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).
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References
In Popper’s case, ‘recent’ needs qualification, since much of what I will discuss is in the 1934 Logic of Scientific Discovery. Nevertheless, it is a component of recent discussion, both in the sense that its theses are elaborated and expanded in Popper’s more recent essays, and in the sense that the earlier work came under full consideration only with its translation and publication (in revised form) in English, in 1959.
Carl Hempel, ‘Carnap and the Philosophy of Science’, in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (ed. P. A. Schilpp), LaSalle, 111., 1963, p. 707.
Y. Bar-Hillel, ‘Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language’, Op. Cit., p. 537.
Ibid., p. 536.
Willard V. O. Quine, ‘Carnap and Logical Truth’, in Op. Cit., p. 405.
William Craig, ‘On Axiomatizability within a System’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 43 (1953) 30–32; and ‘Replacement of Auxiliary Expressions’, Philosophical Review 65 (1956) 38–55.
Carl Hempel, Op. Cit., p. 699. See also Scheffier’s discussion on Craigean and Ramseyan elimination, Anatomy of Inquiry, New York 1963, pp. 193–222.
Macquorn Rankine, ‘Outlines of the Science of Energetics’, Miscellaneous Scientific Papers, 1855, p. 209; cited in P. Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Princeton, N. J., 1954 (Athenaeum, 1962), p. 53.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Lectures on Molecular Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light, Baltimore 1884, pp. 131–2.
Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, pp. 70–71.
Karl Popper, ‘The Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics’, in Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, p. 198; see also Conjectures and Refutations, New York 1962, pp. 267ff.
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London 1959, p. 43.
Karl Popper, ‘On the Status of Science and of Metaphysics’, in Conjectures and Refutations, p. 196.
Popper, ‘Demarcation…’, Op. Cit., pp. 278-279; in Carnap, pp. 211–212.
Joseph Agassi, ‘The Nature of Scientific Problems and their Roots in Metaphysics’ in The Critical Approach (ed. M. Bunge), Glencoe, 111., 1964, pp. 189–211.
Joseph Agassi, Op. Cit., pp. 191–193. Imre Lakatos also addresses himself to this thesis in ‘Demarcation Criterion and Scientific Research Programs’, in Problems in the Philosophy of Science (ed. by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave), Amsterdam 1967.
In the quasi-Popperian sense of ‘part of science’ which Agassi holds to in this paper.
Ibid.
Popper, Conjectures…, p. 55–56.
J. Agassi, ‘The Confusion between Physics and Metaphysics in the Standard Histories of Science’, in Proceedings, XI International Congress in the History of Science, Ithaca 1964, p. 233.
J. Agassi, ‘The Nature of Scientific Problems…’, Op. Cit., p. 198.
George Berry has suggested to me, on this point, that since from ‘(M→ T) • (T→ P)’, it follows that ‘(M → P)’, by the transitivity of implication, then, if the scientific status of ‘T’ lies in its making a logically true conditional out of ‘(T→ P)’, then, if ‘(M→ T)’ is logically true, ‘M’ must also enjoy this same status. Agassi’s point, however, is that in the case of ‘M’ such that ‘(M→ T)’ is true, then ‘M’ is still empirically refutable. (All this assumes that on even a qualified interpretation of’ →’ in ‘(M→ T)’ or ‘(M→ P)’, Modus Ponens remains our rule of inference.)
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. II, No. 2), Chicago 1962, p. 41.
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., pp. 23–24.
Ibid., p. 110.
T. Kuhn,Proceedings...,Opt, Cit., p. 248.
J. Agassi, ‘The Nature of Scientific Problems…’, Op. Cit., p. 210.
M. Polanyi, ‘Discussion…’, in Scientific Change (ed. A. C. Crombie ), New York 1963, p. 375.
C. S. Peirce, ‘Notes on Scientific Philosophy’.
It is clear that there is understanding in science which is ad hoc, or which falls short of theoretical understanding of the ‘grand system’ sort. Of course, there are degrees of understanding, from, e.g., understanding some simple apparatus, or some delimited experimental result, to understanding a ‘grand theory’. I would argue that all of these require some kind of theoretical context, if what we are talking about is scientific understanding, and not simply some technical skill.
Mary Hesse, ‘Models and Matter’, in Quanta and Reality, Cleveland 1964, p. 56.
Ibid., p. 56.
P. Duhem, Op. Cit., p. 27; Cf. also pp. 24ff., 293ff.
Norman Rudich, ‘The Dialectics of Poesis: Literature as a Mode of Cognition’, in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II (ed. R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky ), New York 1965, pp. 343–400.
Philipp Frank, The Place of Logic and Metaphysics in the Advancement of Modern Science’, Philosophy of Science 40 (1948) 275–286.
The reference is, of course, to Whitehead. For a recent treatment of Whitehead’s relevance to contemporary physics, see Abner Shimony, ‘Quantum Physics and the Philosophy of Whitehead’, in Boston Studies, Op. Cit., pp. 307ff. and the comments by J. M. Burgers.
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Wartofsky, M. (1967). Metaphysics as Heuristic for Science. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3508-8_8
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