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Knowledge Missemination: L. Susan Stebbing, C.E.M. Joad, and Philipp Frank on the Philosophy of the Physicists Adam Tamas Tuboly Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries, University of Pecs Science popularization might take different forms. In the early twentieth cen- tury, Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington presented the most successful endeavors. Philosophers were highly unimpressed and disturbed by these pop- ular works and various authors declared their disagreement with the physi- cists’ philosophical books against their own philosophical background. I will discuss three different philosophers, L. Susan Stebbing, C. E. M. Joad, and Philipp Frank, whose three lines of criticism represent three different forms of philosophy, social engagement, and scientific outlook. What is interesting is that there was a point when the most diverse philosophers (of science) agreed in contrast of their common enemy, namely, those popularizing scientists that have their reputation and use it to propagate false, or at least misleading views about science, culture, and values. What we shall see is how far this agreement went among these figures and how the divergent strategies culminated in very similar results regarding knowledge dissemination. Keywords: Susan Stebbing, Arthur Eddington, James Jeans, philosophy of physics, popularization of science, C.E.M. Joad, Philipp Frank, logical empiricism The paper was first presented at the Matter and Life: Historico-logical Issues in Post-1800 Physics and Biology workshop (Sarton Centre for History of Science, Ghent University, 27. 08. 2018). I am indebted to Bohang Chen, Maarten van Dyck and Charles T. Wolfe. I am also grateful to George Reisch for the many discussions on Frank’s philosophy, the two anonymous reviewers of the journal and to Alexander Levine and Michael Whitworth for their kindness and help. I was supported by the MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group and by the MTA Premium Postdoctoral Research Scholarship. Perspectives on Science 2020, vol. 28, no. 1 © 2020 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00331 1 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/posc_a_00331 by guest on 29 September 2021 2 Knowledge Missemination 1. Introduction: Setting the Scene In their major work, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (2010, p. 5) expressed the opinion of presumably many working physicists, philosophers of physics and even educated laymen when they said, “philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” Their examples of the fields that have been conquered by physicists include most of the perennial philosophical ques- tions: “what is the nature of the world”, “how can we understand the world,” “where did we come from,”“how did the universe come into existence.” Due to numerous disruptions that shocked the relations between philoso- phy, science, and society, physicists became able (or were recognized by many as being able) to produce better and more fruitful answers to all those ancient questions that philosophers were never able to handle in a satisfactory manner. One of the main lessons of Hawking and Mlodinow’s book is not simply that they try to disqualify philosophical questions, but that they are even allowed and able to play the role of such experts and public intellectuals whose opinion has to be carefully listened to outside the physical sciences as well. While contemporary physicists tend to claim that philosophy is dead and what most philosophers do is just harmful gibberish, the first half of the twen- tieth century experienced a rather different attitude. Respectful physicists, after their theoretical investigations were done, tended to produce such philosoph- ical works that aimed at setting the stage for the discussion on science, its re- sults, and its relation to society. Perhaps the most well-known examples from the early twentieth century are Sir James Jeans’ and Sir Arthur Eddington’s popularizing work on the philosophical or general consequences of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Jeans and Eddington, despite being heavily debated by their contemporaries, have shown that popular writing could matter during the disruption of Science and the soaring development of scientific disciplines. “Those who could do it successfully were in a position to influence the public’s perception of science whether or not they were reflecting a consensus of the scientific community” (Bowler 2009, p. 34). After the 1920s and 1930s, trained philosophers and physicist-turned- philosophers entered the scene. In this paper, I will reconstruct and discuss three widely different, though related, criticisms of Jeans and Eddington. L. Susan Stebbing, in her book, Philosophy and the Physicists ([1937] 1944), criticized Jeans and Eddington from a philosophical point of view, but based her insights mainly on the clarity of thinking and the preciseness of presentation, that is, on the theory and method of communication utilizing also her own the- oretical arguments. The notorious popularizer, C.E.M. Joad often wrote about the intersections of philosophy and science for a broader audience of educated laymen. He attacked the physicists not for pursuing metaphysics per se, but Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/posc_a_00331 by guest on 29 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 3 for propagating an erroneous metaphysics and for neglecting values in science and human life. Finally, the logical empiricist Philipp Frank criticized the physicists from the viewpoint of his positivist philosophy of science and ar- gued for a somewhat neutral though socially sensitive reading of science. The three lines of criticism represent three different forms of philosophy, social engagement, and scientific outlook. Nonetheless, all of the abovemen- tioned scholars considered the newest results of science to be of utmost im- portance for society and held that the knowledge dissemination strategies of scientists have to be chosen carefully. If not, even the best intentions could turn into—to say somewhat idiosyncratically—knowledge missemination, that is, into a misleading form of presenting scientific theories, especially in relation to society and human values. In the paper, I am not concerned with the specific arguments of the physicists, namely whether particular physical theories indeed have those effects and consequences that the phys- icists attributed to them or not, or with the particular theoretical remarks of the philosophers. That is, I am not interested in the questions whether Frank, Stebbing, and Joad have produced better arguments than the phys- icists, and whether they were indeed able to point out the alleged deficien- cies of the physicists’ argumentation. Missemination is only partially tied to invalid arguments and faulty reasoning, but overall, it is the outcome of a more general way of presentation and engagement with the given subject. What I am after now is thus simply the general outlook of the philos- ophers, their strategies, and how their projects fit their bigger narratives. What is interesting is that there was a point when, or a platform where, the most diverse philosophers (of science)—who are usually conceived to be diametrically opposed—agreed in opposition to their common enemy. That enemy consisted of those popularizing scientists who had their rep- utation and used it to propagate false, or at least misleading views about science, culture, and values. What we shall see here is how far this agree- ment went among these philosophers and how the divergent strategies cul- minated in very similar results regarding knowledge dissemination. I shall reconstruct three different forms of philosophical practice and worldview, pointing out their possible intersections. From this perspective, my claims have to be much more historical and modest than a purely phil- osophical investigation is supposed to be. One final introductory note is in place. The whole issue is a pretty com- plex matter, thus any attempt to deal with this mazy web of scholars and works in such a short paper as this might not amount to more than just a diffident scratching of the surface. Early twentieth century British science writing was a rapidly flourishing scene with its own social and scientific context. Besides Jeans’ and Eddington’s writings on physics, the market- place was filled with the popular and engaging books of J. B. Haldane, Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/posc_a_00331 by guest on 29 September 2021 4 Knowledge Missemination Lancelot Hogben, Julian Huxley, J. Arthur Thomson, and H. G. Wells. Keeping up the relation with the public, communicating the latest theo- retical ideas of science and drawing a thrilling picture of how science en- ters daily life and shapes our attitude towards it were thus significant concerns of many.1 Regarding philosophy in particular, before and after the publication of Jeans’ and Eddington’s works, many conferences and symposiums were de- voted to the question of how philosophy may be influenced by the new physics, and whether physicists shall learn any lessons from the new scien- tific philosophies. Some of the already well-established figures that acted on the borders of philosophy and science had their say in these debates
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