THE HEURISTIC ROLE OF QUESTIONS IN THE FORMATION OF RESEARCH PROGRAMMES: COPERNICUS’S HELIOCENTRIC SYSTEM A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY SEZEN ALTUĞ IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SEPTEMBER 2016 Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Tülin Gençöz Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Prof. Dr. Şeref Halil Turan Head of Department This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Doç. Dr. Samet Bağçe Supervisor Examining Committee Members Yrd. Doç. Dr. Sandy Berkovski (ID BILKENT, Phil) Doç. Dr. Samet Bağçe (METU, Phil) Doç. Dr. Sinan Kaan Yerli (METU, Phys) I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last name : Sezen Altuğ Signature : iii ABSTRACT THE HEURISTIC ROLE OF QUESTIONS IN THE FORMATION OF RESEARCH PROGRAMMES: COPERNICUS’S HELIOCENTRIC SYSTEM Altuğ, Sezen M.A., Department of Philosophy Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Samet Bağçe September 2016, 96 pages The aim of this thesis is to develop a critical view about the notion of the heuristic in Lakatos’s methodology of research programmes. The heuristic is tried to be sterilized from its defects with an insight derived from different forms of theories dealing with questions. For that reason, a short survey which includes Socratic dialogues, Hintikka’s theory of interrogative games, van Fraassen’s theory of why-questions, and Laudan’s analogy between science and problem-solving activity is introduced. As a result, the heuristic is construed as the interrogative tools that an inquirer has to construct her theories and solve their problems. The Copernican Revolution is endeavoured to be reconstructed as a case study in the lights of the questions that Copernicus might pose to discover his heliocentric cosmology. Since the Copernican programme cannot be reduced to the theories of Copernicus alone, only the primitive form of this programme which could be associated with Copernicus is examined to check the verity of this newly formulated definition of the heuristic. Keywords: questions, interrogative theory, heuristic, research programmes, Copernicus iv ÖZ ARAŞTIRMA PROGRAMLARININ OLUŞUMUNDA SORULARIN HÖRİSTİK ROLÜ: KOPERNİK’İN GÜNEŞ-MERKEZLİ SİSTEMİ Altuğ, Sezen Yüksek Lisans, Felsefe Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Doç. Dr. Samet Bağçe Eylül 2016, 95 sayfa Bu tezin amacı, Lakatos’un araştırma programları metodolojisindeki höristik kavramına dair eleştirel bir bakış açısı geliştirmektir. Sorularla uğraşan farklı teorilerden türetilen bir görüyle höristik, kusurlarından arındırılmaya çalışılmaktadır. Bu gerekçeyle, Sokratik diyaloglar, Hintikka’nın sorgulayıcı oyunlarını, van Fraassen’ın niçin-soruları teorisini ve Laudan’ın bilim ve problem çözme aktivitesi arasında kurduğu benzetmeyi içeren küçük bir inceleme sunulmaktadır. Sonuç olarak höristik, bir araştırmacının teorilerini kurmak ve problemlerini çözmek üzere sahip olduğu sorgulayıcı araçlar olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Kopernik Devrimi ise güneş-merkezli kozmolojinin keşfi için Kopernik’in sormuş olabileceği sorular ışığında yeniden inşa edilmeye uğraşılmaktadır. Kopernikçi programın tek başına Kopernik’in teorilerine indirgenemeyişinden ötürü, programın Kopernik ile ilişkilendirilebilecek yalnızca ilkel bir formu, höristiğe dair yeni formüle edilen tanımın doğruluğunu kontrol etmek için sınanmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: sorular, sorgulayıcı teori, höristik, araştırma programları, Kopernik v Let no one untrained in philosophy enter here. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In spite of many difficulties, this thesis has been completed. I owe my gratitude to all lovely people who made this work possible. My deepest gratitude is to my family, without whose encouragement I cannot declare myself as a master in such a challenging discipline. The values that my mother, father, and big sister have brought into my life cannot be limited to these finite lines of acknowledgments. I would like to thank my supervisor Samet Bağçe, for his patience to answer my endless questions, his effort to regiment my disorganized studies, and each bits of his precious time which was spared for me for any reason. Special thanks to my colleagues in the Laboratory for Computational Ontology, especially to my principal investigator, Aziz Fevzi Zambak, for their support. Without them, I would have lost my enthusiasm for philosophy. Also sincere thanks to my friend, Ayça Müge Sevinç, for her motivation to join me in my little trips from Kızılay to METU in weekdays and her joy which never fades. Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my fiancé, Utku Barış Bektaş, who is always be there for me and helps me to a better person. I am very lucky to have such a person who keeps reminding me that even our darkest moments point the way to a brighter future. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PLAGIARISM………………………………………………………………………… iii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………. iv ÖZ……………………………………………………………………………………. v DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………… vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………………………………. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………….. viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………. 1 2. LAKATOS’S HEURISTIC AND A CONTRIBUTION TO ITS DEFINITION…………………………………………………………………… 12 2.1. The Definition of the Heuristic in Lakatos………………………….. 12 2.2. Some Problems about Lakatos’s Definition……………………….. 18 2.3. A Contribution to Define the Heuristic: Questions………………… 21 3. COPERNICUS AS THE CASE STUDY: THE PIONEER OF THE HELIOCENTRIC PROGRAMME……………………………………………. 23 3.1. Some Ambiguities about the Definition of the Scientific Revolution………………………………………………………………….. 23 3.2. The Life of Copernicus………………………………………………. 29 viii 3.2.1. Origins……………………………………………………. 29 3.2.2. Education………………………………………………... 32 3.2.3. Years Out of the Hometown………………………….... 43 3.2.4. Commentariolus……………………………………….… 48 3.2.5. De revolutionibus………………………………………... 51 3.3. Copernican Questions in the Reconstruction of the Heliocentric Programme………………………………………………………………… 61 4. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………….. 74 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………. 79 APPENDICES A. TÜRKÇE ÖZET……………………………………………………………. 83 B. TEZ FOTOKOPİSİ İZİN FORMU………………………………………… 95 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Reasoning via questions is a practice employed by many figures in the history of philosophy and science. Most philosophers and scientists have utilized questions deliberately or unintentionally, and been assisted by them in discovering new paths to consider for their inquiries. While the questions preoccupied with “meaning” are mostly associated with philosophical activities, questions pointing a “world-fact” are assumed to be asked by a scientific interest (Uygur, 1964, p.72).1 In this separation, scientific inquiry is depicted as an attempt to interpret the world by examining the fact, whereas philosophical inquiry is treated as a concern about the meaning of definite words, rather than realities going beyond these words in question. Although both of them can deal with the same phenomena, the way of how these two types of inquiry handle the questioned phenomena alters. While scientific questions have recourse to the phenomena of words and are exhausted on the world, philosophical questions look into this phenomena-through-language and are exhausted within the realm of language (Uygur, 1964, pp.77-80). In terms of the form of questioning, the philosophical interrogation is tended to be characterized by the question-pattern of “what-is”, but the inquisitive act of the scientists is usually exemplified by “how” questions (Uygur, 1964, p.78). For instance, “What is the meaning of world?” is a philosophical question, but “How is the world made up?” is a scientific question. 1 Uygur also refers here to the ordinary sense of questioning the world-fact in everyday deeds such as asking the number of rooms by pointing out a particular house. However, such a mundane practice of questioning is out of the topic of this paper. 1 When we go back in history and research the primitive forms of interrogative reasoning, we firstly encounter with the philosophical questions in the form of “what- is”. This type of inquiries mostly resembles the pattern that is followed by the question- and-answer dialogues. This simple form of interrogation performed between two parties aims to get an answer to big (principal) questions through directing smaller (operative) questions to the opponent (Hintikka, 1999, p.67). Platonic or Socratic dialogues are competent examples of this kind of reasoning whose formal structure imitates what two human speakers do in a conversation in everyday life. Of course, the content of the Greek example is much more philosophical. Basically, Socratic method adopts stimulating one‟s thoughts by a question-and-answer dialogue, and aims to demonstrate the inconsistency within one‟s most fundamental opinions. Acknowledging the standard interpretation, a typical Socratic dialogue begins with a question searching for a definition such as “What is X?” The basic rationale behind the Socratic Method is, gradually, making one‟s “indigested opinions” examined,