Abstract
In his Scientific Representation (2008), van Fraassen argues that measuring is a form of representation. In fact, every measurement pinpoints its target in accordance with specific operational rules within an already-constructed theoretical space, in which certain conceptual interconnections can be represented. Reichenbach’s 1920 account of coordination is particularly interesting in this connection. Even though recent reassessments of this account do not do full justice to some important elements lying behind it, they do have the merit of focusing on a different aspect of his early work that traditional interpretations of relativized a priori principles have unfortunately neglected in favour of a more “structural” role for coordination. In Reichenbach’s early work, however, the idea of coordination was employed not only to indicate theory-specific fundamental principles such as the ones suggested in the literature on conventional principles in science, but also to refer to more “basic” assumptions. In Reichenbach, these principles are preconditions both of the individuation of physical magnitudes and of their measurement, and, as such, they are necessary to approach the world in the first instance. This paper aims to reassess Reichenbach’s approach to coordination and to the representation of physical quantities in light of recent literature on measurement and scientific representation.
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Notes
- 1.
The “invention” of temperature, as Chang (2004) put it, has now become a classic example of this.
- 2.
I tend to interpret it as a weak defence of the a priori, rather than as a “weak rejection” of it, as Parrini has instead suggested already in the early 1980s. Cf. his (2002), chap. 1.
- 3.
See Friedman (2001) and literature therein.
- 4.
In chapters II and III of his (1920/1965) Reichenbach’s approach is indeed to show how contradictions can emerge when considering the whole set of fundamental principles presupposed by a theory with respect to some other whole set of principles accepted by the previous theory.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
On the origin and importance of this principle in Reichenbach’s work, see Padovani (2013).
- 9.
See in particular his (2008, chap. 5).
- 10.
Reichenbach describes the passage from one system of principles to the other in terms of inclusion of the oldest into the new one. An extension or generalization of a system moving beyond the previous one can be obtained within the system itself, by virtue of what he names “procedure of the continuous expansion” (Verfahren der stetigen Erweiterung), that the English edition translates as “method of the successive approximations”. As he writes: “The contradiction that arises if experiences are made with the old coordinating principle by means of which a new coordinating principle is to be proved disappears on one condition: if the old principle can be regarded as an approximation [Näherung] for certain simple cases. Since all experiences are merely approximate laws [Näherungsgesetze], they may be established by means of the old principles; this method does not exclude the possibility that the totality of experiences inductively confirms a more general principle. It is logically admissible and technically possible to discover inductively new coordinating principles that represent a successive approximation of the principles used until now. We can call such a generalization “successive” [stetig] because for certain approximately realized cases the new principle is to converge toward the old principle with an exactness corresponding to the approximation of these cases. We shall call this inductive procedure the method of successive approximations [Verfahren der stetigen Erweiterung].” Reichenbach (1920/1965), 68–69.
- 11.
Cf. van Fraassen (2008), 166 ff.
- 12.
Interestingly, an analysis of these issues had already been carried out by Reichenbach, mutatis mutandis, in his doctoral dissertation (1916/2008), together with his first extensive discussion of the notion of approximation. As I have emphasized in my (2011), it was this kind of analysis that first implicitly lead to the idea of a “relativized a priori” and so it was not the Einsteinian revolution that was in the background of this idea, contrary to what Friedman (2001) has claimed.
- 13.
This theoretical space is a mathematical construct that is used to represent certain conceptual interconnections in the act of measuring. Some of van Fraassen’s favourite illustrations of what he means by “logical space”, and how this theoretical space is supposed to work, are time and colour. On these issues, see however Belot (2010).
- 14.
I’ve insisted on these issues especially in Padovani (2015b).
- 15.
Cf. Padovani (2015a).
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Acknowledgements
Besides the EPSA 2015 meeting in Düsseldorf, early versions of this paper were also presented at the BSPS conference in Manchester (2015) and at the GWP conference in Düsseldorf (2016). On all those occasions, I have greatly benefitted from the remarks made by the audience. I also wish to thank Giovanni Valente and Erik Curiel as well as two anonymous referees for valuable comments on a previous draft of this paper.
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Padovani, F. (2017). Coordination and Measurement: What We Get Wrong About What Reichenbach Got Right. In: Massimi, M., Romeijn, JW., Schurz, G. (eds) EPSA15 Selected Papers. European Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53730-6_5
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