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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2022
This paper is intended to be a small contribution to a future comprehensive Theory of Scientific Growth. I take it that such a theory would give an idealized description of the repeating patterns of growth found within the history of science and show how these developmental patterns are different from those found in the case of theories such as witchcraft, on the one hand, and the patterns found in the growth of the ‘practical arts’, such as pottery-making, on the other. The theory would go on to explain why such patterns might be expected to produce scientific knowledge by pointing out the critical forces which are operating and the rationality of the responses to them. In short, an adequate philosophical theory in this area should not only give the kinetics of scientific growth, but also the dynamics of that process.
1 Lakatos, I., ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (ed. by Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A.), Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 91–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Ibid., pp. 133-7.
3 Ibid., p. 135.
4 Ibid., p. 137.
5 Sometimes Lakatos interprets the criterion of novelty so as to make it very weak. He says, for instance, that the Bohr theory's prediction of the Balmer series was in some sense a ‘novel fact’ because while Balmer observed that “hydrogen lines obey the Balmer formula,” Bohr predicted that “the differences in energy levels in different orbits of the hydrogen electron obey the Balmer formula”. (Ibid., p. 156). (The contrast is between ‘line’ and ‘difference’ in orbital energies.) He puts the general point this way: ”… we should certainly regard a newly interpreted fact as a new fact, ignoring the insolent priority claims of amateur fact collectors.” (Ibid., p. 157. Italics in the original.) In my criticism of Lakatos’ position I will try to ignore this lapse into the we-live-in-a-diflerent-world-after-a-revolution syndrome. If he wants to count a research programme as progressive when it is found to predict a known result, he should just say so.
8 I. Lakatos, ‘History and its Rational Reconstructions’, this volume, p. 104.
7 Ibid., p. 100.
8 Whewell, William, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Facsimile of the 2nd. ed., 1847, Johnson Reprint Co., London, 1967, Vol. 2, pp. 68-9Google Scholar.
9 See Lakatos, ‘Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, p. 175.
10 Ibid., p. 140.
11 Ibid., p. 175.
12 Feyerabend, P. K., ‘Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III (ed. Feigl, H. and Maxwell, G.), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962, p. 71Google Scholar.
13 Holders of the Incommensurability Thesis would question whether quasi-complementary theories can be compared and in what sense we can say they are ‘subsumed’ or ‘corrected- and-explained’ by the later synthesis. Aren’t they merely discarded in favor of an incommensurable world view?
I hesitate to delve into this can of worms, but I will make two remarks, First, I would deny that communication difficulties because of incommensurability of concepts have ever been of any practical significance in the history of science. There have been debates over rules of evidence, over what problems are important, and over the best methods of resolving them. But these have been honest disagreements over matters of fact and it seems to me that one of the most important properties of the scientific community is its ability to cut through verbal disagreement and get to the significant issues. I might add that this is a long-standing tradition in science. In one stock example of purported incommensurability, the case of phlogiston vs oxygen, we can hardly say there was a breakdown in communication when in both England and in France there were popular textbooks and monographs which congently and critically compared the two views. For example, in Fourcroy's textbook (the title of the English translation was: “Elementary lectures on chemistry and natural history. Containing a methodical abridgement of all the chemical knowledge acquired to the present time; with a comparative view of the doctrine of Stahl, and that of several modern chemists…“), we find a good discussion of the pros and cons and the relationship between the two theories.
I am not denying that one often finds claims in other spheres that debate is impossible because of conceptual incommensurability. (In the London School of Economics library there is a report by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee to investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws which is entitled: ‘Wordmanship: Semantics as a Communist Weapon’.) I do deny that this is a tactic used in science and I fervently hope the tradition will continue.
On the other hand, I agree that earlier philosophical analyses of the relationships between theories (such as what Feyerabend calls the ‘layer model’) have been incorrect Often in order to compare theories one needs to construct a comparison theory which contains bridging postulates of various kinds and of varying complexity.
Some of the postulates will match variables in the two theories whose values coincide within a restricted domain. Some will match expressions within the theories which have the same limited systematic import; i.e., they play similar explanatory roles. (For example, ‘phlogiston lost’ played the same role in many explanatory arguments within the phlogiston theory as ‘oxygen gained’ did in Lavoisier’s chemistry). Other statements in the comparison theory will make explicit the difference between ontological presuppositions of the two theories, the models or metaphors they employ, their rules of evidence and their heuristic potential. Feyerabend is right - normally, one cannot reduce one theory to the other. However, within a supra-comparison theory, which must be created for the purpose, once can compare the predictive accuracy of the theories and their explanatory power. And one can also debate their heuristic promise, or their differing rules of evidence.
14 I am interpreting the term ‘dialectic’ in the rational fashion suggested by Popper in ‘What is Dialectic?’, Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, p. 315Google Scholar. It seems an appropriate term because I am concerned with historical cases involving a triad of theories, two of which are on the same ‘level” and are in conflict. The third theory which replaces them gives a unified explanation of the phenomena explained by the previous two theories and preserves many of their features, but at the same time modifies them in important respects. A detailed characterization of both the conservative and revolutionary aspects of successive theories in the history of science is given in N. Koertge, ‘A Study of the Relations Between Scientific Theories: A Test of the General Correspondence Principle’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1969).
15 I. Lakatos, ‘Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, p. 153.
16 This account of the new developments in chemistry is based on Kenneth Pitzer's introduction to Lewis, G. N., Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules, Facsimile of the 1923 edition Dover, New York, 1966Google Scholar.
17 Ibid., p. 79.
18 See Ibid., Chapter 6.
19 Pauling, I. and Wilson, E. B. Jr., Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, McGraw Hill, New York, 1935, p. 17Google Scholar.
20 Lewis, Valence, p. 55.
21 Ibid., p. 56.
22 Of course, the most interesting examples are those in which the inter-theoretical conflicts have not been resolved. See Tisza, L., ‘The Conceptual Structure of Physics’, Reviews of Modern Physics 35 (1963), 151-85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 However, see Havas, P., ‘Four-Dimensional Formulations of Newtonian Mechanics and Their Relation to the Special and the General Theory of Relativity’, Reviews of Modern Physics 36 (1964), 938-65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 There are also interesting cases in which formal ‘flaws’|or ‘incongruities’ within our total theoretical structure (they are not actual inconsistencies) can serve as ‘growing points’ for a new theory. See H. R. Post, ‘Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics’, paper presented at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, University College, London, April 26, 1965 and ‘Rules of Discovery: In Praise of Conservative Induction’ (forthcoming).
25 A possible objection to my position might run like this: “Let it be granted that there have existed contradictions between important theories before a revolution and that the theory which comes afterwards unifies and connects them. This is still an inadequate basis for a dynamic theory of scientific growth. Was the scientific community aware of the inter-theoretic contradition? Did it cause a crisis? Did they actively try to resolve it? Unless the answer is yes, you cannot claim to have discovered a driving force within science.”.
To answer this point, one would, of course, like to rely on more detailed historical investigations. However, I think it likely that there are cases where no one realized that an inter-theoretic contradiction existed until after the theory which resolved it was already in hand. Popper describes such a state of affairs by contrasting the objective problem-situation with the perceived problem-situation. It seems to me that one should conclude that one job of methodology is to make us (scientists) more sensitive to these kind of strains within our total body of knowledge.
In general, a methodologist has two jobs - one is to invent or discover within science new varieties of criticism, new ways of generating problems - Popper's characterization of a severe test is one example of such an activity. The other job for the methodologist is to argue against criticism-reducing strategems - an example of this is Feyerabend's argument against the position that the observation language for physics is fixed and must be that of classical physics.
26 N. Koertge, ‘Theoretical Pluralism, Criticism, and Education’, forthcoming in the Proceedings of a Conference on New Directions in Philosophy of Eduction, held at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, 1970.
