Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:03:20.753Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Observation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Peter K. Machamer
Peter K. Machamer*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Of the many problems involved in discussions of acceptability and justification I wish to consider in this paper what types of sentences can be used in order to justify a given claim or theory in science, what types of sentence can be appealed to in testing (showing to be acceptable or rejecting) a theory or claim. Rather than rehashing old critcisms of previous work, or constructing new counters to works already known to be inadequate, I propose to get on with the problem at hand. Necessarily this ‘getting on’ is in large part a taxonomic and programmatic venture. I wish to suggest, briefly and by examples, that in fact there have been, and are, at least four different types of bases to which appeal is made in testing or justifying a theory or claim. These four types are:

  • (a) Observation reports.

  • (b) Accepted Philosophical principles.

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1970 , 1970 , pp. 187 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 N. Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book IV, Chapter 2.

2 Ibn al-Haitham (Alhazen) Al Manazir (Perspectiva). Book VIII, 8. For a discussion see Sabra, A. I., ‘Explanation of Optical Reflection and Refraction: Ibn-al-Haytham, Descartes, and Newton’, Actes du Dixième Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences (Hermann, Paris 1964) p. 532ffGoogle Scholar, and Linddberg, D. ‘The Cause of Refraction in Medieval Optics’. BJHS 4 (1968) pp. 26ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. The use of this principle was quite common in much of medieval science. It survived as was down through the 17th century; Descartes makes use of a similar assumption in his treatment of reflection and refraction.

3 An excellent example of this principle, being explicitly used, is given in Chadwick, J., “The Existence of a Neutron’. Proc. Royal Soc. (London), Series A, 136 (1932) pp. 692Google Scholar, reprinted in Boorse, H. and Motz, L. (eds.), The World of the Atom, Vol. II, Basic Books, N.Y., 1966Google Scholar.

Chadwick writes:

“It is evident that we must either relinquish the application of the conservation of energy and momentum in these collisions or adopt another hypothesis about the nature of radiation. If we suppose that the radiation is not a quantum radiation, but consists of particles of mass very nearly equal to that of the proton, all difficulties connected with the collisions disappear. …” (reprint, p. 1299).

4 Galilei, Galileo, De Motu, Drabkin Translation, University of Wisconsin in Press, Madison, 1960, p. 23Google Scholar.

5 Nash, L., The Atomic-Molecular Theory, Harvard Case Studies in History of Science, Harvard UP, 1950, pp. 88 and 17Google Scholar.

6 The version of the relation between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics differs from what is usually given, e.g. by Nagel who holds that one reduces to the other; (cf. Structure of Science, Chapter 11, pp. 338ff.) But Feyerabend has cogently shown that this relation of reduction is not so, and that the second law is falsified, see Feyerabend, P., ‘How to Be a Good Empiricist’, reprinted in Midditch, Philosophy of Science, Oxford U.P., 1969, p. 28Google Scholar.

7 The first draft of Galileo ‘Floating Bodies’ can be found in GGIV, pp. 36ff. A translation of the published work is available, in an edition edited by Stillman Drake, translation by Thos. Salusbury (Univ. of Illinois, 1970). The axioms mentioned can be found stated on pp. 6-7 of that translation. For discussion of the case cf. W. Shea. ‘Discorso introne alle cose che stanno in su L’acque e che in qualla si muovone', Saggi su Galileo Galilei (ed. by Carlo Maccagni), G. Barbera, Firenze, 1967.

8 Newton, I., Principia. Definitions, Lot Scholium. Motte-Cajori Translation, University of California Press. 1934, pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

9 For purposes relevant to this paper the idea of a community could be construed in terms of those participating in a research program. Where the research program is being carried on by a single individual this condition is trivialized. Indeed the whole condition is not very problematic, it holds merely (to borrow a sort of Lakatos-type terminology) that it is intellectually dishonest to justify particular claims or theories on bases which the justifier does not accept. Possible engineering type counter-examples, like the use of classical equations in bridge building, are not really counter-examples since the justification of these equations will be pragmatic, type (d). Finally, it is worth noting another aspect of ‘acceptability’; while what is required of a person in a tradition or program is that he accept the basis, more general anti-privacy requirement is that it be acceptable, given proper training, etc, to individuals at large. This latter acceptability would be guaranteed by using a natural language but may raise problems in more outre types of possible cases.

10 More needs to be said about these various kinds of bases. Also the processes by which such grounds of justification and test undergo change needs much analysis. What is here is mere hint.

11 The idea of an observation report where the G's involved are non-human could be conjured up, by taking the ‘report’ to be appropriate reactions of specifiable kinds. Thus to find out if the cat was observing to birds we would dream up various tests to ensure that the cat had paid sufficient attention to what he saw, etc. The possibility of non-language tests for humans also exists, but, at least in science, they seem uninteresting.

What is interesting and where the start needs extension is with cases of observation which do not involve sight. I don't have anything to say about such cases at this point.

12 It seems, contrary to Ryle, Concept of Mind, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1960, p. 222 that one could observe X with no purpose in mind; all that observation requires is that the observer pay sufficient attention, and possess sufficient knowledge, to be able to gain and report some information about X on the basis of his observing X. Thus I might observe something quite by accident, and be quite disinterested in it, and still meet all the conditions for observing. This makes sense of locuteians like “Walking down the Quai I observed the maidens at their sun worship”. It is possible (however unlikely) that in such a case I had no purpose in observing them. For more on ‘acceptability’ see Note 9.

13 The argument Galileo gives brings this connection out quite clearly, and it is clear that he takes this connection to provide the support for his position. Galileo writes:

“Eximum praeterea praeclarumque habemus argumentum pro scrupolo ab illis demendo, qui Systemate Copernico conversionem Planetarum cirea Solem aequo animo ferentes, adeo perturbantur ab unius Lunae circa Terram latione, interea dum ambo annum orbem circa Solem absolvunt… nunc enim nedum Planetarum unum circa alium convertibilem habemus, dum ambo magnum circa Solem perlustrant orbem, verum quartuor circa Lovem, instar Lunae circa Tellorum sensus nobis vagantes offert Stellas, cum omnes simul cun love, 12 annorum spatio, magnum circa Solem permeant orbem. (Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Vol. IIIi, p. 95) for translation see Drake, S., Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, 1957, p. 57Google Scholar.

14 L. Nash, The Atomic-Molecular Theory, op. cit. pp. 39-40. Prof. June Z. Fullmer made helpful suggestions about this case, and suggested that the nitrous oxides might provide another, even better example.

15 Cf. Alexander, P., Sensationalism and Scientific Explanation, Alexander distinguishes between ‘theory-laden’ and ‘concept-laden’, Routledge, London, 1963Google Scholar.

16 Compare Hanson's famous case from Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge U.P., 1958, p. 5-8, where Tycho and Kepler watch the sun rise.

17 The theory of further testing offered here owes something to the pragmatists, esp. to G. H. Mead who in his description of the ‘act of perception’ included such further tests as part of the ‘act’, (cf. Mead's Philosophy of the Act): The idea of interpretation is discussed by Hanson, op. cit., Chapter 1. He thinks there is never any interpretation.

18 This process is readily seen in Galileo's third letter; where he considers Scheiner's consequents, and compares the sunspots to the Medicean planets. Drake, op. cit., pp. 134-42.

19 This argument comes from Austin's ‘Other Minds’ and ‘Sense and Sensibilia’. It is sketched more fully in my ‘Recent Work in Perception’, Amer. Philos. Q.I (1970) 4.

20 Feyerabend's analysis of the color case occurs in his early paper ‘An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience’, Proc. Aristotelian Society (1958), 150ff. I am here assuming that the set of ‘pragmatics’ determine the use of the word in question and thus are responsible for the meaning. I make this assumption knowing it to be simplistic, and as it stands probably inadequate. The set of relevant, meaning-determining parameters will probably not be wholly physical and will have to account for intentions of both speakers and hearers. I don’t think this added problem about meaning affects the point concerning continuity which I am here suggesting. This idea of continuity can be found previously in Dudley Shapere's ‘Meaning and Scientific Change’ in Mind and Cosmos (ed. by R. Colodny), University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 1966, p. 70. In a more general vein the method of similarities and differences as the method of understanding was first suggested to me by John Wisdom.

21 Many points in this paper were clarified with the help of discussions with Richard Garner, Bernard Rosen, Larry Laudan, and Ronald Laymon.