Abstract
Popperés supra-historical concept of a scientific reason engendering science in its own manner justified the programme for developing the philosophy of science (methodology) as a logical reconstruction of the development of science. Our critique of this conception is based on the idea that the criteria of rationality have neither a descriptive nor a supra-historical character, so that the logical reconstruction of the development of knowledge cannot give an account either of the course or of the mechanics of this process. Although this view was stated explicitly in the first chapter, it was not properly justified. More precisely: I presented historical arguments which—in my view—support this critique, but historical arguments cannot replace methodological analysis. They cannot do so if we do not want to move from one extreme to another: from treating the context of justification as the only legitimate object of philosophy of science to the treatment of historical processes as justifications.
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Chapter VII. Are There Selection Criteria?
On the distinction between formal and semantic correspondence see my Between Experience and Metaphysics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), ch. 7.
Ibid., ch. 4.
I ignore here the issue of whether the degree of confirmation can be expressed quantitatively, as Carnap believed possible (see Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950). It is well known that a higher degree of justification cannot be equated with a higher degree of truth (as Reichenbach wanted); and because of this, a selection criterion which requires that we choose the theory which appears the most probable, given the available information, is not based on the degree of truth, nor can it be considered conclusive.
Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), 187.
Both of the above theses are frequently attributed to Duhem, and sometimes they are even conflated with each other. Since what is at stake is not a correct interpretation of Duhem’s position but the analysis of his thesis, I find it necessary, like many other authors writing on the subject, to distinguish clearly between these two theses.
Adolf Grìnbaum, “Falsifiability and Rationality,” paper read at the International Colloquium on Issues in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy of Science, September 1971, manuscript.
It is perhaps worth noting that despite some interpretations of the experiment of Pasteur, it is not only the rejection of the theory of spontaneous generation, but also its justification, which could constitute an argument in controversies about the supernatural origin of life.
Jan Such, Czy istnieje experimentum crucis? (Warsaw: 1975), 531.
Ibid., 527, see also p. 50 and note.
Falsification is regarded as a process also by Lakatos, in “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”; however, in The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), he does not identify the problem of the crucial experiment with the entirety of this process, but only with the issue of whether there is a last element such that after its occurrence, the theory is definitively falsified.
Such, Czy istnieje experimentum crucis?, 98-99.
Ibid., 99.
Rejection of radical empiricism excludes the possibility of testing isolated hypotheses, whereas its acceptance allows for both possibilities.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 112; Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.”
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), 78n.
This is the position defended by Adolf Grünbaum in “The Falsifiability of a Component of a Theoretical System,” in Mind, Matter and Method, eds. P.K. Feyerabend and G. Maxwell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966). In his later work Grünbaum abandoned this view and basically accepted Duhem’s thesis. See his “Can We Ascertain the Falsity of a Scientific Hypothesis?” in Studium Generale, 22 (1969), 1061-93; or “Falsifiability and Rationality,” and “Ad hoc Auxiliary Hypotheses and Falsificationism,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 27 (1976). Concerning Grünbaum’s position, see also Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs,” 187, and part 6 of this chapter.
Accordingly Duhem’s thesis is sometimes understood as if it excluded the possibility of falsifying an isolated hypothesis, and sometimes as if it excluded falsification of any isolated fragment of knowledge. I believe that whoever accepts the thesis in this first formulation must also accept the second.
Willard Van OrmanQuine, From a Logical Point of View: Logico-Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1953, 2nd rev. ed. 1961), 43.
Ibid., 44.
Grünbaum, “The Falsifiability of a Component of a Theoretical System,” 280.
Ibid., and his “Can We Ascertain the Falsity of A Scientific Hypothesis?”
Grünbaum, “The Fasificability of a Component of a Theoretical System,” 278.
Grünbaum, “Ad hoc Auxiliary Hypotheses and Falsificationism,” §3.
Quine, From the Logical Point of View, 44.
Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” 93.
Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 38n.
Stefan Amsterdamski, Between Experience and Metaphysics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), ch. 6.
Grünbaum, “Ad hoc Auxiliary Hypotheses and Falsificationism,” 350.
Carl Hempel, Philosophy of Science (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 30.
Grünbaum, “Ad hoc Auxiliary Hypothesis and Falsificationism”; Popper, Unended Quest.
Joseph Agassi, Science in Flux, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975).
The following statement by John Watkins in defense of Popperian philosophy nicely illustrates how difficult it sometimes is to decide where continuation ends and essential revision begins: “Yes, we have no criteria. What we do have is a corrigible and revisable methodology of scientific appraisal” (John Watkins, “The Popperian Approach to Scientific Knowledge,” in G. Radnitzky and G. Andersson [eds.], Progress and Rationality in Science [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978], 3). This is supposed to be a continuation of Popper’s position, using his criteria of demarcation and falsification.
Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.”
My views on this subject have been presented in Between Experience and Metaphysics, chapter 6. Today I would add to this evaluation (given the arguments presented in the previous section) that I doubt whether criteria of selection can be unequivocal even within the framework of a single programme. (See also Alan Musgrave, “Method or Madness?” in R.S. Cohen, P.K. Feyerabend and M.W. Wartofsky (eds.), Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976).
In a paper written together with Elie Zachar shortly before his death, Lakatos defended this position quite explicitly (“Why did Copernicus’s Programme Supersede Ptolemy’s?” in Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Musgrave, “Method or Madness?”
Lakatos, “History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions,” in The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, 112, 117.
Ibid., 103n.
Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” ch. II.
Ph. Quinn, “Metaphysical Appraisal and Heuristic Advice: Problems in Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol. 3 (1972), 143.
Lakatos, “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic,” in Mathematics, Science, and Epistemology. Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2, eds. John Worrall and Gregory Currie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 147.
Imre Lakatos, “Reply to Critics,” in R.C. Buck and R.S. Cohen (eds.), P.S.A. 1970, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 8 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1971), 174–182.
Grünbaum, “Falsifiability and Rationality,” 89-90.
Since quasi-falsification is not conclusive, Grünbaum faces the same problem as Lakatos and Musgrave: how to reconcile the heuristic significance of a methodology with the fact that it does not supply unequivocal selection criteria.
Musgrave, “Method or Madness,” 476, 479-480.
Lakatos, “History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions,” 117.
Ibid., 117, 133.
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Amsterdamski, S. (1992). Are There Selection Criteria?. In: Between History and Method. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 145. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2706-6_8
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