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Scientific Representation by Bas C. Van Fraassen ARTICLE IN PRESS Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (2009) 268–272 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsb Essay Review The insidiously enchanted forrest. Essay review of ‘Scientific Representation’ by Bas C. van Fraassen F.A. Muller a,b,Ã a Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, H5-16, 3062 PA, Rotterdam, Netherlands b Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, WG-3.08, 3584 CD, Utrecht, Netherlands article info Article history: Received 22 May 2009 When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective, B. C. van experiment and technology, of instruments and artefacts, and Fraassen, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008, 408 + xiv pp., index, ISBN then the issues of measurement, structuralism and perspective. 978-0-19-927822-0, cloth, price: 30 pound sterling. These topics are scattered over no less than 13 Chapters, grouped together in four parts: Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (henceforth: Representation), B. C. van Fraassen’s most recent, 400pp. contribu- I. Representation tion to the philosophy of science, is contemporary, varied, II. Windows, Engines and Measurements systematic, historical, exciting, provocative, empiricist, pragma- III. Structure and Perspective tist, profound, sketchy and accessible. We ground these judgments IV. Appearance and Reality subsequently whilst treating most of the topics of Representation in more detail. Besides novel topics there are also familiar topics, such as Carnap’s Aufbau, Putnam’s model argument, Russell’s structural- ism and Newman’s objection, the Poincare´-Reichenbach problem Contemporary, Varied. A new book by Van Fraassen! What of co-ordination and the microscope—an instrument that keeps is it? Another massive attack on realism in the philosophy haunting Van Fraassen, ever since Ian Hacking started hitting him of science, as in The Scientific Image (1980)? A new acerbic on the head with it. The topic of Part IV, appearance and reality, treatment of analytic metaphysics, as in Laws and Symmetry is a topic as old as philosophy itself and still a topic in the (1989) and in The Empirical Stance (2002)? The long-awaited philosophy of perception; but it was, until now, not a topic in the treatise on voluntaristic epistemology, as outlined in Laws philosophy of science. The reason that it is addressed is that it and Symmetry? Further historical explorations of philosophical presents itself rather forcefully after the ways in which Van traditions, as in The Empirical Stance? Back to logic without Fraassen has treated representation and measurement, and has existential import, as in Derivation and Counterexample (1972)? distinguished phenomena and appearances. And, of course, this Forget it all. time-honored topic of appearance and reality adds to the variety Representation is a contribution to the discourse on topics that of topics that Representation harbors. have entered the stage of attention quite recently, as there are: the concept of representation in science, the role and philosophy of Systematic, Historical. Representation is first and foremost a systematic inquiry rather than a historical treatise. Having said this, it is striking what parade of philosophers (and scientists) Ã Corresponding author at: Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, H5-16, 3062 PA, Rotterdam, Netherlands. from the past is marching through the hundreds of pages of this E-mail address: [email protected] contemporary inquiry. The parade is far from cosmetic. Passages 1355-2198/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.shpsb.2009.05.003 ARTICLE IN PRESS F.A. Muller / Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (2009) 268–272 269 of Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Descartes, Galilei (who is, as images. The moral is that we do not literally see through a always, mentioned by his first name ‘Galileo’ for reasons that microscope. This is a hard counter-intuitive nut to swallow. Yet it continue to elude this reviewer), Bacon, Leibniz, Kant, Fourier, is consistent to swallow it. Constructive empiricists are forced to Hertz, Boltzmann, Maxwell, Duhem, Kelvin, Helmholtz, Planck, swallow it and are thereby destined to walk around permanently Poincare´, Einstein, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Weyl, Bradley, with a sore throat. Tolman, Reichenbach and Goodman are invariably spot-on. In response to criticism of Paul Teller (who has taken over Sometimes Van Fraassen draws attention to unusual aspects of hitting Van Fraassen on the head with a microscope from these usual suspects. For example, Wittgenstein’s picture theory Hacking), Van Fraassen draws further distinctions. The sort of of meaning of his Tractatus can be seen as the ultimate general- image that a microscope creates is (i) a public hallucination, which isation of how measurement-outcomes are Duhemian locations in stands in contradistinction to (ii) a private hallucination (broadly ‘the logical space of a theory’ (p. 164). Weyl’s description of co- construed, e.g. dreams included). Public hallucinations subdivide ordinate systems as ‘‘the unavoidable residuum of the ego’s further into (i.a) images of objects, to which images produced by annihilation’’ (p. 71) is taken as pointing to the self-location microscopes and projectors belong, as well as reflections, of anyone in the logical space of a theory, which is, according holograms and shadows, and (i.b) images that are not images of to Van Fraassen, a necessity for using a theory. Kant is not quoted anything, such as rainbows and mirages. (i) Public hallucinations on transcendental deductions, necessary conditions for the can be recorded by camera and displayed on screen, in contra- possibility of X or the elusive Ding an sich, but as stating a distinction to private ones. Public hallucinations are not delusions, ‘‘precise and perfect analogy between theory, model and map’’ in that they do not suggest that some object is there that there is and pointing out ‘‘the inevitable indexicality of application’’ not. The point is now that (i) public hallucinations, in contrast to (p. 80). There you go. (ii) private ones, need to be saved by science, because they are observable events, i.e. phenomena, and according to Van Fraassen Exciting, Provocative. As early as 1994, in his contribution to Jan to save the phenomena is the aim of science. The ray theory of Hilgevoord’s Physics and our View of the World, Van Fraassen light and the laws of optics provide a description of the rainbow as extended Nelson Goodman’s distinction between representation-of well as of microscope and projector images; thus they save these and representation-as — drawn in his seminal Languages of Art phenomena. (1968)—from art to science, and then went on to argue that all But must we not assume, then, in cases of images where we representation in science is representation-as. We represent the speak of (i.a) images-of-something, that there is something, solar system as a Newtonian gravitational system of point- something very real, that is responsible for the occurrence of particles; we represent a Helium molecule as a quantum- these real images? We can but we must not, Van Fraassen mechanical electro-statically bound system; we represent an submits, in case this alleged real something is unobservable. The atomic nucleus as a drop of liquid having very special properties, observable events do not compel anyone to believe in the such as an extremely high density; etc. In Part I of Representation, existence of unobservable objects, such as for instance blood he explores the parallels between representation in art and in cells. Van Fraassen does mention the possibility to welcome that science in depth. we do see through the microscope and believe what we see is The Renaissance theory of geometrical perspective made it amongst what there is, but he does not endorse this possibili- possible for artists to learn how to suggest 3 spatial dimensions in ty—for if he were to endorse it, the flood gates of unobservables pictures on a 2-dimensional flat surface (the paper of the drawer, would be wide open and the constructive empiricist would face the plate of the etcher, the canvas of the painter); this theory put a the risk of drowning. number of hallmarks of perspective center-stage: occlusion, In the mean time we have landed in the realism debate and we marginal distortion, grain and angle. Van Fraassen argues that shall stay there for a few Chapters. precisely these hallmarks have their parallels in scientific representations, which thus is supposed to provide the ground Empiricist, Pragmatist. Although the empiricist spirit is not for claiming that all representation in science is necessarily omnipresent in Representation as it is in The Scientific Image and perspectival, just like every drawing, etching and painting provides Laws and Symmetry, it is far from absent either, as the discussion what is seen by a pair of eyes at a particular location in space, above on images and microscopes already testifies. The full frontal that is, from some particular geometrical perspective. The attack against realism takes place in Part III; structural realism in parallels are not invariably drawn with shining success, e.g. particular is here the main target. In its strongest form, first occlusion and distortion do not seem to have an obvious parallel propounded (and perhaps qualified) by Russell and Carnap, it in measurement. reads that all we can know about the world is the kinds of Then there is an elaboration on Van Fraassen’s view of structures there are, their properties and their interrelations, measuring instruments in science as creators of phenomena that somehow inferred from the phenomena. Modern day versions of were not there (Chapter 4).
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