Abstract
A scientific paper is supposed to be innovative, to comprise a contribution to the stock of human knowledge. The trouble is, we do not know what innovation is, what the stock of human knowledge is, and how the one augments the other. The discovery of the New World is a paradigm case; should we ascribe it to the first humans who crossed the Bering Sea, to the first Vikings who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, to Christopher Columbus, or to Amerigo Vespucci? Each of these options rests on a theory that is hardly articulated, much less open to critical assessment.
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Notes
- 1.
The editors of Boyle’s Works (1999, 5, xli–xlv) notice that this work is largely a compilation of items from works of Boyle and of other Fellows of the Royal Society published in their Transactions in the 1660s.
- 2.
Incidentally, much later, when amateurism was over, it was easy to misunderstand Hooke’s “heads”. In the Introduction to Encyclopedia Metropolitana (1845), for example, Samuel Taylor Coleridge considered Hooke’s “heads” a classification and ridiculed it and its going into strange details. His elder contemporary, the famous philosopher-physicist André-Marie Ampère wrote “heads” too, and these comprise a classification—of possible problems for possible future researches more than concrete ones for specific people. (Thus, one of his heads is “cybernetics” that waited about one century before it came to use.)
- 3.
- 4.
The editors of Boyle’s Works take it for granted that he wrote this letter when Oldenburg was still alive (Works 2000, 11, pp. liii–liv). In the middle of the letter to Oldenburg (p. 371), Boyle requested of his readers that they should ask Oldenburg to testify that he (Boyle) had performed all of his experiments carefully and reported them candidly. Obviously, the insoluble problem of circumstantial description irked him to the very end. He feared that some of his experiments would prove unrepeatable due to the incompleteness of his descriptions of their circumstances. As Bacon received much ridicule then for his poor reports and as Boyle was very sensitive to ridicule, this is not surprising.
- 5.
Historians of science are mostly inductivists or else mostly indifferent to style. Literary historians do better but are regrettably rather intimidated by scientists.
- 6.
An exception is a passing remark in Justus von Liebig’s tirade against Bacon (Liebig 1863, 253 note): he equated there the style of the inept English critics of his own work with that of Bacon. “It is not necessary to say that these experiments have no connection with any reasonable question whatsoever”, he added.
- 7.
Some mathematical texts skip the axioms. In probability this is understandable (Popper 1959, Appendix *4).
- 8.
Thus Michelson’s experiment is pointless unless it is a refutation of the ether theory and the observation of Bothe and Geiger is likewise useless unless it is a refutation of the Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory.
- 9.
Line, a professor in the casuist tradition, was reluctant to allow his peers to continue the debate on his behalf after he had lost it (Reilly 1962, 227): he “felt that his confrère was showing undignified obstinacy, and… since his error was obvious, he should be obliged to desist from further dispute. He wrote … ‘it is to be feared that the dispute would give occasion to those who wish us ill, to say that we are such that once we have asserted anything, we will always defend it, even though we have been convicted of error’.” This indicates that possibly Boyle deemed his peers more sensitive than they were. Newton’s sensitivity, however, goes the opposite way. Without his reinforcement, Boyle’s demand to suppress controversy would not have persisted for as long as it did.
- 10.
The literature suggests that Boyle was as superstitious as Joseph Glanvill was. It overlooks the difficulty that the Royal Society had about accepting Glanvill that R. F. Jones discussed in detail. It also ignores Boyle’s correspondence with Glanvill (Prior 1932). Glanvill’s conduct was more honorable than Boyle’s. Since Boyle insisted that the Society limit its studies to natural knowledge and since he declared scientific evidence acceptable if it is acceptable in court, it is clear that he was not happy about witch-trials yet in public he ignored them.
- 11.
- 12.
Boyle did give credit to some of his technical assistance; he did not institutionalize this and he was seldom followed. The familiar if atypical study by Julius Roth (1966) is different. It deals with improper use of hired hands who are only partly technicians and mostly they are research assistants who often take initiative. Employment of research assistants is no different from purchasing research work—privately or in industry—and so it is of no concern here, be its output of high quality or low. Unfortunately even Kant agreed (and added that action makes perception scientific).
- 13.
The editors of Boyle’s latest Works add a remark here: Bacon was Boyle’s preceptor, namely, teacher. They notice that he claims to have written but never published his opinion about The Partiality and Uncertainty of Fame (Works, 2000, 8, 92 note). As he explained, he had changed his view of the quest for fame and it became greatly different from that of Bacon.
- 14.
Buchdahl rightly observes: “As Dr. Boas Hall points out, Boyle’s writings are immensely long-winded and repetitious, and only ruthless pruning can enable the true brilliance of his thought to emerge” (Buchdahl 1966, 83).
- 15.
Examples: Birch in (Works, 1744, 1, 35); (Cajori 1929, 78); Britannica 14th edition, 1954 Art. Boyle. Marie Boas Hall happily disagrees: “His familiarity with Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi … and indeed all the scientists of his day is amply attested by frequent references in his works, despite his often quoted disclaimer” (Hall 1952, 418, note 6). Hall (1987, 112 and 119) mentions Boyle’s atomism and ascribes to him “a truly Baconian mistrust of dogmatic systems”; see also Hall (1992, 27): “the Royal Society’s declared opposition to premature theorizing which its members tended to equate with speculation; a position which Boyle himself often publicly proclaimed.”
- 16.
- 17.
The possible exception is George Sarton, whose study of Boyle and Bayle as skeptics (Sarton 1950) is difficult to assess. He constantly referred to the contrast between skepticism and dogmatism. It is traditional: rationalist tradition deems skepticism and dogmatism Scylla and Charybdis. Boyle and Bayle opposed this tradition.
- 18.
Sylva Sylvarum comprises ten books, each with 100 brief chapters.
- 19.
A letter of the Astronomer Royal on Faraday (Agassi, 1971, 315) is telling. So is de la Rive’s obituary.
- 20.
Amusingly, Herschel did the same almost two centuries later (Herschel 1830, Ch. 7). The asymmetry between support and undermining is logical and although many, from Bacon to Popper, have repeated it, some bamboozlers deny it and win applause of the ignorant.
- 21.
(Correspondence, 2001, 3, 139–40): “The Continuation of Lord Bacons Sylva, or Promiscuous Experiments wilbe a Pandect, to receive all your scattered papers, & to reduce them into a disorderly Order as falls out oft-times to be better than the best Methode, for all uses, occasions, & for immortality. Here you may annexe to any piece that is published, reexamine, enlarge Here you enter polychrests, which cannot belong to one Head, nor confind to fewe heades. Here you relieve Lord Bacons Sylva, & his Novum Organum which oft times wants your ayde. Here you shewe, Howe much you have Advced both beyond my Lord Bacons Votes, & beyond Des Cartes his sayes, or Imaginations.”
“Sir, I have strong reasons to urge, That as soone as they amounted to a Century they deserv’d to be abroad.” For thus you may empty your deskes often; & be lesse overwhelmed with your owneabundance; Thus you may enforce our dullnesse to apprehend our Worke, & the sooner you will see us worke under your commands.
(op. cit, 208): “Your Pandects, or promiscuous Experiments doe seeme to promise a larger bulke than any of the other. And I would earnestly disswade from publishing more than a Century at a Time; for all the reasons above renderd, & more especially for the immense extent of the importance of a small number of those collections in the severity of your choice; & they may easily overwhelme an ordinary Industry, & confound Memory. Then these are in your Thoughts I hope you will sometimes caste your eye upon Lord Bacons Novum Organum, & give him some ayde for his kindnesse & sollicitute. By thirty of your experiments, you may lifte his head above the waters, & save him from … [oblivion].”
- 22.
Again, Bacon’s inconsistent brilliance stands out. Here, in an aside, he throws away the great idea of Charles Sanders Peirce about the advantage of the most refutable hypothesis and the demand of Karl Popper to speak in a way that renders the vulnerability of what we say obvious. Yet Bacon said this while insisting that the expectation that people will ever behave this way is bound to bring about utter frustration.
- 23.
The metaphor of foundations is from the Novum Organum; that of superstructure is from Boyle’s “Proëmial Essay”.
- 24.
Boyle did not publish his voluminous output under his own name before he was 30 (Shapin 1993, 336).
- 25.
Boyle criticized essentialism as anthropomorphic. He said, for chemists the essence of ice is its ability to melt but for physicians the essence of water is its ability to freeze.
- 26.
There is more to it than tolerance: there may be serious criticism of Descartes. It is hard to adjudicate how serious was Boyle’s occasional inclusion of gravity among the mechanical affectations of matter and his refusal to engage in a debate with Henry More about “the cause of gravity in general”. See his Hydrostatical Discoursse Occasioned by the Objetion of the Learned Dr. Henry More: in his Works 1999, 7, 139–84, 148. Obviously, Newton knew this text.
- 27.
It is difficult to stick to this obvious claim. For, classical observation theory—sensationalism—is inherently passivist. According to Bacon, since Mother Nature does not lie, utterly passive observation cannot err. This is his doctrine of prejudice, of course. Locke too insisted on a theory of perception that views it as pasive.
- 28.
Descartes claimed that even if for some reasons the certainty of his principles is discarded, their fruitfulness is unquestionable, as they brought about theories like his optics. Boyle, who rejected Descartes’ optics, here claims that the mechanical principles can be useful but that they are barren as yet. This shows again both his implicit mode of criticism and his usage of “power”, “usefulness” and “fruitfulness” not in their Baconian senses.
- 29.
Some methodologists totally ignored demand to avoid ad hoc assumptions. Surprisingly, most of those who utilized this demand in their methodological theories did not discuss it. I may mention perhaps Whewell as an example. He used the non-ad hoc character of hypotheses as his criterion for their scientific status, i. e. for their certainty. As certainty is elusive, it may perhaps be less surprising that his arguments for his demand for non-ad hoc character are complex and overlooked. Still, at least he could repeat Newton’s argument that we want information about the world and ad hoc hypotheses give us none. Yet Whewell’s problem was different. He wanted to explain the refutation of Newton’s optical theory in a manner that dismantles the threat of a similar fate to Newton’s mechanics. His explanation rested on his criterion: he showed that Newton’s optical theory was ad hoc but not his mechanics (and not the wave theory of light). Whewell’s explanation is somewhat ad hoc (just as his construction of the optical True Ladder of Axioms is). Russell’s simplistic attitude is perhaps best: ad hoc hypotheses are arbitrary. This does not clash with Popper’s sophisticated view of it as the contrary to testability.
- 30.
An ambiguity is possible here that is better avoided. The demand to develop a skill to a reasonable level as a condition for some tasks is often reasonable and is not necessarily élitist. Not so when the demand is to listen to the skillful, as these are the élite. In a discussion with me in Boston Colloquium (Agassi 1981, 192) Polanyi admitted that his view of science is somewhat romantic as he admired leading thinkers as having abilities above those of ordinary mortals.
- 31.
Compare Popper (1959, §30) with (Musgrave 1976) regarding the refutability of all refutations.
- 32.
This is the requirement for total evidence. The literature on it is extensive, yet most of it adds nothing to the initial observation on it by Charles Sanders Peirce. Unusual are McLaughlin (1970), Fitzhugh (2006) and Cloos (2010). Still, Bacon was the most consistent yet his promise is invalid. This insures the insolubility of the problem.
- 33.
Michael Polanyi used this as empirical refutation of inductivism. He declared that no alternative to it is possible and that therefore science has to rely on expert leaders—even when they cannot explain their judgments (or else the explanation would be an induction surrogate). He stressed that expert pronouncements are authoritative even though they are fallible.
- 34.
This is a red herring that again shows Boyle’s eagerness to involve people in experiments.
- 35.
H. Graham Cannon noted this in a wise letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian, of 16.12.1955:
“As specialization becomes more and more pronounced, so the possible audience capable of grasping the problem concerned becomes smaller and smaller. The crash will come when scientists as a whole find that they are quite unable to grasp the developments in their ancillary subjects.”
“I consider strongly that the fault lies in our own university departments of science. We turn out honours graduates—too few it is stated—but I maintain it is too many who are already specialists on graduation and may even have been specialists right through their school days. It is the placing of research before anything else that is the cause of the rot. How often in making a university appointment in the faculty of science is the question asked—can this man teach? Practically never. It is always—what is his specialist branch of research? Teaching ability is the last thing to be considered, and this is possible simply because the only interest in teaching is taken[to be?] the curriculum (if I can be called such) of the special honours degree. The general honours degree, that is, the degree in science covering a wide field of interests, rather than specialization in one particular science, is treated with scorn and contempt by the majority of science teachers. Until this misguided attitude is abandoned, there is little hope of producing research workers whose knowledge of science as a whole is wide enough to enable them to express the significance of their results in any except the ghastly jargon of the specialist scientist.”
- 36.
Aldous Huxley described narrowly educated researchers in his novels, for example in his 1939 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. He contrasted there the broad and narrow education of old-style and new-style researchers. Some critics read the novel as lamenting the absence of culture in the USA. They thus misread even its story line.
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Agassi, J. (2013). The Inductive Style. In: The Very Idea of Modern Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 298. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5351-8_14
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