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Aim-Oriented Empiricism and the ‘Father’ of the Scientific Revolution: Metaphysics and Method in the Work of Galileo

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Aim-Oriented Empiricism and the ‘Father’ of the Scientific Revolution: Metaphysics and Method in the Work of Galileo AIM-ORIENTED EMPIRICISM AND THE ‘FATHER’ OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: METAPHYSICS AND METHOD IN THE WORK OF GALILEO A Thesis presented by Katherine R. Crawley for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of London University College, London July 1998 ProQuest Number: 10609111 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10609111 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With grateful acknowledgements and thanks to Nick Maxwell, for his unfailing support, and to Rob Iliffe, particularly for his valuable help with Chapter One. In addition I would like to express my gratitude to Geoff, Vicky, and Drew for all their love and encouragement. 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is concerned with that branch of the history of science which takes as its central problem the question of scientific progress, defined as the growth of knowledge and understanding about the world. It is an area of enquiry which has been suppressed, in recent years, by the development of historical methodologies which eschew all epistemological deliberations and their established ramifications. This thesis, therefore, addresses itself to the following areas. In Chapter One consideration is given to the degree to which the present ascendancy of contextual, social history of science depends upon formulating methodological strategies that deny the very legitimacy of a progress history of scientific ideas. These strategies are shown to depend upon the old definition of internalist, intellectual history of science, which drew upon related areas in the philosophy of science. Some basic arguments ^ in favour of the possibility of progressive histories of scientific ideas, which have been ignored by the discipline as a whole, are rehearsed. Chapter Two is devoted to an account of how a present-day philosophy of science, aim-oriented empiricism, offers a solution to the problem of induction which, by demonstrating that scientific rationality has a historical dimension, provides a suitable historiographic framework for a progress-oriented history of scientific ideas. Chapter Three examines the work of Galileo in the light of this new historiographic framework. Firstly, it is demonstrated to be an option 7 for exegesis, an account of how ideally rational science ought to be which does not rationally ' reconstruct the past Secondly, it illuminates Galileo’s work in significantly new ways, demonstrating that by making explicit the metaphysical dimension already implicit in Galileo’s methodology, his work can be shown to have an underlying unity - and be part of a progressive tradition - in ways which other interpretations, distracted by the seeming disunity at the methodological level, fail to appreciate. Finally, Chapter Four considers the possibility of a beneficial, reciprocal relationship between developments in the philosophy of science and in progressive histories of scientific ideas. 3 CONTENTS pages CHAPTER ONE * CRITIQUE OF CERTAIN TRENDS IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 7-94 Social History of Science and the Concept of Scientific Progress 7 Hunt the Historiography 11 Influences on the Development of a Social History of Science 15 What are the Advantages of Constructivism? 34 Methodological Relativism 37 Anthropological and Sociological Techniques 39 Whig Historiography and Ideas of Progress 45 Problems Associated With Social History and Historiography of Science 53 What is Whiggish About Whig History? 60 A Possible Route Towards A Solution 69 Generalized Arguments Concerning the Pursuit of the Subject Matter 82 References for Chapter One 90 CHAPTER TWO* AIM-ORIENTED EMPIRICISM: A SUITABLE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK TO PROVIDE CRITERIA FOR THE EXECUTION OF A PROGRESSIVE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS 95-162 Expounding Aim-Oriented Empiricism 98 A Brief Summary of Aim-Oriented Empiricism 99 Some Problems and Some Solutions 107 The Operation of Aim-Oriented Empiricist Science 112 Going Beyond Popper 115 4 The Illuminative Strengths of Aim-Oriented Empiricism 117 The Principles of Uniformity 121 Solution to the Problems of Induction 127 The Methodological Problem of Induction 127 The Justificational Problem Gf Induction 130 Aim-Oriented Empiricism and the History of Science 133 Progress History of Science is Possible 133 Towards a Historiography of Science 135 Aim-Oriented Empiricism and Whig historiography 150 Aim-Oriented Empiricism and Present-Day History of Science 152 References for Chapter Two 162 CHAPTER THREE* GALILEO AND THE AIM-ORIENTED EMPIRICIST PERSPECTIVE 163-267 Introduction 163 Level 5: The Comprehensibility Theses 167 The Articulation of the Level 4 Blueprint 177 The Development of the Level 3 Blueprint 184 The Blueprint Progression 189 Blueprint Clashes 194 A Brief Resume 198 Methodology Implies Blueprint Even in Unexpected Cases 224 The Father of Modern Science? 228 Essence, Measurement, or Something Else? 238 Matter in Motion 250 Unity at the Metaphysical Level 254 References for Chapter Three 262 CHAPTER FOUR* THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS? 268-278 References for Chapter Four 278 5 APPENDIX 279-285 Diagram 1 285 BIBLIOGRAPHY 286 6 CHAPTER ONE CRITIQUE OF CERTAIN TRENDS IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Social History of Science and the Concept of Scientific Progress This thesis is concerned with that branch of the history of science which takes the central problem to be scientific progress, defined as the growth of knowledge and understanding about the world. The question which started me thinking about these issues, paradoxically, involves the scarcity of present-day contributions to this area. Why does no- one, or at least hardly anyone, consider the progress of scientific knowledge any more? It is not so very many years since such a notion seemed an obvious and reasonably unproblematic form of exposition for the history of science. Indeed there is an interesting disciplinary point to be made here: more than a few historians - and I mean here historians whose subject areas lie outside the realm of science, such as historians of art and architecture, ancient civilizations, politics, warfare, society, and economics - still do regard the history of science as a special case.1 They tend to hold that because of its peculiar and heavily intellectual, or ideas-oriented, subject matter, it is not altogether susceptible to the same methodological and historiographical pronouncements that non-scientific history is. However, a great many contemporary historians of science would disagree with this because their discipline is increasingly, sometimes it seems overwhelmingly, studied in terms of social considerations which eschew all epistemological deliberations and their established ramifications. Anyone talking or writing about such entities as knowledge and progress (and for that matter, rationality, objectivity, and verisimilitude) is liable to be told that such entities cannot do any analytical work in the history of science. They are peremptory definitions, they are banal, 1 This was brought home to me during a conversation with Professor Arthur Marwick at an Open University history symposium held in Cambridge in 1996. 7 they cannot help the aspiring historian of science to get any kind of a purchase on the past. The question that therefore needs to be asked, is ‘is this sort of position entirely unproblematic and are the kinds of criticisms that it levels at the older forms of exposition sustainable?’. Examinations of explanations of scientific progress and change have occasionally surfaced in recent years. In a book entitledScrutinizing Science, edited by Donovan and the Laudans, a methodological approach is taken to a range of philosophical theories of scientific change. This is done in the expressed hope that a rigorous comparison with relevant historical evidence might produce a survivor among the competing theses that would give an empirically‘ well-grounded picture of the workings of science ’ and (by implication) provide a historiographical framework too.[1] Although well aware that attempts to bring together histories and theories would raise considerable conceptual and methodological problems, the editors decline to address these problems in any depth.f2] In their summing-up eleven of the original thirty-eight theses survive, rather than the hoped-for one. All eleven are somewhat modified and in fact most of them have only survived the testing in a highly qualified form. David Gooding, who is sympathetic to many of the aims of the editors, calledit ‘a worthy start which everyone interested in the philosophical import o f historical studies should read with care. ’[5] I think the emphasis has to be very much on the word ‘start’. Paul Hoch, who is less sympathetic, regardsScrutinizing Science as being like, a new philosophical meta-methodology of rational scientific appraisal which, it is maintained, has been shown to be applicable to all (or nearly all) ‘cases’ - but which rarely if ever brings in the relevant social processes in the relevant research communities and their relations to broader
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