IS SCIENCE PROGRESSIVE?

Transcription

1 IS SCIENCE PROGRESSIVE?

2 SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Florida State University, Tallahassee Editors: DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden WESLEY C. SALMON, UniversityofPittsburgh VOLUME 177

3 ILKKA NIINILUOTO Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki IS SCIENCE PROGRESSIVE?... '' SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

4 library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Niiniluoto, llkka. Is science progressive? (Synthese library; v. 177) Essays written between 1978 and 1983, some translated from the Finnish. Includes index. 1. Science-Philosophy-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Realism-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. Q175.3.N ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / All Rights Reserved 1984 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland in 1984 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

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6 CONTENTS PREFACE ix CHAPTER 1. The Nature of Science CHAPTER 2. How is Philosophy Possible as a Science? CHAPTER 3. Notes on Popper as Follower ofwhewell and Peirce CHAPTER 4. The Evolution of Knowledge CHAPTER 5. Scientific Progress CHAPTER 6. The Growth of Theories: Comments on the Structuralist Approach Ill CHAPTER 7. Truthlikeness, Realism, and Progressive Theory-Change. 159 CHAPTER 8. The Growth of Knowledge in Mathematics CHAPTER 9. Realism, W orldmaking, and the Social Sciences CHAPTER 10. Finalization, Applied Science, and Science Policy CHAPTER 11. Paradigms and Problem-Solving in Operations Research. 244 CHAPTER 12. Remarks on Technological Progress INDEX OF NAMES

7 PREFACE This collection brings together several essays which have been written between the years and During that period I have been occupied with the attempt to find a satisfactory explicate for the notion of tnithlikeness or verisimilitude. The technical results of this search have partly appeared elsewhere, and I am also working on a systematic presentation of them in a companion volume to this book: Truthlikeness (forthcoming hopefully in 1985). The essays collected in this book are less formal and more philosophical: they all explore various aspects of the idea that progress in science is associated with an increase in the truthlikeness of its results. Even though they do not exhaust the problem area of scientific change, together they constitute a step in the direction which I find most promising in the defence of critical scientific realism. * Chapter 1 appeared originally in Finnish as the opening article of a new journal Tiede 2000 (no. 1 I 1980) - a Finnish counterpart to journals such as Science and Scientific American. This explains its programmatic character. It tries to give a compact answer to the question 'What is science?', and serves therefore as an introduction to the problem area of the later chapters. Chapter 2 is a revised translation of my inaugural lecture for the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in the University of Helsinki on April 8, It appeared in Finnish inparnasso 31 (1981), pp :Like Chapter 1, it displays a programme in trying to show how philosophy can be a 'scientific' and 'progressive' enterprise in spite of its differences with factual empirical sciences. It also contains my reply to Richard Rorty's challenge of analytical philosophy. Chapter 3 is the oldest of these essays. It was written in the summer of at the same time when I prepared my first paper on truthlikeness for the 5th International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science in London, Ontario. It shows that many questions about scientific change which became fashionable in the 1960's and 1970's were discussed on a sophisticated level already in the 19th century by William Whewell and Charles Peirce. At the same time, it serves as a critical evaluation of Karl Popper's falsificationism. The paper appeared first in Ajatus 37 (197 8), pp It is reprinted here without changes, but some new notes (numbered as 2a, Sa, etc.) are added. Chapter 4 is a paper read in a symposium on 'Evolution', organized by Tutkijaliitto in Helsinki, November 20-22, It has appeared in the Proceedings of the symposium in The paper deals with Peirce's, Popper's, and Stephen Toulmin's attempts to use evolutionary concepts and analogies in the analysis of the growth of knowledge. ix

8 X PREFACE Chapter 5 is perhaps the central article in this collection, since it deals directly with the notion of scientific progress. To answer the factual question, Is science progressive"?, we first have to consider the conceptual question, What is meant by progress in science"?, and the methodological question, How is scientific progress appraised"? The chapter outlines a defence - against Thomas Kuhn, among others - of what I call the 'realist' view: science makes progress insofar as it gains true or highly truthlike information about reality. It appeared in Svnthese 45 (1980), pp Chapter 6 is my contribution to the Second Joint International Congress of History and Philosophy of Science. Pisa and it has appeared in the Proceedings in 1981 (Hintikka, Gruender. and Agazzi. Eds., Synthese Library vol. 145). It gives an overall introduction and evaluation of the 'structuralist' approach to theories and theory-change of Joseph Sneed and Wolfgang Stegmi.iller, and therefore it is more technical than the other chapters. Some new notes are added in order to make the presentation up-to-date. Chapter 7 is written for the Fourth Joint International Congress of History and Philosophy of Science, Blacksburg, 1982, and its abridged version will appear in the Proceedings of the Congress. It continues directly the argument of Chapter 5 by defending realism against recent criticisms due to Larry Laudan and Hilary Putnam. It also gives more information about my programme for defining degrees of truthlikeness for various kinds of scientific statements and for estimating these degrees on the basis of some evidence. Chapter 8 is a revised translation of my paper for a series of lectures on the history of mathematics, organized in the University of Helsinki in It appeared in Finnish in 1982 in the Proceedings of this series. The paper is an introduction to some philosophical and methodological issues about the history of mathematics, and it relates the nature of progress in mathematics to the general issues of scientific change. Chapter 9 is partly based on my paper for a symposium on 'Scientific Progress and the Social Sciences', organized in the University of Tampere on April It was read at Cornell University on November It argues that the realist view of progress as approach to the truth is applicable also to the descriptive social sciences. It also compares the ontological and epistemological position of scientific realism with the views of some continental philosophical traditions (Kantianism, Marxism, phenomenology, hermeneutics). Chapter 1 0 is based on an unpublished lecture on models of scientific change and their relevance to science policy, presented in the Academy of Finland, on March 1, 197 8, and on my paper 'Comments on the Finalization Thesis', presented as a comment to Wolfgang van den Daele's lecture in an International Seminar on Science Studies, January 1977, Espoo. By criticising the Finalization Thesis, I outline a view of applied sciences as 'design sciences' which attempt to establish so-called technical norms. Chapter 11 is a case-study which evaluates the claim that management science (or operations research) is facing a 'crisis' in Kuhn's sense. It is

9 PREFACE xi based on a lecture read in the Finnish Society of Operations Research on March 5, 1981, and in Gent on December It turns out that the Kuhnian model of science fits surprisingly well with OR. This fact, I argue, has important consequences to the problem-solving accounts of scientific progress. Chapter 12 is partly based on my paper 'Tekniikan filosofiasta' which appeared in Finnish in 1982 and on my paper for the 17th World Congress of Philosophy, Montreal, It tries to show that science and technology have important differences in their aims and patterns of development. It also re-evaluates the realist conception of progress with respect to the technological sciences. * In writing these essays, I have enjoyed the stimulating atmosphere at the Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki. The leisure needed for the completion of these papers and for collecting them in a book was partly provided in 1982 by the grant for Senior Scholars from the Academy of Finland. For practical help in working with this volume, I am grateful to Mrs. Auli Kaipainen and Mr. Hannu Simpura. I dedicate this book to my wife who has supported all the aspects of progress that I have made in preparing this book. Ilkka Niiniluoto