Abstract
The problem that troubled most of philosophers of science today, after the rise of the new logic, is that of observation. Since science discusses not observations but observation reports, this raises the question, how do we verbalize what we observe? This question is very troublesome. It invites scientific theories of observation and of language yet as it is at the basis of science it should precede science (Popper 1935, §25).
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- 1.
The claim that observation reports are unproblematic combines the view that some observation reports are theory-free, that they are verifiable, and that the ideal language shares a structure with the world—the picture theory of language so-called. All this is too naïve for words.
- 2.
It is no news that for decades now much of the energy invested in the philosophy of science goes to the erroneous suggestion that the possibility of tinkering is novel and thanks to two great thinkers, Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Quine. The same goes for the erroneous suggestion that the claim that scientific theories are refutable is novel and thanks to Popper and answerable by conventionalism, that Lakatos has shown Popper in error since science regularly evades criticism and rescues any theory that is under attack until and unless a new theory comes to replace it. This rider is a hackneyed idea; Lenin branded it the demand for constructive criticism. Allegedly, it is novel and thanks to two thinkers, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. To see how astute Bacon was, we may notice that he took all this as too obvious yet still in need of airing since it is more harmful than people realize. And he denounced current science as its theories are refutable; Popper was far from having originated this idea. One of the first people who have saddled him with this alleged innovation is the famous physicist-sociologist of science John Ziman who, in his 1959 review of Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery said, he could not understand the fuss Popper was making about refutability, since “it sticks out like a sore thumb”. It does. To answer Ziman, what is new in Popper is the idea that refutability is a virtue, and that it suffices as a characterization of science: refutable explanations are scientific. Moreover, this solves the problem of induction: it explains how we gain theoretical knowledge from information. It never ceases to surprise me that learned inductivist commentators dismiss this idea as wild (see next chapter). Yet it surely is more surprising that inductivist commentators (such as Carl G. Hempel) rest their view of induction on the availability of theory-free data and endorse the demand for constructive criticism.
- 3.
Of course, a true theory does not mislead. That a mere conjecture will turn out to be true is most unlikely, said Bacon in response to this. Still, true observations are theory-laden too. They thus reflect the true theory. This is why it is possible to squeeze the true theories out of (sufficiently many and sufficiently varied) true observation reports—like wine out of ripe grapes (Novum Organum, 123): just avoid making mistakes and the truth will reveal itself to you.
- 4.
Thomas S. Kuhn found unanimity explicable only by the hypothesis that scientific communities oust dissenters (Kuhn 2000, 209). Instances for and against this hypothesis abound. Yet the cure he refers to is ineffective. Banishment is ineffective even as a silencer of religious disputes; and in politics even the death penalty does not quench dissent.
- 5.
The observation that it is so easy to cheat seems to suggest that trust is not itself under scrutiny. This is an error: fraud is usually found out fairly quickly. This argument is puzzling as it looks circular. It is not: it is bootstrap operation (Agassi 1975, 155).
- 6.
The solution of the tau-theta paradox by declaring the two particles identical is a point in case.
- 7.
The psychological literature on novelty is also oddly scarce. Daniel Berlyne is possibly the leading experimental psychologist who explored this area seriously (Berlyne 1960).
- 8.
- 9.
Discoveries that are also inventions, like Faraday’s dynamo, are more surprising than ingenious inventions like Edison’s reduction of the hysteresis in the dynamo.
- 10.
Contemporary utilitarian philosophers are apt to judge all action by their usefulness; in the Renaissance the ability to act and expand the horizons was valued in itself. Going for novelty distinguishes it from the Middle Ages. The symbol of the era was thus the useless cupola of the Florentine Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore that Brunelleschi constructed using ancient procedures. Is this an anti-utilitarian attitude?
- 11.
Gerolamo Cardano singled out as important novelties gunpowder, the needle and printing; Bacon followed him.
- 12.
The idea that empiricism makes every experience new is the criticism that Jorge Luis Borges has launched against it in the form of his famous story “Funes the Memorious”.
- 13.
Schrödinger viewed the Hertz effect as resonance too, but in a much wider sense.
- 14.
There are predecessors to Bacon’s theory of accidental discovery, such as the ancient story that Pythagoras discovered the physical basis of acoustic harmony by accident while passing by a blacksmith workshop (that resembles the story that a physician prescribed frog legs to Galvani’s wife) and of Archimedes Eureka. They all make inspiration humdrum. One may view this as debunking or as promising: discovery awaits the prepared mind, said many an important scientific leader, including Lagrange and Pasteur.
- 15.
Today, when so much background knowledge is needed to identify discoveries, Bacon’s observation that technicians will outdo researchers becomes barely thinkable; yet his complaint that discoveries are limited to the hypotheses that experts employ to generate them becomes all too obvious.
- 16.
As Bertrand Russell read scholastic literature in preparation for his A History of Western Philosophy, he was surprised that some of its texts impressed him favorably. This shows the power of Bacon’s impact.
- 17.
Anyone who will find a predecessor to Whewell’s criterion for confirmation should have it published.
- 18.
As technology caters for social ends, it is goal-directed and so it applies the rationality principle. Its study thus may qualify as a social science proper.
- 19.
This idea sounds reasonable. It is not. Niels Bohr’s theory of the atom was in agreement only with the first column of the periodic table at most, yet it was rightly hailed as a great achievement.
- 20.
Bacon’s theory of discovery explains the simultaneous discovery of anything that suddenly becomes generally available but not what is there from time immemorial, for example the common gases.
- 21.
As Faraday showed, it is possible to reconcile Coulomb’s theory of action at a distance with di-electricity by postulating dielectric dipoles (Agassi 1971, 272).
- 22.
We forget that Mary Shelly’s Dr. Frankenstein brought his monster to life with animal electricity (1818).
- 23.
This is the source of the word “serendipity” for accidental discovery: it has to do with a certain tale of a search for one thing that led to the finding of another, much like the story of Saul who, looking for his asses and bumped into Samuel who anointed him the first king of Israel.
- 24.
The allusion is to Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos (Agassi 1999).
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Agassi, J. (2013). Prejudices of the Senses. 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_6
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