Philosophy of Science

The Historical Background

Joseph J. Kockelmans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351308502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work.Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections into several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics.The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers

Part I
THE BEGINNING: 1786-1850

Chapter 1
IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

Introduction

IMMANUEL KANT was born in Königsberg on April 22, 1724. He entered the Collegium Fridericianum for his secondary education in 1732, then eight years later registered as a theology student at the University of Königsberg. In a short time, however, the preparatory sciences (natural science and philosophy) had so appealed to him that he decided to become a philosopher. He finished his course work in 1748, but owing to financial difficulties delayed taking his degree, and worked instead as a private tutor for several families in his neighborhood. Finally in 1755 he presented his thesis De Igne and was graduated; later that year his dissertation, entitled Primorum cognitionis metaphysicae principium nova dilucidatio, qualified him for Privatdocent. Kant taught as magister legens at the University of Königsberg for fifteen years before becoming a full professor of philosophy in 1770. After a span of some twenty-six years of regular teaching, he ceased lecturing in 1796 and devoted his attention completely to his writing. He died on February 12, 1804, after a life of study, teaching, and writing; he had not married, traveled, or been involved in political or other activities, preferring to the exclusion of all else the life of a scholar.

Kant was educated by Martin Knutzen in the philosophical tradition of Leibniz and Wolff; thus his earlier publications were written within this general perspective. Between 1762 and 1770 English empiricism influenced his thinking to an extent quite evident in his major writings of that period. In his inaugural address, De mundi sensïbïlis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (1770), a new, highly personal element began to manifest itself. In this lecture it became clear that Kant thought he had found a means of transcending Leibniz’ dogmatism as well as Hume’s skepticism. However, these ideas were destined to ferment for twelve years as Kant was gradually formulating his critical solution, described at length for the first time in his famous Critique of Pure Reason (1781). During the fifteen years which followed, Kant revised this work and proceeded to apply it to the various realms of mans experience, the physical sciences, ethics, aesthetics, history, religion, and politics. During the last eight years of his life, he worked on a restatement of his philosophy; the notes which were meant as material for a revision of certain major parts of his philosophical “system,” predominant among them his investigations concerning the metaphysical principles of the natural sciences, were published posthumously by Adickes in 1920 under the title Kauȁs Opus Postumum.

In carefully analyzing and comparing the dogmatic rationalism defended in the Leibnizo-Wolffian tradition and skeptic empiricism as proposed by Hume, Kant gradually came to the conclusion between 1770 and 1781 that metaphysics, understood as the speculative study of suprasensible realities, that is, as demonstrated doctrine about God, human freedom, and immortality, was impossible. In Kant’s view the main concern of the philosopher had to be the question of whether such a metaphysics was possible at all. “My purpose is to convince those who find it worth their while to occupy themselves with metaphysics: that it is absolutely necessary to suspend their work for the present, to regard everything that has happened hitherto as not having happened, and before all else first to raise the question: whether such a thing as metaphysics is possible at all’.” (Prolegomena, Preface).

A thoroughgoing study of this question led Kant to the position that classical metaphysics is impossible because it transcends the limits of man’s possible knowledge. This however does not mean that all metaphysics is impossible. By showing the impossibility of the rationalist metaphysics Kant attempted also to lay firm foundations for another type of metaphysics, hoping to transcend Hume’s skepticism. The new metaphysics was to be a careful and critical investigation of those rational principles and conditions which man must necessarily employ and observe within experience, rather than outside it, whether this experience be our experience of physical things, or our moral, political, or religious experience.

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant comes to the conclusion that our knowledge is to be restricted to the knowledge of phenomena. In restricting the cognitive use of the categories of our understanding to phenomena, it follows for Kant that we cannot know the things as they are in themselves independent from their appearance to man; we cannot know noumena in the sense of knowing their essential characteristics; neither are we entitled to assert dogmatically that they are. With respect to physical reality this position entails that all forms of philosophy of nature in the traditional sense of the term be excluded. The question concerning the essence of material things becomes here a meaningless one. However there are empirical sciences of nature whose subject matter does not consist in nature as it is in itself, but in nature insofar as it, as phenomenon, is given in experience. Thus it follows that it is and remains meaningful to ask about the a priori conditions which are to be fulfilled by a datum in order that it may be a valid subject of investigation for a particular empirical science. But in this case, too, the question concerning the very essence of that datum, taken as it allegedly is in itself, remains completely out of consideration. In Kant’s view it was the task of his Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to trace those a priori conditions which must be fulfilled by inorganic material things, taken exclusively insofar as they manifest themselves in our experience as phenomena, to be possible objects of our empirical investigations in the natural sciences.

Some ten years after the publication of this book Kant began to wonder whether or not he could further develop the argument presented in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science, namely that, starting from the categories of our understanding and one single empirical concept, matter, the basic laws of physical science could be deduced. He thought it possible at that time to construct a priori not merely the general outline of the science of nature but many of its details as well. By making extensive use of the concepts of force and ether, he attempted to elaborate the construction he had in mind. It is quite probable that in so doing he became increasingly aware of the necessity of reconstructing his whole theory of knowledge along lines which would make the “transition from metaphysics to physics” plausible. In view of the fact that an understanding of the relationship between Kant’s books Metaphysical Foundations and Opus Postumum is vital for an understanding of his position in regard to philosophy of science in general, some remarks on the subject are relevant here.

Kant was convinced in 1786 that, in regard to corporeal nature, the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science which he had just published materialized at least in principle what he referred to in the Critique of Pure Reason as “Metaphysics of Nature” (lb., pp. 14 and 37). There is no doubt that at that time he intended his book title to suggest more than simply a treatment of elementary principles of a metaphysics of the natural sciences; in fact the book was meant to deal with the metaphysical principles of natural science in an exhaustive way (lb., p. 13). There is no indication in the book that the application of the principles to empirical laws of nature and the multiplicity given in experience might somehow involve complications.

In the Metaphysics of Morals (1796) it becomes evident that in this case, as well as in a metaphysics of natural science, there is a gulf between the a priori principles brought to light in the two branches of metaphysics, and the concrete data of experience which constitute the content of our moral consciousness and the immediate subject matter of natural science. In this event, according to Kant, there is need for a new science whose main task it will be to bridge this gulf (E. Adickes, Kaufs Opus Postumum, pp. 156-158).

From 1796 until 1803, one year before his death, Kant was almost exclusively engaged in preparing material for a work that was to be entitled: On the Transition from the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” to Physics. His unfinished “manuscripts” have been published as Opus Postumum. The work includes different collections of notes and short essays, some of which are of an exclusively epistemological and metaphysical character; most of the collections, however, deal with problems connected with a new approach to philosophy of science. The latter collections are pertinent here; undoubtedly the others were written with some of the problems in the last part of the Critique of Pure Reason in mind.

The sketches and notes immediately concerned with the projected study “On the Transition” deal for the most part with a large-scale ether theory which is connected with a separate treatise entitled “On the Elementary System of Motor Forces.” In the latter Kant takes up in succession the most characteristic properties of matter, such as ponderability, states of aggregation, drop shape, capillarity, cohesion, friction, metallic luster, and so on. However, neither in the title of the work, nor in the manner in which Kant introduces the new discipline within the realm of related sciences, is there any mention of, or reference to, an ether theory. Kant describes the new science merely as one which must build a bridge to span the gulf between the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science and physics by enlarging the domain of the transcendental and aprioric considerations concerning the concept of matter (Adickes, p. 155).

As might be expected in a collection of notes pertaining to the first draft of a systematic work, there is much repetition. Also, whereas some ideas are dealt with quite adequately, many others are only mentioned in passing. And it is not always simple to grasp the exact meaning of Kant’s statements, nor to decide which of his many conflicting views is his final one. Study of the chronology of the notes by Adickes and others has solved some of the interpretation difficulties, but in many instances it is not possible to determine how Kant would have developed his thoughts—which ideas he would finally have maintained, discarding others, and how, ultimately, he would have reconciled various conflicting points of view.

The Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science deals with the concept of matter as that which is subject to motion in space, and with its laws insofar as all of this can be determined with the help of pure concepts and a priori principles. The meaning and goal of these investigations was to give to physics a rigorously scientific, that is, systematic character. For physics, as the study of matters moving forces and their laws, is a merely empirical science, and as such unable to transcend the character of an aggregate of observations which are arbitrarily pieced together. Or as Kant later expresses it, physics is concerned with the laws of the moving forces of matter insofar as they are given in experience, and as such its methods, observation and experiment, can yield only empirical concepts out of which a genuine system can never be framed (zimmern). That is why in its historical development physics has come to fragmentary results only, although it is true that these were important and of far-reaching consequences. Kant maintains, however, that notwithstanding its grandiose success physics is still lacking a stable goal, with the result that its investigations are not guided by one idea, a whole which is founded from within and which clearly delimits itself (Op. Post., Voi. XXI, pp. 161-162, 526; Vol. XXII, p. 497). There is only one way to develop the science “physics” in a truly systematic way and that is by founding it upon a plan which a priori comprises the whole and into which the individual facts and a posteriori laws can be integrated.

What Kant appears to be looking for here is a general over-all schema of physics, a systematic set of anticipations and conditions for the empirical investigation of nature. Mere empirical observation of the moving forces of nature cannot be called physical science. As a science, physics involves systematization and cannot be a mere aggregation of empirical data. But systematization takes place according to a priori principles which must furnish the guiding clues for empirical investigation, says Kant. For, from empirical intuition one can take nothing but what we ourselves have put there for physics (lb,, Vol. XXII, p. 323). Therefore, there must be a priori principles according to which moving forces are coordinated in relation to one another (that is, according to the formal element), while these forces in themselves (that is according to the material element or the object) are considered empirically (lb., Vol. XXI, p. 291). In the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science it becomes clear that one can deduce some definite truths merely a priori. But in addition to these there are also problematic anticipations of the empirical investigation of nature through which we know that this or that is the case, though experience alone can tell us which is the case.

In other words in Kant’s view, physics, considered as concerned with the laws of the moving forces of matter as given in experience, presupposes something corresponding to a schematism of the a priori concepts brought to light in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science, and which can constitute a bridge between the a priori concepts and the empirical representations (lb., Vol. XXI p. 525). The transition from the one science to the other must involve certain mediating concepts (Zwisschenbegriffe) which are given in the former and applied to the latter, and which belong both to the domain of the one and that of the other. Otherwise this transition would be, not a legitimate transition, but “a leap, in which one does not know where one will arrive, and after which, when one looks back, one does not really see the point of departure” (lb., pp. 525-526; Adickes, op. cit, pp. 157-158).

Some scholars have envisioned mathematics as able to present physics with these necessary principles. Not so Kant, who was convinced that there cannot be mathematical principles of natural science because mathematics is unable to furnish physics with any insight into the essence and multiplicity of physical forces. Mathematics itself is not physics, nor is it a canon of physics, but rather a very powerful organon or instrument for use in investigations dealing with movements and their laws. Motions as such can be adequately explained mathematically because motion involves only spatial and temporal concepts which can be represented a priori in pure intuition. Moving forces, however, which act as causes of motions, and without which physics as a systematic science is inconceivable, need philosophical principles (Op. Post., Vol. XXI, p. 209). It is in this connection that Kant inserts his polemic against the title of Newton’s main work, Philosophia naturalis principia mathematica. In his view this title is absurd because it is equally impossible to speak about mathematical principles of philosophy as to talk about philosophical principles of mathematics (Zb., pp. 204-205, 207-208). Mathematics is unable to show and explain the original forces characteristic of nature; presupposing these forces it merely describes and explains motions of things and the laws governing them. That is why the systematization of physics can be only the task of philosophy (Zb., p. 163).

In this kind of metaphysics of natural science Kant presupposes that matter is known to us only via its affections upon our senses. These affections, however, are impossible without certain movements which, in turn, presuppose moving forces. Whereas in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science the concept of matter plays the predominant role, in the Opus Postumum the concept of moving force, or more aptly matter insofar as it contains moving forces, plays the important part. This is why the “Science of the Transition” is so well suited to leading us from a pure metaphysics of natural science, in which the only predicate of matter permitted was that of “what moves in space,” to physics; for the concept of “matter insofar as it contains moving forces” is a concept which is merely empirical on the one hand, but an a priori concept as well on the other. All these factors taken into account, it becomes clear why the treatise “On the Elementary System of Motor Forces” occupies such an important place in the Opus Postumum, and also why a study of ether appeared to be necessary to aVold action at a distance, in Kant’s view absolutely impossible (Adickes, op. cit., pp. 159-162, 363-365).

In view of the fact that, as far as philosophy of science as such is concerned, there is (from our contemporary view) no essential difference between the “Metaphysical Principles” and the “Science of the Transition,” insofar as in both cases philosophy of science is conceived of as a philosophical discipline which is necessary for the foundation of physics as a systematic science, it was decided to present a selection from the first book only; however, the entire issue was deemed of sufficient importance to warrant at least a brief indication of the change in perspective from the first to the second book.

Selective Bibliography

Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith. London, 1933.

———., Prolegomena to Any Future ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I. The Beginning: 1786–1850
• Part II. The Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century: 1870–1899
• Part III. The First Decade of the Twentieth Century
• Part IV. Toward Contemporary Philosophy of Science: 1910–1927
• Name Index
• Index of Subjects