The Challenge of Scientific Revolutions: Van Fraassen's and Friedman's Responses

Abstract

This article criticizes the attempts by Bas van Fraassen and Michael Friedman to address the challenge to rationality posed by the Kuhnian analysis of scientific revolutions. In the paper, I argue that van Fraassen's solution, which invokes a Sartrean theory of emotions to account for radical change, does not amount to justifying rationally the advancement of science but, rather, despite his protestations to the contrary, is an explanation of how change is effected. Friedman's approach, which appeals to philosophical developments at a meta-theoretical level, does not really address the problem of rationality as posed by Kuhn's work. Instead of showing how, despite revolutions, scientific development is, indeed, rational, he gives a transcendental account of rational scientific progress.

Acknowledgements

I should like to acknowledge the support of the Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, for a three-month Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellowship (December 2008 to February 2009), which allowed me to work on this paper. I should also like to thank Michael Friedman, Elias Markolefas, Stelios Virvidakis, and the editor and the anonymous referees of this journal for their comments, criticism, and suggestions, which greatly helped me to improve the paper.

Notes

I am referring to his suggestion that incommensurability is not global but only local or that there are certain values shared across revolutions by all scientific communities, or that the puzzle-solving ability is increasing with time across paradigms. All these elements are supposed to guarantee rational scientific progress.

Kuhn's work, which has been seen as having only historical value, has been relegated to the margins occupied by the so-called historical philosophy of science.

Van Fraassen uses the term ‘epistemic trauma’ drawing on the use of the same term by Vargish and Mook (1999). See van Fraassen (2002, 67 and 239n5).

See Laplanche and Pontalis (1973, 465): ‘In economic terms, the trauma is characterized by an influx of excitations that is excessive by the standard of the subject's tolerance and capacity to master such excitations and work them out psychically.’

If van Fraassen's account places the two moments of epistemic trauma in two distinct communities, that of the scientists and that of the philosophers, then it lends emphasis to the distinction made in much work in science studies today, namely, that between issues that concern the analysts and those that concern the scientists in their practice.

Cf. Kuhn 1970 [1962], ch. 9, titled ‘The Invisibility of Revolutions’.

Here, I don't consider the possibility of a philosopher doing empirical work since van Fraassen does not seem to entertain it.

When Sartre talks about beliefs accompanying emotions he wants to stress the pervasiveness and intensity of the emotive stand. When we are overwhelmed with emotion we do not play-act but somatically express our belief in how the world has been transformed. ‘Merely to run away from it would not be enough to constitute an object as horrifying. Or rather, this might confer the formal quality “horrifying” upon it, but not the substance of that quality. If we are really to be seized by horror we have not only to mime it, we must be spell-bound and filled to overflowing by our own emotion, the shape and form of our behaviour must be filled with something opaque and weighty that gives it substance. Here we can understand the part played by the purely physiological phenomena; they represent the genuineness of the emotion, they are the phenomena of belief’ (Sartre 1977 [1939], 76).

See van Fraassen's distinction between the Prussian and English conception of rationality: ‘the Prussian concept of rationality: what is rational to believe is exactly what one is rationally compelled to believe. I would opt instead for the dual [English conception]: what is rational to believe includes anything that one is not rationally compelled to disbelieve’ (van Fraassen 1989, 171).

For a discussion of van Fraassen's conception of rationality see Psillos (2007).

It seems that the distinction between the two moments of trauma mentioned earlier, affecting different individuals (the scientist and the philosopher), is relevant after all.

Friedman makes use of Reichenbach's insight regarding revisable a priori principles which coordinate mathematical structures and empirical reality and, thus, play a constitutive role in the framework that contains them, i.e. they function as necessary presuppositions of the framework's empirical claims (Friedman 2001, 30, 76–78; 2005, 123–125).

It may be said that the comparison between Friedman and James is not appropriate since James concentrates on religious affairs, where the decisions are momentous, whereas in scientific matters options to choose are never forced. James says, however, that this is ‘almost always the case’ (James 1977 [1896], 728; my emphasis) as regards scientific questions. He then goes on to distinguish between the purely judging mind, which can be indifferent and can wait for coercive evidence, and the individuals who are engaged in research. The actual investigators, according to James, are supposed to resort to their passionate nature. ‘[I]f you want an absolute duffer in an investigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no interest whatever in its results: he is the warranted incapable, the positive fool’ (James 1977 [1896], 729). In the cases under consideration, namely revolutionary change in science, we are not dealing with absolute intellects but with real players facing momentous options.

Kant acknowledges that if these ideas and principles are to have ‘the least objective validity’, if they are not to be ‘mere empty-thought entities (entia rationis ratiocinantis), a deduction of them must be possible, however greatly (as we admit) it may differ from that which we have been able to give of the categories’ (Kant 1990 [1787], A670/B698). He, then, proceeds to offer his weak proof: he says that when we assume these ideas, ‘we do not really extend our knowledge beyond the objects of possible experience; we extend only the empirical unity of such experience’ (A674/B702). For more on this see Guyer (1990, 33).

Friedman had to address the problem of rationality in the development of science for two reasons: first, because he accepted Kuhn's historiographical account of revolutions in science, and second, because, in his model, scientific revolutions are not merely a fact of history but also a necessity (Friedman 2001, 64).

Friedman (2008a, 245–249; cf. 251) says that he is actually in partial disagreement with Cassirer. He disagrees with him as regards the interpretation of Kant's philosophy. Friedman thinks that Cassirer downplays the role of the faculty of pure sensibility in favour of the faculty of pure understanding. He is not satisfied with preserving just mathematical continuity in the history of science as Cassirer is. He wants to know how a new theory is not just mathematically possible but also physically or empirically possible. ‘Like the Marbourg school, … I want to confine the discussion to the conceptual realm and avoid ontology; unlike the Marbourg School, however, I agree with Kuhn that purely mathematical continuity and convergence is not sufficient’ (Friedman 2008a, 249n25).

Friedman says that Kuhn can be seen as following Emile Meyerson rather than Cassirer in favouring substantialistic or ontological continuity in the history of science over mathematical continuity that is espoused by Cassirer. ‘Kuhn consistently gives an ontological rather than a mathematical interpretation to the question of theoretical convergence over time: The question always is whether our theories can be said to converge to an independently existing “truth” about reality, to a theory-independent external world. It follows then that Kuhn's rejection of intertheoretic convergence cannot be taken as a straightforward confutation of Cassirer's position. For Kuhn simply assumes, in harmony with the Meyersonian viewpoint, that there is rational continuity over time only if there is substantial identity’ (Friedman 2008a, 246).

‘[My] implementation of this idea of relativized constitutively a priori principles (of geometry and mechanics) essentially depends on an historical argument describing the developmental process by which the transition from Newton to Einstein actually took place, as mediated, in my view, by the parallel developments in scientific philosophy…’ (Friedman 2008b, 96).

‘Philosophy, throughout its close association with the sciences, has functioned in precisely this way’ (Friedman 2001, 23; emphasis added).

Van Fraassen (2006), for instance, challenges Friedman's account of continuity between Aristotelian and Newtonian physics.

Cf. Chang (2008, 114): ‘In [Philipp] Frank's view, science needs to educate metaphysics, not vice versa.’

‘According to Reichenbach (and the logical empiricists more generally), Einstein's new theory is so radically incommensurable with Newtonian theory that the Kantian philosophy itself needs also to be radically revised: A new revolutionary form of scientific philosophy (logical empiricism) is now required in the wake of Einstein's revolutionary theory’ (Friedman 2008a, 248).

It is interesting to note that Kuhn saw himself as a Kantian with moveable categories (Kuhn 2000, 264), but also as sharing ‘Hume's itch’ (Kuhn 1983, 570), i.e., the irresistible and unsatisfiable urge to look for a rational justification of learning from experience. Hume turned to (or settled for) explanation and Kuhn points to a more Wittgensteinian understanding of things. He says that the itch may be intrinsic to the game we play involving induction, and asks for an explanation of what makes this game and the form of life it underpins viable. The explanation he seeks is not, however, empirical, but rather more of the form of a Wittgensteinian description. For criticism of Kuhn on this particular issue see Rorty (1991, 40).

A transcendental reading of Kuhn's work, which differs, however, from Friedman's, is also proposed in Kindi (2005). This account does not attribute to Kuhn Friedman's aspiration to vindicate transcendentally the rationality of scientific progress, but rather, explains how the use of history may bring forward the diverse conditions in the history of science that have made, and make, science as a practice possible.

According to Habermas (1998, 407), ‘philosophy surrenders its claim to be the sole representative in matters of rationality and enters into a nonexclusive division of labor with the reconstructive sciences. It has the aim of clarifying the presuppositions of the rationality of processes of reaching understanding that may be presumed to be universal because they are unavoidable.’

‘[S]o long as we are unable to see a perspicuous internal relation between the categorical frameworks of Aristotelian and Newtonian physics, we do not know precisely in what sense Aristotle, in contrast to Newton, wanted to “explain” natural processes. Simply noting the competition between various paradigms comes close to confessing that we do not yet understand the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle as well as we do the basic assumptions about nature in classical mechanics’ (Habermas 1998, 417). Habermas admits that the ideal of the universality of meaning ‘is a presupposition that, from the perspective of the observer, often—and under the microscope of the ethnomethodologist, even always—turns out to be mistaken’ (Habermas 2003, 111).

‘I find it hard to burden pre-dynastic Egyptians, ninth-century French serfs and early-twentieth-century Yanomamö tribesmen with the view that they are acting correctly if their action is based on a norm on which there would be universal consensus in an ideal speech situation. The notion that social institutions should be based on the free consent of those affected is a rather recent Western invention, but one which is now widely held. The notions that an action is morally acceptable or a belief “true” if they would be the object of universal consensus under ideal conditions is an even more recent invention held perhaps by a couple of professional philosophers in Germany and the United States’ (Geuss 1981, 66–67). Cf. Sunstein (2006) who argues, pace Habermas, that deliberating groups often converge on falsehoods rather than truths and Chang (2008, 115) who says that ‘in this post-modern age, we cannot escape the pluralist question: what would be so wrong with having different parts of the human epistemic community pursuing the study of nature on the basis of different sets of constitutive principles?’.

Given that Friedman sees Kant's philosophy as providing foundations for Newtonian theory (Friedman 2008a, 250), one might say that Friedman himself, in reconfiguring the Kantian approach, is attempting a similar thing.

It should be noted that Kuhn himself did not think that we should resort to an abstract ideal of rationality, provided perhaps by philosophy, by which to judge whether scientific development is rational. He claimed that scientific behaviour is, in principle, rational. His view was that ‘if history or any other empirical discipline leads us to believe that the development of science depends essentially on behavior that we have previously thought to be irrational, then we should conclude not that science is irrational but that our notion of rationality needs adjustment here and there’ (Kuhn 1971, 144).

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Notes on contributors

Vasso Kindi

Vasso Kindi is at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens.