pursue, in an unqualified way. Only in the 1960s did it begin to occur to people that depletion of resources and degradation of the environment, brought about by unqualified industrial and economic growth, might be highly undesirable. The aim of “progress”, interpreted as unqualified growth, became suspect; the aim needed to be modified in order to become genuinely desirable.
- 27.
That the aim of creating civilization is inherently problematic, even inherently self-contradictory, has been emphasized especially by Isaiah Berlin: see, for example, his Against the Current, 1979 Berlin fails, however, to go on to make the crucial points that (a) a similar situation arises in connection with science, and (b) the all-important conclusion to draw is that the task of making progress towards civilization needs to put aim-oriented rationality into practice, a conception of rationality tailor-made for the pursuit of inherently problematic aims, arrived at by generalizing aim-oriented empiricism, itself tailor-made for the comparable situation that arises in connection with the problematic aims of science.
- 28.
X might be the theatre, politics, science, education, finding a husband or wife, dealing with crime or, rather more generally, building a better world.
- 29.
For a development of this point, see Maxwell (1984), pp. 174–181.
- 30.
Putting rules (i) and (ii) into practice involves (i) articulating problems of living, and (ii) proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible actions, as we shall see in the next chapter.
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Maxwell, N. (2019). The New Enlightenment. In: Science and Enlightenment. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13420-4_3
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