Abstract
In this paper, I will argue that a materialist ontology is an important heuristic for scientific theory, and that a classical problem in natural philosophy — whether matter is self-active or is inert — has its contemporary counterpart in modern physics, especially in microphysics. From this, there follow epistemological and methodological consequences concerning scientific inquiry and practice. In order to set the problem of my paper, I introduce as background the contemporary discussion of the relation of metaphysics to science. The philosophical problem of the paper, however, does not concern the formal or methodological issues in this debate, but rather how these issues are resolved in a concrete case, concerning matter, action, and interaction.
This paper was presented at the XV International Congress of Philosophy, Varna, Bulgaria, August, 1973.
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Notes
T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s own ambivalence mirrors that of Sir Karl: “We both (Kuhn and Popper) insist that scientists may properly aim to invent theories that explain observed phenomena and that do so in terms of real objects, whatever the latter phrase may mean.” (in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, (ed. Lakatos and Musgrave), Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 2). But of course everything depends on what the “phrase may mean”! So much for ambivalent realism....
J. Agassi, The Nature of Scientific Problems and Their Roots in Metaphysics’, in The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy, (ed. M. Bunge), Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1964, pp. 189 ff.
M. Wartofsky, ‘Metaphysics as Heuristic for Science’, III, (ed. R. S. Cohen and M. Wartofsky), in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1968 pp. 123–172. Reprinted in this volume, pp. 40–89.
P. Feyerabend, ‘Consolations for the Specialist’, in Criticism and The Growth of Knowledge, (ed. Lakatos and Musgrave), Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 211.
See, for a discussion of this, John Stachel, ‘The Rise and Fall of Geometrodynamics’, presented October 1972, PSA meeting, Boston, in Proceedings of the PSA, 1972, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, XX, (ed. by K. F. Schaffner and Robert S. Cohen), D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, 1974, p. 31.
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Wartofsky, M.W. (1979). Matter, Action and Interaction. In: Models. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 48. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9357-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9357-0_5
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