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Studies in History and of Science 50 (2015) 4e12

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Studies in History and

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

Why history matters to philosophy of

Thomas Ryckman

Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2155, USA article info abstract

Article history: Naturalized remains the default presupposition of much of Available online 14 November 2014 physics. As metaphysics is supposed to concern the general structure of , so scientific 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 , is Naturalism; offered as a salutary reminder that naturalism’s ready from physical theory to may be ; 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, 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 . discovery or priority that, when scrutinized against the complex Understanding history of science not merely as a litany of new ideational background of the 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 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 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 need That expectation 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 what possible grounds might a reasonable person disagree with scales we have thus far been able to explore.5 Still, , Kuhn’s assertion that history “could” yield a “decisive trans- constructive 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 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 . Here the founda- tional 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 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 , of entities with determinate properties at all coherent sense of quantum theory.” inhabiting and moving around in , 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 world] were as quantum theory claims” might attempting to portray the world in terms of the entities, processes or be underscored, for this is a locution understood on the assumption structures posited by an empirically successful fundamental theory, that one “takes quantum mechanics seriously”, i.e., interprets the assumed for purposes of addressing the foundational question, liter- Schrödinger equation literally. It seems that with frequent enough ally true, or at least approximately so. Yet in conformity with van repetition even the hypotheticals tend to be overlooked, Fraassen’s own favored “”,toplaythegame dutifully dull and largely ignorable provisos. One can point to the one need only “accept” the theory, remaining agnostic about the example of this in the very recent past of where once it posited portrayal, while allowing one’s beliefs to extend no farther was de rigueur to refer multiverse “scenarios” rather than “models” than an overarching confidence in the theory’s empirical adequacy, its or “theories”. But in relatively short order, as the multiverse became ability to “save the phenomena” in its domain of application. mainstream cosmology in physics departments of leading univer- Attention to the foundational question is similarly prominently sities, one finds that admirable caution notably relaxed in both oral 6 featured in Richard Healey’s recent book, Gauging What’s Real: The presentations and in written papers. This is not a criticism of Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Gauge Theories. Gauge field cosmologists; after all some, perhaps many, natural scientists theories, the basis of our current understanding of the strong, weak practice their trade within the frame of a pre-epistemological and electromagnetic interactions, are to Healey “arguably our sur- attitude characterized by Quine (1981, 72) as an “unregenerate est guide to the basic structure of the world”.3 Healey accordingly realism . that robust state of mind of the natural scientist who has never felt any qualms beyond the negotiable uncertainties internal to science.” This attitudedlet us call it the “natural attitude”dis 3 Gauge theories are theories with ‘local symmetries’, that is, theories that remain invariant under transformation of a variable quantity that is ‘local’ (‘infin- itesimal’ would be more exact) in the sense that its value expressly depends on the 4 space and time coordinates. The quantum field theories that comprise the so-called Healey (2012). Standard Model of elementary particlesdthe current best understanding of the 5 Weinberg (2009). non-gravitational fundamental interactiondare quantized gauge theories, also 6 A notable exception to this practice is Weinberg (2007), a book solely con- known as Yang-Mills theories. cerned with explanations and analysis tested in modern cosmological . Download English Version: https://daneshyari.com/en/article/1160538

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