Science and Philosophy - Böcker

Einstein often expressed the sentiment that "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility," and that science is the means through which we comprehend it. However, nearly every­ one - including scientists - agrees that the concepts of modem physics are quite incomprehensible: They are both unintelligible to the educated lay-person and to the scientific community itself, where there is much dispute over the interpretation of even (and especially) the most basic concepts. There is, of course, almost universal agreement that modem science quite adequately accounts for and predicts events, i. e. , that its calculations work better than those of classical physics; yet the concepts of science are supposed to be descriptive of 'the world' as well - they should enable us to comprehend it. So, it is asked, and needs tobe"asked: Has modem physics failed in an important respect? It failed with me as a physics student. I came to physics, as with most naIve students, out of a desire to know what the world is really like; in particular, to understand Einstein's conception of it. I thought I had grasped the concepts in classical mechanics, but with electrodynamics confusion set in and only increased with relativity and quantum mechanics. At that point I began even to doubt whether I had really understood the basic concepts of classical mechanics.

The bulk of the present book has not been published previously though Chapters II and IV are based in part on two earlier papers of mine: "The Influence of Harald H!1lffding's Philosophy on Niels Bohr's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", which appeared in Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 1979, and "The Bohr-H!1lffding Relationship Reconsidered", published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 1988. These two papers comple­ ment each other, and in order to give the whole issue a more extended treatment I have sought, in the present volume by drawing on relevant historical material, to substantiate the claim that H!1lffding was Bohr's mentor. Besides containing a detailed account of Bohr's philosophy, the book, at the same time, serves the purpose of making H!1lffding' s ideas and historical significance better known to a non-Danish readership. During my work on this book I have consulted the Royal Danish Library; the National Archive of Denmark and the Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen, in search of relevant material. I am grateful for permission to use and quote material from these sources. Likewise, I am indebted to colleagues and friends for commenting upon the manuscript: I am especially grateful to Professor Henry Folse for our many discussions during my visit to New Orleans in November-December 1988 and again here in Elsinore in July 1990.

This book explores some truths behind the truism that experimentation is a hallmark of science. The intellectual and practical achievements of science have motivated a philosophical search for scientific methods of empirical access to the world, yet philosophy of science still lacks an adequate theory of observation and experiment. This is because most philosophers still construe scientists' reasoning in linguistic and formal terms which distance scientists from practical engagement with the phenomenal world and from other scientists. This text redresses the philosophical neglect of experimental practice, offering an alternative account of experiment as natural intelligence. This should be a substantial contribution to the philosophy of experiment that draws on studies of the early development of electromagnetism in the 19th century and the author's extensive knowledge of the laboratory work of one of the world's greatest experimental philosophers, Michael Faraday.Gooding uses studies of the process of real and thought experiments to show how scientists develop representations that enable thought and argument by conferring meaning upon actions, objects, instruments and procedures as well as words. He explores the roles of human agency in many kinds of experiment, going behind the orderly reconstructions of the experimental narrative to recover the process of discovery in its most exploratory form. By showing how representations emerge from pre-verbal activity in the material world this study challenges analytical philosophy's preoccupation with mental and verbal representations and its naive distinction between theory and observation. He develops the `experimenter's redress', a new form of empiricism based on the cognitive role played by the refinement of material and linguistic practice in the fine structure of experiment.

The author critically examines and evaluates three basic characteristics of the Leibnizian metaphysical system in this book: Leibniz's version of representation; the principle of continuity; and space, time, and the phenomenally spatio-temporal. Chapter I discusses representation, especially as it refers to the connection between the real and the phenomenal levels of Leibniz's system. Chapter II examines the principle of continuity, including continuity as a general feature of every level of Leibniz's metaphysics. The position adopted is that the problem of the composition of the continuum played a central role on the development of Leibniz's non-spatial and non-temporal monadic metaphysics. The machinery developed is then used to offer a new interpretation of Leibniz' metaphysics of space and time. The notion of indirect representation is used to construct appropriate models that clarify the nature of the correspondence between the real and the phenomenal levels in the case of the relations `spatially between' and `temporally between', as well as in the cases of spatial and temporal density.Finally, Leibniz's solution to the problem of the continuum is discussed, arguing that it is not entirely satisfactory. A non-anachronistic alternative is proposed, compatible with Leibniz's metaphysics of substance.

This is an analysis of the optical revolution in the context of early 20th-century Britain. Far from merely involving the replacement of one optical theory by another, the revolution also involved substantial changes in instruments and the practices that surround them. People's judgements about classification, explanation and evaluation were affected by the way they used such optical instruments, such as spectroscopes, telescopes, polarizers, photometers, gratings, prisms and apertures. The two instrumental traditions in this historical period each nurtured a body of practice that exemplified how optical instruments should be operated, and especially how the eye should be used. These traditions function just like paradigms, shaping perspectives and even world views. This book should be of interest to scholars and graduate students in the history of science, history of instruments, philosophy of science and science studies. It can also be used as a textbook in graduate courses on 19th-century physics.

Schopenhauer's philosophy, at first sight so beautifully rounded, upon analysis reveals itself as the secret arena of two conflicting world-views. The present analysis considers the conflict by confronting Schopenhauer as a "disciple-of-sorts of Kant" with Schopenhauer as "Goethe's one-time collaborator on the theory of colour". Here the two meet over profound issues which the scientific revolution of the 17th century has ineluctably put before us: what is the right level at which to apprehend nature; what is the proper foundation for a consistent ethics; how (if at all) to arrive at a unified conception of a world broken by modern science? In this study, the history of philosophical currents is blended with history of science, with history of ideas generally, and (to elucidate relevant portions of Schopenhauer's biography and intellectual and social environment) with German history too. The analysis, while benefiting from the scholarly literature, is grounded primarily in original research among the collected works of Schopenhauer, Kant and Goethe, considered in all their philosophical, scientific, and literary variety.

Einstein often expressed the sentiment that "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility," and that science is the means through which we comprehend it. However, nearly every­ one - including scientists - agrees that the concepts of modem physics are quite incomprehensible: They are both unintelligible to the educated lay-person and to the scientific community itself, where there is much dispute over the interpretation of even (and especially) the most basic concepts. There is, of course, almost universal agreement that modem science quite adequately accounts for and predicts events, i. e. , that its calculations work better than those of classical physics; yet the concepts of science are supposed to be descriptive of 'the world' as well - they should enable us to comprehend it. So, it is asked, and needs tobe"asked: Has modem physics failed in an important respect? It failed with me as a physics student. I came to physics, as with most naIve students, out of a desire to know what the world is really like; in particular, to understand Einstein's conception of it. I thought I had grasped the concepts in classical mechanics, but with electrodynamics confusion set in and only increased with relativity and quantum mechanics. At that point I began even to doubt whether I had really understood the basic concepts of classical mechanics.

Interdisciplinary research has been a popular idea with many people in the last 20 years. Academic administrators have admonished their faculty to become more interdisciplinary. Students often request the chance to pursue an interdisciplinary degree. While the issue of managing interdisciplinary projects has received a fair amount of attention by those interested in science management, interdisciplinary research has received little attention from historians, philosophers or sociologists of science or from scientists themselves. Yet, there l;lre a number of cases within the life sciences where researchers have been actively engaged in endeavors that take them across disciplinary boundaries. These are ripe for investigation by those interested in the process of science. To provide an in-depth study of some historical or contemporary cases of cross­ disciplinary research activity in the life sciences, a conference was held at Georgia State University in May, 1984. This conference was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (U. S. A. ) through their research conference program. Over a three-day period historians, philosophers, and researchers who were actively engaged in various of the life sciences discussed specific examples of interdisciplinary research and tried to analyze what was needed for successful crossing of disciplinary boundaries. After the conference, each of the participants revised their original presentations, partly in light of the discussion at the conference. The papers in this volume are the fruits of that endeavor.

For some time now the philosophy of science has been undergoing a major transfor­ mation. It began when the 'received view' of scientific knowledge -that developed by logical positivists and their intellectual descendants - was challenged as bearing little resemblance to and having little relevance for the understanding of real science. Subsequently, an overwhelming amount of criticism has been added. One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would support the 'received view' today. Yet, in the search for a new analysis of scientific knowledge, this view continues to exert influence over the tenor of much of present-day philosophy of science; in particular, over its problems and its methods of analysis. There has, however, emerged an area within the discipline - called by some the 'new philosophy of science' - that has been engaged in transforming the problems and methods of philosophy of science. While there is far from a consensus of beliefs in this area, most of the following contentions would be affirmed by those working in it: - that science is an open-ended, on-going activity, whose character has changed significantly during its history - that science is not a monolithic enterprise - that good science can lead to false theories - that science has its roots in everyday circumstances, needs, methods, concepts, etc.

This book is primarily about the methodological questions involved in attempts to understand two of the most peculiar phenomena in physics, both occurring at the lowest of temperatures. Superconductivity (the disappearance of electrical resistance) and superfluidity (the total absence of viscosity in liquid helium) are not merely peculiar in their own right. Being the only macroscopic quantum phenomena they also manifest a sudden and dramatic change even in those properties which have been amply used within the classical framework and which were thought to be fully understood after the advent of quantum theory. A few years ago we set ourselves the task of carrying out a methodological study of the "most peculiar" phenomena in physics and trying to understand the process by which an observed (rather than predicted) new phenomenon gets "translated" into a physical problem. We thought the best way of deciding which phenomena to choose was to rely on our intuitive notion about the "degrees of peculiarity" developed, no doubt, during the past ten years of active research in theoretical atomic and elementary particle physics. While the merits of the different candidates were compared, we were amazed to realize that neither the phenomena of the very small nor those of the very large could compete with the phenomena of the very cold. These were truly remarkable phenomena if for no other reason than for the difficulties encountered in merely describing them.

Anapolitanos critically examines and evaluates three basic characteristics of the Leibnizian metaphysical system: Leibniz's version of representation; the principle of continuity; and space, time, and the phenomenally spatio-temporal. Chapter I discusses representation, especially as it refers to the connection between the real and the phenomenal levels of Leibniz's system. Chapter II examines the principle of continuity, including continuity as a general feature of every level of Leibniz's metaphysics. The position adopted is that the problem of the composition of the continuum played a central role on the development of Leibniz's non-spatial and non-temporal monadic metaphysics. The machinery developed is then used to offer a new interpretation of Leibniz' metaphysics of space and time. The notion of indirect representation is used to construct appropriate models that clarify the nature of the correspondence between the real and the phenomenal levels in the case of the relations 'spatially between' and 'temporally between', as well as in the cases of spatial and temporal density.Finally, Leibniz's solution to the problem of the continuum is discussed, arguing that it is not entirely satisfactory. A non-anachronistic alternative is proposed, compatible with Leibniz's metaphysics of substance.

Schopenhauer's philosophy, at first sight so beautifully rounded, upon analysis reveals itself as the secret arena of two conflicting world-views. The present analysis considers the conflict by confronting Schopenhauer as a 'disciple-of-sorts of Kant' with Schopenhauer as 'Goethe's one-time collaborator on the theory of colour'. Here the two meet over profound issues which the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century has ineluctably put before us: what is the right level at which to apprehend nature; what is the proper foundation for a consistent ethics; how (if at all) to arrive at a unified conception of a world broken by modern science? In this deeply-delving, lucidly written, humane and erudite study, the history of philosophical currents is blended with history of science, with history of ideas generally, and (to elucidate relevant portions of Schopenhauer's biography and intellectual and social environment) with German history too.The analysis, while benefiting from the scholarly literature, is grounded primarily in original research among the collected works of Schopenhauer, Kant and Goethe, considered in all their philosophical, scientific, and literary variety.

The bulk of the present book has not been published previously though Chapters II and IV are based in part on two earlier papers of mine: "The Influence of Harald H!1lffding's Philosophy on Niels Bohr's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", which appeared in Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 1979, and "The Bohr-H!1lffding Relationship Reconsidered", published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 1988. These two papers comple­ ment each other, and in order to give the whole issue a more extended treatment I have sought, in the present volume by drawing on relevant historical material, to substantiate the claim that H!1lffding was Bohr's mentor. Besides containing a detailed account of Bohr's philosophy, the book, at the same time, serves the purpose of making H!1lffding' s ideas and historical significance better known to a non-Danish readership. During my work on this book I have consulted the Royal Danish Library; the National Archive of Denmark and the Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen, in search of relevant material. I am grateful for permission to use and quote material from these sources. Likewise, I am indebted to colleagues and friends for commenting upon the manuscript: I am especially grateful to Professor Henry Folse for our many discussions during my visit to New Orleans in November-December 1988 and again here in Elsinore in July 1990.

An analysis of the optical revolution in the context of early 19th century Britain. Far from merely involving the replacement of one optical theory by another, the revolution also involved substantial changes in instruments and the practices that surrounded them. People's judgements about classification, explanation and evaluation were affected by the way they used such optical instruments as spectroscopes, telescopes, polarisers, photometers, gratings, prisms and apertures. There were two instrumental traditions in this historical period, each of which nurtured a body of practice that exemplified how optical instruments should be operated, and especially how the eye should be used. These traditions functioned just like paradigms, shaping perspectives and even world views. Readership: Scholars and graduate students in the history of science, history of instrument, philosophy of science and science studies. Can also be used as a textbook in graduate courses on 19th century physics.

This book is primarily about the methodological questions involved in attempts to understand two of the most peculiar phenomena in physics, both occurring at the lowest of temperatures. Superconductivity (the disappearance of electrical resistance) and superfluidity (the total absence of viscosity in liquid helium) are not merely peculiar in their own right. Being the only macroscopic quantum phenomena they also manifest a sudden and dramatic change even in those properties which have been amply used within the classical framework and which were thought to be fully understood after the advent of quantum theory. A few years ago we set ourselves the task of carrying out a methodological study of the "most peculiar" phenomena in physics and trying to understand the process by which an observed (rather than predicted) new phenomenon gets "translated" into a physical problem. We thought the best way of deciding which phenomena to choose was to rely on our intuitive notion about the "degrees of peculiarity" developed, no doubt, during the past ten years of active research in theoretical atomic and elementary particle physics. While the merits of the different candidates were compared, we were amazed to realize that neither the phenomena of the very small nor those of the very large could compete with the phenomena of the very cold. These were truly remarkable phenomena if for no other reason than for the difficulties encountered in merely describing them.