The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms

300 Pages·2009·2.57 MB·English

by  Dr. Alan Chalmers (auth.)

THESCIENTIST’SATOMAND THEPHILOSOPHER’SSTONE
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editors
ROBERTS.COHEN,BostonUniversity
JU¨RGENRENN,MaxPlanckInstitutefortheHistoryofScience
KOSTASGAVROGLU,UniversityofAthens
EditorialAdvisoryBoard
THOMASF.GLICK,BostonUniversity
ADOLFGRU¨NBAUM,UniversityofPittsburgh
SYLVANS.SCHWEBER,BrandeisUniversity
JOHNJ.STACHEL,BostonUniversity
MARXW.WARTOFSKY†,(Editor19601997)
VOLUME279
THE SCIENTIST’S
ATOM AND THE
PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
How Science Succeeded
and Philosophy Failed to
Gain Knowledge of Atoms
ALANCHALMERS
123
Dr AlanChalmers
UniversityofSydney FlindersUniversity
UnitforHistoryandPhilosophyofScience PhilosophyDepartment
N.S.W.2006
POBox2100
Australia
Adelaide5001
[email protected]
Australia
alan.chalmers@flinders.edu.au
ISBN 978-90-481-2361-2 e-ISBN 978-90-481-2362-9
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2362-9
SpringerDordrechtHeidelbergLondonNewYork
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Preface
In1989itbecamenecessaryformetodesignaseniorundergraduatecourseinthe
historyofthephysicalsciencesforanewprogrammeinHistoryandPhilosophyof
ScienceattheUniversityofSydney.Ichosetosurveythehistoryofatomismfrom
Democritustothetwentiethcentury,therebygivingstudentsatasteofthevarying
contextsinwhichsciencehasbeenpractised.TheworkIneededtodotopreparefor
thatcoursesoondevelopedintoamajorresearchproject.Thisbookistheoutcome.
Oneoftheoriginalsourcessubjecttoacriticalreadingbymystudentsandmy-
self was Robert Boyle’s essay ‘On the grounds and excellency of the mechanical
hypothesis’. My appraisal of that essay appeared as a journal article in 1993. It
represented a critical moment in the evolution of my thoughts on the history of
atomism.InmyarticleIdistinguishedbetweenBoyle’saccountofthefundamental
make-up of the physical world that he called the mechanical philosophy and the
fruitsofhisexperimentation,bestrepresentedbythepneumaticsthathesupported
byexperimentswithhisairpump.Itwasthatdistinctionthatgavemethebasisfor
thethesisdefendedinthisbook.Icametoseemodernatomictheoryastherather
recentlegacyofexperimentalscienceasitemergedintheseventeenthcenturyrather
thanatraditionofspeculativephilosophydatingbacktoDemocritusandextending
toseventeenth-centurymechanicalphilosophyandbeyond.
The title of my article of 1993, ‘The lack of excellency of Boyle’s mechanical
philosophy’ made some historians uncomfortable. Presumably they suspected that
I was using contemporary standards to cast judgement on Boyle’s case. There is
certainly a fundamental problem involved here. How can one defend a philosoph-
ical thesisabout thechanging natureofscience byinvoking thehistoryofscience
withoutprojectingontopastsciencedistinctionsandnormsthathadyettobecon-
structed? The fact that my early research had not totally come to grips with that
problemwasbroughthometomein1998atatimewhenIwasaSeniorResearch
FellowattheDibnerInstitutefortheHistoryofScienceandTechnology,aninstitu-
tionthat,regrettably,hassincebeendisbanded.IreadapaperinwhichIpresented
as a problem the fact that, on the one hand, Boyle distinguished between his me-
chanical philosophy and his experimental science and yet, on the other, claimed
thathismechanicalphilosophyhadexperimentalsupport.ThefollowingdayIwas
subjecttothecustomarygrillingbytheotherFellows.Myconfidenceinmyposition
wasshakenwhenoneofthePostdoctoralFellowsaskedmeifIthoughtBoylewas
v
vi Preface
confused. I had no satisfactory answer to that question. I still lacked an answer
in 2007, when I taught a course on the history of atomism to a class of very dis-
cerning graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh. I presented the problem
raisedbymyinquisitorattheDibnertomystudents,invitingthemtorespondtoit.
No definitive answer emerged. I believe I can now dissolve the problem and I do
so in Chapters 6 and 8 of this book. It draws on a distinction between two kinds
of empirical support, a strong one involved in Boyle’s experimental science and a
weakeroneinvolvedinhisdefenceofthemechanicalphilosophy.Idonothaveto
imposethatdistinctiononBoyle’sworkbecauseitcanbeseentohavebeenmade
byBoylehimself,onceonehaslearntwheretolook.Ihopemybookdisplayshow
historyandphilosophyofsciencecanbeintegratedinawaythatcombinesrigorous
philosophicalargumentwithhistoryofsciencethatlivesuptothehigheststandards
ofscholarlyresearch.1
Boyledistinguishedbetweenphilosophicaltheoriesabouttheultimatestructure
ofmatterandlessambitiousclaimssubjecttoexperimentalinvestigationandverifi-
cationexemplifiedinthelawthatbearshisname.Buthisappreciationofthedistinc-
tiondidnothave,andcouldnotpossiblyhavehad,theimplicationsforhimthatthe
distinction between philosophy and science has for us. Modern debates about the
ultimatestructureofmatterareconductedbyphilosophersaspartofwhattheycall
‘metaphysics’.Thedistinctionbetweentheirpracticeandthatofscientistsisrecog-
nised and, indeed, institutionalised insofar as the two practices are accommodated
indifferentuniversityfaculties.Theoutcomesofthedeliberationsofmodernmeta-
physicianshaveimplicationsonlyforahandfulofaddictsandareoflittleconcern
to, and have minimal effect on, anyone else. Their ponderings tend to be a source
of bemusement if not amusement for scientists. The situation was very different
in the seventeenth-century situation in which Boyle worked. Natural philosophers
were engaged in attempts to comprehend and give a theoretical basis for the new
social formations and also in attempts to rewrite Christian theology following the
discrediting of the Aristotelian philosophy with which it had become entwined in
theMiddleAges.AmechanicalphilosopherlikeThomasHobbesputhisversionof
themechanicalphilosophytoworkintheLeviathanjustasBoyleputhismechanical
philosophytoworkinthetheologythatheconstructedaspartofhiscountertothe
atheismthatthreatenedhim.Appeal toBoyle’slaw orthecirculationoftheblood
wouldnothaveservedsuchpurposesatall.Seventeenth-centurymetaphysics,inthe
guise of the mechanical philosophy, was not the marginal and specialised activity
that the metaphysics conducted in modern philosophy has come to be. Neverthe-
less,adistinctionbetweenphilosophicalmetaphysicsandexperimentalphilosophy
emerged,andwasmadeexplicit,intheseventeenthcentury.Ibelievewelearnmuch
about science by recognising the way in which, by the beginning of the twentieth
century, a general atomic theory of matter that was experimentally supported had
comeaboutinawaythatowedlittletothephilosophicalversionsofatomismthat
hadoriginsinAncientGreece.Thatiswhatmybookisintendedtodemonstrate.
My research into the history of atomism has been carried out in a number of
institutionalcontextsandIwouldliketoacknowledgethesupportIhavereceived.
I have already referred to my period as a Senior Research Fellow at the Dibner
Preface vii
Institute for the History of Science and Technology. I held a similar position at
the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 2003/4
andwasanErskineFellowattheUniversityofCanterbury,NewZealandin2000.
I have also been hosted by the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social
Science attheLondon School ofEconomics, theDepartment ofPhilosophy atthe
UniversityofBristoland,forshorterperiods,attheDepartmentforHistoryofSci-
ence at Harvard University and the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of
Manchester. For a decade after my retirement from the Unit for the History and
Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney late in 1999, my base was the
DepartmentofPhilosophyatFlindersUniversity,Australia,where,asanHonorary
SeniorResearchFellow,Iwasabletoretainafootholdinacademiaandavailmyself
ofthatuniversity’sresources.AtFlindersIwasalsoabletohonemyphilosophical
argumentsbyexploitingtheexpertiseofthephilosophers,especiallyGregO’Hare,
from whom I could get an insightful summary of the latest analytic philosophy in
awaythatsparedmetheneedtosearchtheliterature,andGeorgeCouvalis,whose
doggedrefusaltobeconvincedbymyargumentsconstitutedanever-presentchal-
lengethatledtoimprovementsinthem.AlsoworthyofspecialmentionisRodney
Allenwhosesupportextendedfurtherthansupplyingthecoffee.
TherearemanyindividualsfromwhomIhavelearnt,andIamsuretoforgetto
mentionsomeofthem.AlanMusgravereadtheentiremanuscriptofthefirstdraftof
thisbookandsupplieddetailedcommentsandcriticismsthatwereinvaluable.One
ofhismarginalnotesonmymanuscriptreads‘decidewhatyouwanttosayandsay
it’,whichexemplifiestheforthrightandhenceproductivecharacterofhiscritique.I
amindebtedtotherecentscholarshipofWilliamNewmanandUrsulaKlein,whichI
drawonextensively.Unknowntothem,Ihavehadinnumerable,almostdaily,virtual
conversations with them. Regrettably, our personal confrontations have been few,
althoughtheyhavebothbeengenerousinrespondingtomycorrespondence.Other
individuals whose help and encouragement warrants mention are, in alphabetical
order,PeterAnstey,KeithBemer,JedBuchwald,HasokChang,KarenRueHauck,
KeithHutchison,DeborahMayo,RobertNola,JohnNorton,DenisPozega,Andrew
Pyle,NicholasRasmussen,JonahSchupbachandNeilThomason.
IwouldliketorecallthedebtIowetothelateHeinzPost.HewasHeadofthe
DepartmentofHistoryandPhilosophyofScienceatChelseaCollege,Universityof
LondonandsupervisedmyPhDthesisonClerkMaxwell’selectromagnetism.That
department, which flourished under Post and did not survive long after his retire-
ment, was designed to offer HPS courses to students with a good science degree.
ThoseofuswhoobtainedourdoctoratesunderPost’sinfluenceliketothinkofour-
selves as the ‘Chelsea School’, although the College has since been absorbed into
Kings College, London. Included in our number are Noretta Koertge, John Pick-
stone, Harvey Brown, Simon Saunders, Steven French, Harmke Kaminga, Giora
Hon, and Eric Scerri. Our work bears witness to the influence of an inspirational
teacher.PosthadaninterestinthemorerecenthistoryofatomismandIrecallthat
hewasencouragedbyapublishertowriteabookonthetopic.Ithasbeenlefttome,
hisgratefulstudent,toproducethatbookandIliketothinkthatitisonehewould
haveendorsed.
viii Preface
SpecialthanksareduetoSandraGrimes.Hergenerousandconstantsupportand
encouragement were not always received with the appreciation and acknowledge-
menttheydeservedbyanirascibleandeasilyrattledauthor.
Note
1. Iamamemberofagroupofseventeeninternationalscholarsbroughttogetherontheinitiative
of John Norton at the University of Pittsburgh and Don Howard at the University of Notre
Dameunderthebanner&HPS.Theaimistofostertheintegrationofhistoryandphilosophy
of science in a way that lives up to the highest standards of both disciplines. To this end a
conferenceisheldevery2yearsinvolvingpapersthatcanserveasexemplarsofhowthiscan
bedone.
Contents
1 Atomism:ScienceorPhilosophy? ................................ 1
1.1 Introduction .............................................. 1
1.2 ScienceandPhilosophyTranscendtheEvidenceforThem ....... 4
1.3 HowtheClaimsofScienceareConfirmed..................... 5
1.4 InferencetotheBestExplanation ............................ 8
1.5 ScienceInvolvesExperimentalActivity
andConceptualInnovation.................................. 10
1.6 ReadingthePastintheLightofthePresent.................... 11
1.7 WritingHistoryofScienceBackwards........................ 12
1.8 TheStructureoftheBook................................... 13
1.9 ANoteonTerminology .................................... 17
2 DemocriteanAtomism ......................................... 19
2.1 PhilosophyastheRefinementofCommonSensebyReason...... 19
2.2 ParmenidesandtheDenialofChange......................... 21
2.3 TheAtomismofLeucippusandDemocritus:TheBasics......... 24
2.4 AtomicExplanationsofProperties ........................... 27
2.5 AtomicExplanationsofSpecificPhenomena................... 28
2.6 AtomismasaResponsetoZeno’sParadoxes................... 29
2.7 Aristotle’sCritiqueofIndivisibleMagnitudes .................. 33
2.8 Did Democritus Propose Indivisible Magnitudes
asaResponsetoZeno? .................................... 34
2.9 DemocriteanAtomism:AnAppraisal......................... 38
3 HowdoesEpicurus’sGardenGrow? ............................. 43
3.1 Epicureanism ............................................. 43
3.2 PhysicalAtomsintheVoid.................................. 44
3.3 AtomsandIndivisibleMagnitudes ........................... 45
3.4 AtomicSpeedsandObservableSpeeds........................ 48
3.5 Gravity .................................................. 49
3.6 ExplainingthePhenomenabyAppealonlytoAtomsandVoid.... 51
ix