Metaphysics as Heuristic for Science

Abstract

Now that the anti-metaphysical crusade of classical positivism has spent its force, and has been fragmented into the qualified and revisionist versions of logical empiricism, there is evidence of a cautious rediscovery of the relevance of metaphysics to science, within some recent discussion in philosophy and history of science. I say ‘rediscovery’ because the thesis is certainly not new, and some hardy souls within philosophy and history of science have held it all along in one or another version, even in the heyday of verificationism and reductionism. But what appears in present discussion is not radical enough. Rather, I would characterize it not simply as cautious, but as an attempt at piecemeal reconstruction within the framework of logical empiricism; or else simply as an emasculated descriptivist thesis about the history of science (simply repeating what every serious student of the subject knows: namely that metaphysics has always been relevant to science in paradigmatic historical instances).

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science on March 1, 1965.1 wish to thank professors Robert S. Cohen, George D. W. Berry and Joseph Agassi of Boston University for their (continuing) criticism, as well as professors Israel Scheffler of Harvard, Imre Lakatos of London School of Economics, and Stanley Greenberg of Antioch, for their critical comments and suggestions on the draft.