Why History Matters to Philosophy of Physics

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 50 (2015) 4e12 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa Why history matters to philosophy of physics Thomas Ryckman Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2155, USA article info abstract Article history: Naturalized metaphysics remains the default presupposition of much contemporary philosophy of Available online 14 November 2014 physics. As metaphysics is supposed to concern the general structure of reality, so scientific naturalism draws upon our best physical theories to attempt to answer the foundational question “par excellence ” Keywords: viz., “how could the world possibly be the way this theory says it is?” A particular case study, Hilbert’s Metaphysics; attempt to analyze and explain a seeming “pre-established harmony” between mind and nature, is Naturalism; offered as a salutary reminder that naturalism’s ready inference from physical theory to ontology may be General relativity; too quick. Hilbert; Ó Pre-established harmony 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science “History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or consequence of fragmenting the professional discipline of history chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science. In the wake of Kuhn’s book, internalist narratives in the of science by which we are now possessed.”1 mold of the history of ideas, such as those of Koyré concerning A half-century ago, these words inaugurated a transformation in Kepler, Galileo and Newton were, and continue to be, eclipsed by two heretofore separate disciplines, history of science and philos- externalist histories emphasizing local social, political, economic ophy of science. Kuhn advocated a new historiography of science and cultural influences prompting and accompanying scientific whose canonical texts were the philosophically rich intellectual change. On the other hand, even the briefest glance at any of the histories of a previous generation of mostly European scholars widely used current anthologies of philosophy of science reveals (Hélène Metzger, Edwin A. Burtt, Anneliese Maier, E. J. Dijksterhuis, continuing efforts of more than a generation of philosophers to and especially Alexandre Koyré2). From this perspective, the come to terms with Kuhn’s challenge to the textbook view of sci- familiar chronicles of incremental progress in science (textbook ence and its achievements, and above all, to the Enlightenment “development-by-accumulation” models) raised questions about ideal of an overarching scientific rationality. discovery or priority that, when scrutinized against the complex Understanding history of science not merely as a litany of new ideational background of the event or episode in question, discoveries accommodated by better and more general theories, admitted only arbitrary or irrelevant answers. To the contrary, the but also as a battle of ideas, partly over the very significance of new scholarship insisted that historians cease to view past science these discoveries, fought by and between scientists, no longer from the rear view mirror of present science but instead “display seems a radical perspective to many of us, because we have read the historical integrity of [previous] science in its own terms.” Kuhn, if not Koyré. That does not mean that philosophers of science (1996, 3) To Kuhn’s lasting dismay, his forceful advocacy of a “his- no longer spend some of their time confuting, from the right, toriographic revolution in the study of science” had the ironical charges of “irrationalism” directed against Kuhn’s textured analysis of theory change, or, from the left, co-option of Kuhn’s account of scientific revolutions by a science study fringe satisfied only by E-mail address: [email protected]. pseudo-scientific causal accounts of belief formation. In short, there 1 Kuhn (1996, 1). remains a continuing cultural clash between the traditional pro- 2 Heilbron (2011, 11): “Koyré had revealed to Kuhn and his generation that the history of science was not a chronicle of true belief, but of the battle of ideas gressivist image of science (that Kuhn questioned) and its anti- required to arrive at useful concepts.” authoritarian discontents (that Kuhn abhorred). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2014.09.010 0039-3681/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T. Ryckman / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 50 (2015) 4e12 5 Still in its infancy fifty years ago, philosophy of physics as we casts the interpretive task of the philosopher of physics as the know it today came of age during the period of Kuhnian tumult in attempt to address the related question, “What beliefs about the its parent subject. Since Kuhn’s examples of revolutionary change world are, or would be, warranted by the empirical success of this were taken largely from physical science, one might expect to find (gauge) theory?” (2007, xv). On the other hand, Healey has more resounding responses to Kuhn in this specialized sub-discipline. recently allowed that an interpretation of quantum mechanics need That expectation will be largely frustrated. To give but one illus- not attempt to answer the foundational question.4 In any case, it is tration: an authoritative reference work, the 1450 page Handbook of instructive to observe that the attempt of philosophers of physics to Philosophy of Physics (edited by Jeremy Butterfield and John Ear- a naturalistic (and ‘experimental’) metaphysics informed by our man, Elsevier, 2007) contains precisely one mention of Kuhn, to his best fundamental theories may be contrasted with a quite distinct 1978 monograph on Max Planck and the discovery of the constant pragmatic attitude toward these theories common among the that bears his name. It might be thought this invisibility signals only corresponding working physicists. For gauge theories, the relevant a benign neglect? Perhaps philosophers of physics, narrowing their community consists of quantum field theorists who, far from attention from the scientific communities that were Kuhn’s pri- regarding these theories as providing a literal story of what the mary focus to the conceptual and foundational analysis of physical world is fundamentally like, follow Steven Weinberg in regarding theories that are those communities’ finished product, merely these theories of the Standard Model instrumentally, as ‘effective engage in a necessary (and productive) division of labor? For on field theories’, i.e., approximations valid at the distance and energy what possible grounds might a reasonable person disagree with scales we have thus far been able to explore.5 Still, instrumentalism, Kuhn’s assertion that history “could” yield a “decisive trans- constructive empiricism or non-realism more generally remain formation in the image of science”? Yet like many polling results, minority viewpoints among philosophers of physics, whose default any presumed widespread consensus proves both shallow and attachment is to some variety of realism as the recent resurgence of deceptive. In particular, it would be utterly misguided to draw interest in metaphysics of physics testifies. substantive inferences regarding the image of science manifest by The foundational question appears in its most straightforward the contemporary constellation of practice in philosophy of physics. articulation when philosophers of physics are enjoined to ‘take quantum mechanics seriously’. An instructive example is found in 1. Scientific naturalism and the foundational question par the publisher’s blurb ornamenting the dust jacket of David excellence Wallace’s (2012) book The Emergent Multiverse. Here the foundational question is refracted through the lens of the many-worlds That practice has a decidedly ahistorical orientation, in large interpretation of quantum mechanics: part implementing an agenda along lines usually only tacitly “The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics takes the assumed, but conveniently stated by Bas van Fraassen in his book, apparent craziness seriously, and asks, ‘what would the world Quantum Mechanics: an Empiricist View: be like if particles really were in two places at once, if cats really When we come to a specific theory, the question: how could the were alive and dead at the same time? The answer, it turns out, world possibly be the way this theory says it is? . is the foun- is that if the world were like that, if it were as quantum theory dational question par excellence, and it makes equal sense to claims, it would be a world that, at the microscopic level, was both realist and empiricist alike. (1991,4) constantly branching into copies . the interpretation is not sensationalist at all: it simply takes quantum theory seriously, fi In view of the insurmountable dif culties of accommodating quan- literally, as a description of the world. Once dismissed as absurd, tum weirdness within any picture of the world extrapolated from it is now accepted by many physicists as the best way to make classical physics, of entities with determinate properties at all times coherent sense of quantum theory.” inhabiting and moving around in space, it is small wonder that the foundational question makes an explicit appearance in the enterprise The hypotheticals in this quotation are surely apparent but the of interpreting quantum mechanics. More generally, it arises in antecedent “if [the

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