Natural Science and the Future of Metaphysics

Abstract

Does physical science, in its employment of such terms as ‘electron’, ‘photon’, and’ space-time’, make claims about what exists? The immediate reply of common sense would undoubtedly be affirmative; and yet powerful philosophical forces have aligned themselves against this view, however obvious it may appear at first glance. For, it has been urged, such terms as the above are ‘theoretical’; and whatever meaning they may have either is, and must be, wholly exhausted by some set of ‘observation terms’, or else, if there is any additional component of meaning of such terms - if, that is, they are only ‘partially interpreted’ in observational terms, - that surplus meaning does not, and could not, consist in reference to any ‘unobservable’ entities behind the scenes of, and causing, the scientist’s experiential data. The use of such terms, it is concluded, does not involve any claim that something referred to by them (other than a set of observed or observable data) literally exists. Still more generally and more positively, the allegation is that any scientific terms which appear to refer to unobservable entities - and ‘electron’, ‘photon’, and’ space-time’ are said to be such terms — serve a function other than making claims about existence, a function which I will summarize by saying that they are alleged to be mere conceptual devices. Other writers have used more specific names for such terms or the ideas they represent, among them ‘logical constructs’, ‘convenient fictions’,’ shorthand summaries’, ‘intervening variables’, ‘models’, ‘abstractions’, ‘idealizations’, ‘instruments’ - all, often, prefixed by a rather pejorative ‘mere’.