Abstract
The aim of this paper is to clarify some crucial aspects of Poincaré ’s philosophy of science, and especially the notion of ‘convention ’. This will lead to a better understanding of the differing interpretations of his views that have been proposed, and to a reassessment of the conventionalist philosophy of science 100 years after Poincaré’s passing. The first section presents a short contextualization of conventionalism with the nineteenth century philosophical landscape. In the second one, we briefly expose two conflicting ways of interpreting Poincaré’s conventionalism regarding natural science, that is, physics and mechanics . In the third section, the core of this paper, we analyze the different concepts of convention that are found in Poincaré’s works. Finally, we offer some concluding remarks on Poincaré’s views in light of present-day philosophical concerns.
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- 1.
There were of course other philosophical schools at that time, such as materialism, spiritualism, and some forms of existentialism. French spiritualism was dominated by Victor Cousin, who was very influenced by Hegel’s and Schelling’s idealism. In this respect, we can say that every one of these streams emerged as a “reaction against” or as “adding a rider” to, these two main philosophical streams. This idea can also be found in Mandelbaum (1971, 4–5).
- 2.
Moritz Schlick’s chair in “Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences” at Vienna University is usually regarded as the academic instauration of philosophy of science (cf. Friedman 2001, 12). However, Mach’s chair on “History and Theory of Inductive Sciences,” at the same University (a chair also occupied by Boltzmann), is a precedent. In France, the chairs of “General History of the Sciences” in the Collège de France (created by Comte in 1892), and the chair of “History of Philosophy regarding Sciences” at the Sorbonne (created by Gaston Milhaud in 1909) are precedents likewise.
- 3.
By this, we do not mean that the interpretation of geometrical conventionalism is fully unproblematic, but as we will show, the notion of convention is univocal for geometry , even if the interpretations are not.
- 4.
Grünbaum 1963a, is his most famous contribution, but he also outlines his position in subsequent papers such as Grünbaum 1963b, Grünbaum 1968, and especially Grünbaum 1978, where he discusses what he considers the most important problem in geometrical conventionalism : the so-called ‘parallax argument’. See also Rougier 1920 and Reichenbach 1928. We do not want to enter into the details of this interpretation since it is more widespread than the other.
- 5.
Richardson asked me this question after the symposium on Poincaré presented at the HOPOS conference in 2012.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the audiences of HOPOS 2012 and International Meeting: ‘Henri Poincaré , 100 years after’ (University of Lisbon, 2012) where a version of this paper was read. I am very grateful to F. Varela, D. Stump and R. DiSalle for insightful comments and corrections. I also thank FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) for a Ph.D. grant (SFRH/BD/4478/2008) and Project “The physics of Principles and the Scientific Epistemology: the cases of Mach, Hertz, and Poincaré” (PTDC/FIL-FCI/116939/2010), CFCUL (Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa) and Faculty of Philosophy from Complutense University (Madrid) for academic support.
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de Paz, M. (2014). The Third Way Epistemology: A Re-characterization of Poincaré’s Conventionalism. In: de Paz, M., DiSalle, R. (eds) Poincaré, Philosopher of Science. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 79. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8780-2_3
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