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SCIENCE, LABOR and SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS by George Borg B.Sc

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SCIENCE, LABOR and SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS by George Borg B.Sc TITLE PAGE SCIENCE, LABOR AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS by George Borg B.Sc. in Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley 1999 Ph.D. in Chemistry, Harvard University, 2007 M.A. in Philosophy, Tufts University, 2012 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2020 COMMITTE E PAGE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by George Borg It was defended on June 5, 2020 and approved by Paolo Palmieri, Associate Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Kevin Zollman, Associate Professor, Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University Dissertation Co-Director: John D. Norton, Distinguished Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Dissertation Co-Director: Michael R. Dietrich, Professor, History and Philosophy of Science ii Copyright © by George Borg 2020 iii ABST RACT SCIENCE, LABOR AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRSS George Borg, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2020 My dissertation introduces a new materialist theory of scientific progress built on a novel characterization of scientific work and an analysis of progress appropriate to it. Two questions, crucial for understanding scientific progress, are answered: Why is it possible for scientists at a given time to have more epistemic abilities than scientists at an earlier time? How can knowledge acquired in the past be used in on-going or future research? I argue that these questions are best answered by analyzing science as a form of labor. The elements of the labor process, involving both intellectual and material means, provide a starting-point for the systematic study of how scientific abilities evolve. As a unit of analysis, the labor process exposes features of the dynamics of knowledge accumulation that traditional analyses do not. I analyze historical cases from chemistry and the Scientific Revolution, attending carefully to how scientific work is conducted and conceived. First, I argue that scientific progress consists not just in the growth of theoretical or empirical knowledge, as in traditional philosophy of science, but also in the growth of know-how. The tools of science play a crucial role in determining the abilities scientists can and must have to do science. Tools also determine how scientists’ abilities change over time, by enabling, but also constraining, the incorporation of knowledge into the labor process. I argue that an extremely important mechanism of progress in science consists of a feedback loop between the production of new knowledge and instrument construction. This process requires the integration, and transformation into material form, of different kinds of knowledge. As the process is repeated over the long term, scientific work is transformed because it becomes less dependent on native human epistemic abilities. iv Second, the evolution of scientific abilities depends on ambient ideological conditions: Social attitudes towards different kinds of work are critical, as are notions about the proper object of science. What results is a picture of scientific change involving the interactions of different kinds of knowledge and in which internal and external factors, as well as instrumental rationality, play a significant role. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................xv 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................1 1.1 References ...................................................................................................................11 2.0 MODELS OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS ..................................13 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................13 2.2 Scientific progress ......................................................................................................14 2.2.1 Varieties of scientific progress ..............................................................16 2.2.2 The broad conception of scientific progress ........................................17 2.3 Three models of science .............................................................................................26 2.3.1 The intellectualist model ........................................................................26 2.3.2 The labor process model ........................................................................30 2.3.2.1 Excursus on the labor process .................................................. 33 2.3.2.2 The Radical Science Journal collective .................................... 39 2.3.2.3 Edgar Zilsel and the merging of intellectual and manual labor ................................................................................................................. 42 2.3.2.4 Science as practice ..................................................................... 46 2.3.3 The sociological model ...........................................................................50 2.4 Scientific progress and the labor process model .....................................................56 2.4.1 Abilities in philosophy of action and in philosophy of science ...........56 2.4.2 Abilities, instruments, and scientific progress .....................................60 2.5 References ...................................................................................................................71 3.0 HISTORICAL-EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ORIGINS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD .......................................................77 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................77 3.2 The Scholastics, manual labor and the role of maker’s knowledge in science .....78 3.2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................78 3.2.2 Randall’s two theses ...............................................................................80 vi 3.2.3 The Scholastics’ contribution to scientific method according to Randall .............................................................................................................82 3.2.4 Schmitt on experience and experiment in Zabarella ..........................85 3.2.5 The experimental method as production .............................................87 3.2.6 Ways forward? .......................................................................................95 3.2.6.1 Logic as instrument ................................................................... 95 3.2.6.2 Newman on the “perfective arts” ............................................. 97 3.2.7 Conclusion .............................................................................................102 3.3 From perception to measurement in Kepler’s Optics ...........................................103 3.3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................103 3.3.2 Gal and Chen-Morris on the “disappearing observer” ....................106 3.3.3 Kepler and the perspectivists ..............................................................109 3.3.4 Error, perception and measurement ..................................................120 3.3.5 The problem of the certainty of measurement ..................................125 3.3.6 The eye and the problem of systematic measurement error ............137 3.3.7 Concluding remarks ............................................................................148 3.4 Conclusion of chapter 2 ...........................................................................................149 3.5 References .................................................................................................................151 4.0 ON “THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO SCIENCE ITSELF:” CHEMISTRY, INSTRUMENTS, AND THE SCIENTIFIC LABOR PROCESS ................................................................................................................155 4.1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................155 4.2 Models and machines of scientific revolutions ......................................................158 4.3 Structure determination before and after the instrumental revolution .............164 4.4 Marx’s analysis of the labor process and the industrial revolution ....................173 4.5 Parallels between the Industrial Revolution and the Instrumental Revolution .179 4.5.1 Conceptions of progress .......................................................................180 4.5.2 Common features .................................................................................181 4.5.3 Disanalogies ..........................................................................................189 4.6 Explication of the analytical claim .........................................................................191 4.7 Objections and replies .............................................................................................196 vii 4.8 Conclusion: The Instrumental Revolution or an instrumental revolution? .......199 4.9 References .................................................................................................................203 5.0 THE INSTRUMENTAL REVOLUTION AND THE HEURISTICS OF CHEMICAL RESEARCH .....................................................................................211
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