Abstract
Through the years empiricists and realists have been battling over the question of whether or not science should be restricted to investigating what is observable, with neither party paying virtually any attention to the question whether the observable is to be conceived differently from their respective viewpoints. Phenomenalists have argued that phenomena alone should be treated as actually existing, assuming that the empirical laws of science in fact link phenomena in their sense of the term. And realists, for their part, have advocated that science recognize a trans-empirical realm, without considering whether the empirical realm takes a form more in keeping with their view or that of the empiricists or phenomenalists.
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As expressed by W. Stanley Jevons: Instruments of measurement are only means of comparison between one magnitude and another, and as a general rule we must assume some one arbitrary magnitude, in terms of which all results of measurement are to be expressed. Hence, whether we are measuring time, space, density, mass, weight, energy, or any other physical quantity, we must refer to some concrete standard, some actual object, which if once lost and irrecoverable, all our measures lose their absolute meaning. (1887, p. 305).
For a more detailed treatment of this point, see Campbell (1920), ch. X.
Campbell distinguishes between two kinds of measurable properties, which might be termed fundamental and derived. Fundamental properties are those which can be measured without measuring anything else, and derived properties are those which cannot. Thus e.g. where length is fundamental, density is derived (from length, via volume, and mass). In the present context we should say that the physical standards underlying all measurement are those which provide the units in terms of which fundamental measurements are made. For more on this distinction, see Campbell (1920), pp. 275–277; (1938), pp. 126–127; (1942), pp. 763–765; and Ellis (1966), chs. V and VIII.
Thus, due to the principle of the uniformity of nature, the situation is drastically different from that depicted on the logical empiricist conception, according to which the accumulation of ever more confirming instances is to add greater and greater support to a law. As expressed by Campbell: “So far as induction is a process at all, it is complete after a very limited number of experiments. The finding of laws from a large number of experiments has nothing whatever to do with what is usually regarded as induction.” (1920, p. 213).
Cf. e.g. Enriques (1906), pp. 68, 70: “Facts subject to conditions, of which we have lately spoken, are commonly called ‘laws,’ especially when they are stated in a simple and general way. [And we conclude] that we cannot recognize a philosophical foundation for the distinction between ’facts’ and ‘laws.”’ The identification of facts and laws is also made by others, including Poincaré, who speaks of law as being “scientific fact itself’ (1914, p. 14), and Campbell, who says: ”A `fact’ is ... a portion of experience which is known to be interconnected by a relation of uniformity.“ (1920. n. 101).
Though in this work the term “law” is normally intended to refer to uniformities existing in nature, for the sake of simplicity it is also sometimes used in referring to the scientific expression of such uniformities. The context should make clear which use is intended however.
In a similar vein, cf. Weyl (1949), p. 177: “A measure of quantity must be found according to which the transmitted quantum does not change.”
Cf. ibid.: “In this sense energy may also be looked upon as substance;” and d’Abro (1939), vol. 1, p. 333: “From this standpoint energy has the properties of a substance.”
Strictly speaking, the quantity of substance need not remain constant in an experiment, so long as its change is measured.
It would be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to depict experimentation without bringing in causal notions, thus implying that empirical laws have a causal aspect. What distinguishes laws from theories in this regard is theories’ striving to meet the contiguity principle. But for the time being we shall consider such causal notions simply to be `intuitive,’ thereby allowing the empiricist that the expressions of empirical laws, considered by themselves, are essentially formal in character.
For the relevance of this point to the notion of natural kinds, see Chapter 7 below.
Cf. Campbell (1923), p. 38: “A law is not materially altered in character or simplicity if the values of the magnitudes change, so long as the nature of the relation between them is unaltered. Thus, if a re-examination of the law relating the volume and mass of silver led to the belief that the density of silver is 10.9 and not, as we now believe, 10.5, we should not regard the law as altered materially for the primary purposes of scientific inquiry; but we should regard it as altered, if we found that the mass was not proportional to the volume and therefore that there was no such thing as density.”
In this regard, cf. Boltzmann (1904), p. 160: “Every securely ascertained fact remains for ever immutable; at most it can be extended or complemented by the arrival of new items, but it cannot be entirely overthrown. This explains why the development of experimental physics proceeds continuously without any leaps that are too sudden, and why it is never visited by great revolutions or commotions. It is very rare for something to be regarded as a fact and afterwards be found to have been erroneous, and even when it does happen the error will soon be cleared up without this greatly affecting the edifice of science as a whole.” This of course refutes Popper’s falsificationist conception as applied to empirical laws. For a general critique of Popper’s philosophy of science, see Dilworth (1994a).
In this regard cf. Northrop (1931), p. 7: “[T]he priority of eternity means that we do not come to nature perceiving it at an instant in an infinite time series; we observe it as something which is eternal first, and come upon the discovery of temporality in its parts later.”
For this reason, and others that may be gleaned from what has been said above, it is misleading to conceive of the expressions of natural laws as true generalizations as can be represented in the predicate calculus.
Cf. Campbell (1920, p. 69) who, in the same vein, says: “It is, of course, invariability in this sense which gives to science its practical value; it is because the connections between observations established by science are invariable that they can be used for prediction; and it is the power to predict that gives the power to control.”
In this regard cf. Poincaré’s complementary comment with regard to force: “Everything which does not teach us how to measure it is as useless to the mechanician as, for instance, the subjective idea of heat and cold to the student of heat. This subjective idea cannot be translated into numbers, and is therefore useless; a scientist whose skin is an absolutely bad conductor of heat, and who, therefore, has never felt the sensation of heat or cold, would read a thermometer in just the same way as anyone else, and would have enough material to construct the whole of the theory of heat.” (1902, p. 106).
See Agazzi (1977), pp. 162–164 and 167–168 for a description of how the operations performed in an empirical discipline are linked to objectivity and replicability, and serve to construct the objects of the discipline.
It is noteworthy in this regard that some form of the distinction was accepted by virtually all of the scientifically most influential thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Boyle, Newton and Locke. For a discussion of the historical roots of the distinction and its influence on the founders of modern science, see Dilworth (1988).
In this regard cf. Blackmore (1982), p. 79: “Galileo regarded the purpose of ‘the attempted reduction of scientific experience to experience that can be expressed in mathematical terms’ to be to understand the real physical world beyond sensations, consciousness, and ’experience’ and that what science is ’about’ is not just `experiential possibilities expressed in mathematical terms,’ but trans-experiential physical realities.”
Cf. Northrop (1931), p. 132: “If nature is nothing but a group of sense data then experimental procedure is pointless.” Contrast with Duhem: “[E]xperimental method ... is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them.” (1906, p. 10). Regarding Kant, see Prichard: “It is all very well to say that the substratum is to be found in matter, i.e. in bodies in space, but the assertion is incompatible with the phenomenal character of the world. ... Now Kant, by his doctrine of the unknowability of the thing in itself, has really deprived himself of an object of appre hension or, in his language, of an object of representations. For it is the thing in itself which is, properly speaking, the object of the representations of which he is thinking, i.e. representations of a reality in nature; and yet the thing in itself, being on his view inapprehensible, can never be for him an object in the proper sense, i.e. a reality apprehended. ... Kant is in fact only driven to treat rules of nature as relating to representations, because there is nothing else to which he can regard them as relating.” (1909, pp. 273–274, 280–282). See also Caird: “Kant does not in any way attempt to show how the idea of matter is derived from experience, except by saying that it is by motion alone that outer sense can be affected.” (1877, p. 492).
This serves to distinguish modem science from Aristotelian science, for, as noted by Louk Fleischhacker, where in modern science one knows things by their measure, in Aristotelian science one knows them by their appearance.
“Thus, in order to understand what physical properties such as mass or elasticity are, it is certainly necessary to have had some experiences, simply in order to be conscious and capable of knowing and understanding anything at all. There is, however, no particular sort of experience that it is necessary to have had.” N. Maxwell (1984), p. 202.
For a criticism of Karl Popper, N. R. Hanson and Paul Feyerabend in this regard, see Dilworth (1994a), pp. 149–151.
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Dilworth, C. (1996). Empirical Laws: The Supervention of Experience. In: The Metaphysics of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 173. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8621-4_4
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