Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
General editor: Jude R Dougherty
Studies in Philosophy
and the History of Philosophy Volume 22
Nature and
Scientific Method
edited by Daniel 0. Dahlstrom
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS
Washington, D.C.
College of St Francis
JOLIET, ILLINOIS
Publication of this book has been funded in part by a gift to the
Associates of The Catholic University of America Press by
Msgr. Edward A. Synan.
Copyright © 1991
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standards for Information
Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials,
ANSI Z39.48-I984.
00
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Nature and scientific method / edited by Daniel O. Dahlstrom.
p. cm. — (Studies in philosophy and the history of
philosophy ; v. 22)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Science—Methodology. 2. Science—Philosophy.
3. Philosophy of nature. I. Dahlstrom, Daniel O.
II. Series.
B21.S78 vol. 22
[Q175-3]
100 s—dc20 8q-7o8i7
[502.8]
isbn 0-8132-0723-1 (alk. paper)
| 0 9
Contents
Introduction vii
PART I: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
1. rom harre, Causality and Reality 3
2. Patrick a. heelan, Hermeneutical Philosophy and
the History of Science 23
3. Robert sokolowski, Explaining 37
4. Jude p. Dougherty, Abstraction and Imagination
in Human Understanding 51
5. francis j. collingwood, Duhem’s Interpretation of
Aristotle on Mathematics in Science 63
6. Nicholas rescher, Baffling Phenomena 81
7. mario bunge, Basic Science Is Innocent; Applied
Science and Technology Can Be Guilty 95
PART II: HISTORICAL STUDIES
8. r. f. hassing, Thomas Aquinas on Phys. VII. 1 and
the Aristotelian Science of the Physical Continuum 109
9. jean de groot, Philoponus on Separating the
Three-Dimensional in Optics 157
10. jean dietz moss, Ludovico Carbone’s Commentary
on Aristotle’s De caelo 175
11. richard j. blackwell, Foscarini’s Defense of
Copernicanism 199
12. edith sylla, Galileo and Probable Arguments 211
13. richard h. kennington, Bacon’s Critique of
Ancient Philosophy in New Organon I 235
)3f/ NS3
v
vi CONTENTS
14. andrea croce birch, The Problem of Method in
Newton’s Natural Philosophy 253
15. DANIEL o. dahlstrom, Kant’s Metaphysics of Nature 271
16. edward H. madden, The Reidian Tradition: Growth
of the Causal Concept 29*
Publications of William A. Wallace, O.P. 3°9
Contributors 3*9
Index 323
Introduction
did OXEJIZEOV 71QOJTOV XI EOTIV Yj (pVOLC,
—Aristotle, Metaphysics, 995318
I
The right method, the right “way after” (methodos) something, de¬
pends on what we are pursuing. “Hence we should first inquire what
nature is,” Aristotle concludes. The present volume is a collection of
systematic and historical studies addressing the terms of this Aristo¬
telian inference. In the first part of the volume, what we understand
nature to be as well as its relation to how we understand nature are
examined from contemporary realist and hermeneutical points of
view, in the light of the use of models in contemporary physics, and
in the face of baffling phenomena.
Rom Havre elaborates the structure of an inductive argument, based
upon criteria of disclosability and manipulability, for a policy realist
reading of scientific theories. Policy realism countenances the indefi¬
nite revisability of specific concepts together with the conservation of
ontological categories determined by certain basic “affordances,” that
is, dispositions realized relative to some human practice. Harre con¬
cludes by suggesting how quantum held theory, as a physics of af¬
fordances, can be given a policy realist reading.
Patrick Heelan’s original essay is a speculation on the contribution of
methodological and existential hermeneutics to the history and phi¬
losophy of science. Likening historical research to the creation of a
library’s fundamental reference corpus, Heelan illustrates how a
(never completely transparent) structure of presumptions grounds in¬
terpretation and how accordingly interpretation must be open-ended
and holistic, poietic and prudential. In history and in science, Heelan
concludes, stability, consensus, and confirmation are achievements,
credited to a researcher’s narrative act of making past phenomena
present to us.
Robert Sokolowski challenges the thesis that the task of the philosopher
vii
Vlll INTRODUCTION
consists in identifying certain ultimate names and statements (or ob¬
jects and states of affairs) and reducing other statements (or states of
affairs) to them, as is often undertaken in the sciences. Sokolowski
argues that the philosophical task consists instead in recovering and
clarifying the concrete activities of thinking and disclosing. He con¬
cludes by masterfully clarifying how, within the framework of these
activities, names and explanations (and things and causes) have dy¬
namically related, yet irreducible roles.
Through an interpretation of Aristotle’s account of the role of imag¬
ination in knowing, Jude Dougherty argues for a realist interpretation
of the models, both iconic and sentential, involved in the scientific
knowledge of nature. Dougherty recounts the role played by Bohr’s
image of a liquid drop for the nucleus of an atom, in the imaginations
of Lisa Meitner and Otto Frisch as they took the first steps toward the
development of the theory of fission. This example illustrates, Dough¬
erty concludes, the Aristotelian claim that thinking always has re¬
course to images and indeed images of real objects, even as it moves
beyond images to some universality.
Francis J. Collingwood recounts how fundamental insights of Aristotle
persist in Duhem’s philosophy of science. Collingwood argues that
Duhem’s conception of the fundamental role of the quantification of
sensory data, his appreciation of the resulting limitations of physical
theory, and even his sometimes criticized reticence regarding conjec¬
ture represent a rigorous adherence to the texts of Aristotle. The aim
of Collingwood’s study is to indicate how Duhem foresaw the need to
strip away all qualitative notions in elaborating a mathematics capable
of handling physical experiments and collations.
Nicholas Rescher outlines the kinds of possible reaction to the sort of
phenomena, prominent in the development of science and in the psy¬
chological domain, that are not simply novel or puzzling but cannot
be accommodated within an accepted view of the natural order. After
suggesting the advisability of accepting such phenomena as real,
Rescher sketches features of the particular view of science entailed by
this suggestion. Countenancing baffling phenomena, Rescher argues,
underscores not only the historical, provisional, and indeed teleolog¬
ical character of science but also the possibility and utility of insisting
on the separation of phenomena and theory.
Mario Bunge challenges the common nonsense of baldly placing
moral blame for the threats of global ecological and nuclear disasters
on the shoulders of scientists and technologists. While demonstrating
the irreducibility to one another of basic science, applied science, and
technology, Bunge concedes that the three domains often in fact over-
Introduction IX
lap; for example, in contrast to technologists, both basic and applied
scientists are essentially discoverers. In contrast to basic science, how¬
ever, applied science and technology are not morally neutral; that is
to say, they can be put to evil use. The applied scientist or technologist
is morally blameworthy, Bunge concludes, only when participating in
the design or planning of what is unambiguously evil.
II
Part II contains essays on specific conceptions of nature and sci¬
entific method in the history of science and philosophy, from Aristotle
to early American philosophy. Aquinas’s interpretation of the motor
causality principle first presented in Aristotle’s Physics, that is, that
fundamental principle of premodern physics that everything moved
is moved by another, is the subject of R. F. Hassing’s essay. Hassing
demonstrates that the principle concerns the physical continuum,
common to bodies as such in abstraction from any determinate natural
form, but according to an Aristotelian conception of motion that can¬
not be adequately reconstructed in the familiar modern terms of ve¬
locity or momentum. In conclusion Hassing disputes the assumption
that the motor causality principle is refuted by classical mechanics.
In the second essay Jean de Groot examines the physical basis for
mathematical demonstration in Philoponus’ reconciliation of geo¬
metrical optics with Aristotle’s theory of light. In the course of re¬
jecting the ancient supposition of visual rays emitted from the eye,
Philoponus detaches consideration of the mathematical properties of
visual rays from consideration of their physical properties. This move,
however, raises questions about the ontological status of those math¬
ematical properties, especially from the standpoint of Aristotle, who
explicitly rules out even the theoretical separability of physical forms
from matter. Focusing on Philoponus’ Corrolarium de Loco as well as
his commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and Physics, de Groot dem¬
onstrates how Philoponus conceived the separability of quantity on
the basis of distinctions delivered by Aristotle himself.
The subject of Jean Dietz Moss’s essay is a manuscript she recently
uncovered in Florence, containing a commentary on Aristotle’s de caelo
by Ludovico Carbone, an enigmatic figure whose apparent plagiariz¬
ing of lectures on logic, given at the Collegio Romano, provides a key
piece of evidence for reconstructing Galileo’s access to Aristotelian
logic. In an attempt to strengthen the case for interrelationships
among the Collegio Romano, Carbone, and Galileo, Moss compares
Carbone’s commentary with Galileo’s “Physical Questions,” MS 46.
X INTRODUCTION
Richard Blackwell addresses the historical significance of the Letter of
Paolo Antonio Foscarini, placed on the Index by the Catholic church
as part of its condemnation of Copernicanism and cited as evidence
for the widespread acceptance of that doctrine deemed by the church
“false and completely contrary to the divine Scriptures.” Blackwell
outlines the principles of interpretation advanced by Foscarini, a Car¬
melite priest and Galileo admirer, in his attempt to demonstrate the
possibility of a Copernican reinterpretation of biblical passages and
theological doctrines that seem to require geocentrism. Blackwell con¬
cludes that this attempt constituted the main document arguing for
reconciliation of Copernicanism and Scripture in the hands of church
officials prior to the condemnation.
The essay by Edith Sylla begins by tracing Averroist and probabilist
ways of accommodating reason and revelation in the Middle Ages.
This sketch is offered as a backdrop for appreciating the development
of Galileo’s views on the suitable mode of interpreting biblical state¬
ments in the light of probable arguments, relevant to those statements,
that might be advanced by science in the future. In this way Sylla
suggests the inadequacy of standard attempts to interpret the concep¬
tions of scientific method among the parties to the Galileo affair
largely in terms of some sort of disjunctive dilemma of hypothesis or
certitude, that is, calculated conjecture to save the phenomena or de¬
monstrative truth. Instead, Sylla argues that due consideration must
be given to the rhetorical form of Galileo’s writings and the status of
the probable arguments they entail.
Bacon’s unique and widely influential critique of ancient philosophy
in the first part of New Organon is the basis for his new concept of
method. Yet this critique has been largely neglected by students of
Bacon, thus prompting the study by Richard H. Kennington. After care¬
fully elaborating the sphere and rationale of the exclusion of final
causes in Bacon’s attempt to reform the ancient order of demonstra¬
tion, Kennington attempts to clarify Bacon’s rejection of natural spe¬
cies as the starting point of knowledge, in favor of an experimental
interpretation of nature, aimed at disclosing the laws of bodies as
collections of simple natures. In contrast to standard interpretations,
Kennington aims to show the basic harmony of the ideals articulated
by Bacon: a new way of contemplation and the mastery of nature.
Andrea Croce Birch examines the various senses of “analysis” and
“synthesis” in Pappus’ geometry and Newton’s natural philosophy, as
she attempts to develop the plausible rationale for Newton’s contro¬
versial methodological remark “as in mathematics, so in natural phi¬
losophy.” Birch argues that the remark is motivated as much by a
Introduction xi
concern for methodological differentiation as by a concern for meth¬
odological unity.
Daniel O. Dahlstrom examines Kant’s demarcation of the first install¬
ment of his physics, the so-called metaphysics of nature, from the
transcendental philosophy by means of the empirical concept of mat¬
ter. Taking issue with several critics, Dahlstrom argues that for Kant,
whereas transcendental principles are derived from the conditions of
any possible experience, the system of metaphysical principles of na¬
ture is based upon the concept of objects in motion, a concept empir¬
ical in both content and instantiation. On this interpretation, the
autonomy of transcendental philosophy and that of physics are re¬
spectively assured, though with the implication that the principles of
physics are only conditionally necessary.
Edward H. Madden traces the growth of the causal concept in the
Scottish and American realist tradition stemming from Thomas Reid.
Madden demonstrates how Francis Wayland, the Scot appointed pres¬
ident of Brown University in 1827, amends Reid’s views by acknowl¬
edging an efficient causality (power) other than agent causality. A
serious lacuna in Wayland’s analysis, clarification of the kinds of en¬
tities constituting causes and effects, is filled by James McCosh, the
Scot appointed president of Princeton University in 1868, whose con¬
cept of powerful particulars also avoids Wayland’s construal of power
as an “unknowable ontological tie.” Madden shows, in conclusion, that
the concept of powerful particulars was meant by McCosh to encom¬
pass even the unobservable referents of theoretical terms, thus rep¬
resenting, within the antiskeptical tradition of Reid, a decisive rejec¬
tion of Reid’s own rigid inductivism.
Ill
The mark of Rev. William A. Wallace, O.R, is evident at every turn
in this volume. The essays by Heelan, Moss, and Blackwell build ex¬
plicitly on his groundbreaking studies of Galileo and the Collegio
Romano; in the essays by Harre, Sokolowski, Dougherty, and Rescher
there is an unmistakable resonance with the spirit of Wallace’s realist
approach to the philosophy of science. The studies by DeGroot, Mad¬
den, and Collingwood reflect the Aristotelian and Thomistic core of
Wallace’s convictions and lifelong work, as do the essays by Wallace’s
own former students, Hassing and Birch. Even Bunge’s ethical con¬
cern for distinguishing science, applied science, and technology re¬
flects a lifelong penchant of Father Wallace, the former engineer who
received a doctorate in theology for his The Role of Demonstration in
