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MURPHY, Alice. Thought Experiments and the Scientific Imagination. Phd

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i Thought Experiments and the Scientific Imagination Alice Murphy Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science September 2020 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Alice Murphy to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2020 The University of Leeds and Alice Murphy iii Acknowledgements Firstly, a huge thank you to my supervisors, Steven French and Aaron Meskin. It’s hard to do justice to the support and insights that you have each provided over the past four years. Steven has been endlessly generous, and has an open minded approach to research that is a constant source of inspiration. Aaron’s meticulous attention to detail has made me a more careful writer and thinker. You’ve both enabled me to form sketchy ideas into arguments, spurred me on when I’ve been lacking in confidence, and have made the whole process energising and, dare I say it, fun. At the risk of causing too high of expectations of the thesis that follows, I also want to say thank you to Milena Ivanova, Andrea Blomqvist, Mike Stuart, Max Jones, Fiora Salis, Karim Thébault and Adrian Currie for incredibly valuable conversations and feedback. I am grateful to David Davies for hosting me during my visit to McGill, and Elay Shech, James Shelley and Keren Gorodeisky for hosting me during my time at Auburn. I have benefitted enormously from the mentorship of Víctor Durà-Vilà over the past couple of years, and I also want to thank Nick Jones, Callum Duguid, and Alison Toop for helping me develop as a teacher. Thank you to Debbie Foy, Paul McShane and the rest of the PRHS administrators for their immense patience. I am very grateful to WRoCAH and the Royal Institute of Philosophy for funding this project. Thank you to Roman Frigg and Juha Saasti for a stimulating viva, and to Adrian Wilson for chairing. The School of PRHS is a brilliant and welcoming community. A big thanks to my fellow MAP committee members for providing opportunities to work towards making philosophy more inclusive (and a space to get angry about things in the meantime) and to all the members of the Philosophy of Science reading group for broadening my research horizons. Thank you to Emily Herring, Laura Sellars, Coreen McGuire, Jade Fletcher, Christina Nick, Hollie Gowan, Alex Aylward, Tadhg O’Laoghaire, Joe Saunders, Mikey Cannon, Adina Covaci, Will Gamester, Miriam Bowen, David Heering, Simon Newey, Arthur Carlyle and Mathieu Rees for your friendship and guidance. And to Vishnu Radhakrishnan for being my best bud from the moment I moved to Leeds. A massive thank you, and an even bigger apology, to Caitlin Molloy for all the weekend visits and for listening to me whinge about obscure “problems”. iv Finishing a PhD during a global pandemic wasn’t exactly easy, but it would have been a whole lot harder without the support of Nathan Wood. Thank you for making me laugh even in my moodiest of moody moments and for being the highlight of my day every day. Finally, I want to say thank you to all my family, especially my g-dad Morty, my brother Tom (who also proofread many of these chapters), and most of all to my mum and dad for 27 years of boundless love and encouragement. v Abstract Thought experiments (TEs) are important tools in science, used to both undermine and support theories, and communicate and explain complex phenomena. Their interest within philosophy of science has been dominated by a narrow question: How do TEs increase knowledge? My aim is to push beyond this to consider their broader value in scientific practice. I do this through an investigation into the scientific imagination. Part one explores questions regarding TEs as “experiments in the imagination” via a debate concerning the epistemic status of computer simulations in science. I outline how, against Hacking, TEs also have “a life of their own” and I argue against accounts that privilege experiments over simulations (and by extension TEs) in light of their capacity to surprise in a productive way. Part two develops a pluralist account of the nature of the imagination in science. At its core, my view is that when we attend to a number of examples of TEs and consider the context in which they are used, we see that TEs engage a variety of our imaginative capacities. Existing monistic views fail to recognise the richness of the imagination and its potential in science. Part three looks to the “beauty” of TEs which is currently overlooked in the aesthetics of science literature. I put forward a new account that demonstrates the epistemic value of aesthetic features in science by showing how an appropriate fit between form and content enhances the usability of a TE, and its effectiveness as a prompt for our imagination. This also enables a more nuanced take on the proposed similarities between TEs and literary fictions. In the concluding chapter, I outline ways in which the core features of my account can be extended beyond TEs to illuminate the significance of the imagination and aesthetic values in other areas of science. vi Contents Acknowledgements _________________________________________________________ iii Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ v Contents _________________________________________________________________ vi List of Figures ___________________________________________________________ viii Introduction _______________________________________________________________ 1 1. Thought Experiments and Experiments ____________________________________ 11 Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 11 Thought Experiments, Experiments and Computer Simulations ________________ 12 The Life of an Experiment _______________________________________________ 17 1.3.1 The Evolution of Experiments _____________________________________________________ 19 1.3.2 The Robustness of Experimental Results _____________________________________________ 20 1.3.3 Experiments Can Precede Theory __________________________________________________ 21 The Life of a Thought Experiment ________________________________________ 21 1.4.1 The Evolution of Thought Experiments ______________________________________________ 22 1.4.2 The Robustness of Thought Experiments ____________________________________________ 25 1.4.3 Thought Experiments Can Precede Theory ___________________________________________ 27 Conclusion ____________________________________________________________ 30 2. Privileging Experiments ________________________________________________ 31 Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 31 The Materiality Thesis __________________________________________________ 31 The Value of Surprise ___________________________________________________ 37 Surprise and Confoundment in Thought Experiments ________________________ 41 2.4.1 Brown’s View: Thought Experiments and Platonism ___________________________________ 42 2.4.2 Norton’s View: Thought Experiments are Arguments ___________________________________ 44 Thought Experiments, the Imagination and Surprise _________________________ 50 Conclusion ____________________________________________________________ 55 3. The Scientific Imagination ______________________________________________ 58 Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 58 Science and the Imagination ______________________________________________ 59 Models as Fictions ______________________________________________________ 62 The Varieties of Imagination _____________________________________________ 67 Thought Experiments and Imagery ________________________________________ 70 The Propositional Alternative ____________________________________________ 75 Propositional Imagination and Argumentation ______________________________ 80 Conclusion ____________________________________________________________ 83 4. A Pluralist Account of the Imagination in Science ___________________________ 85 Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 85 vii Thought Experiments, Models and Mental Images ___________________________ 85 Invitations to Imagine ___________________________________________________ 91 The Case for Pluralism __________________________________________________ 95 4.4.1 Propositional Imagination ________________________________________________________ 95 4.4.2 Objectual Imagination ___________________________________________________________ 96 Conclusion ___________________________________________________________ 104 5. The Aesthetics of Science: The Case of Thought Experiments _________________ 105 Introduction __________________________________________________________ 105 The Cognitive Value of Literature ________________________________________ 107 Disanologies Between Literature and Thought Experiments __________________ 112 The Beauty of Thought Experiments ______________________________________ 117 Problems for Aesthetics of Science ________________________________________ 121 Conclusion ___________________________________________________________ 124 6. The Aesthetic and Literary Qualities
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