Teaching Theory of Knowledge
3. Epistemology and the Scientific Revolution The following materials present important and familiar issues and theories in epistemology against the setting of 17th century scientific developments. In fact, the consideration of problems concerning perception, the status of mathematical truth and its application to empirical phenomena, the possibilities of understanding and explaining physical phenomena, and such theories as phenomenalism was motivated to an important extent by developments in science, and problems in the philosophy of science, and its methodology like those represented in these readings. Accordingly, considerable insight into the epistemological issues can be gained by a course which covers the material outlined below.
These materials are suitable (depending upon their treatment) for both introductory and advanced courses in philosophy, as well as for interdisciplinary "humanities" courses. They have the advantage of providing a motivation for the study of epistemology which is largely unavailable when the philosophical works of the likes of Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley are presented (as is customary) in abstraction from their scientific settings. And it is hoped that presentation of reasonably accessible episodes from the history of science in connection with classic readings in the theory of knowledge can encourage humanities students who have shied away from science and the history of science to give them a try.
Readings
Bacon, F. New Organon.Berkeley, G. Philosophical Writings.
Burtt, E. A. Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. Hereafter cited as 'Burtt'.
Cohen, I. B. The Birth of a New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1985. Hereafter cited as 'Cohen'.
Descartes, R. Philosophical Writings. Cottingham, et. al. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Hall, M. B. Nature and Nature's Laws. Hereafter cited as 'Hall'.
Locke, J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Dover Publications. 1959.
Newton, I. Newton's Philosophy of Nature. H. S. Thayer (ed.). New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1953. Hereafter cited as 'Newton'.
3.1 Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Scope and Nature of Empirical Evidence.
3.2 Methodology: the Discovery and Testing of Theories.
3.3 Historical Examples of Scientific Reasoning.
3.4 Historical Examples of Experiments and Observations.
3.5 Epistemic Status of Principles of Reasoning and A Priori Truths.
3.6 Phenomenalism and Its Motivation.
3.1 Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Scope and Nature of Empirical Evidence. The readings below provide a sample of 17th century scientific arguments for the thesis that colors, and a great deal of other sensory features, are best explained as effects caused in the perceptual systems by external objects (e.g., atoms) which lack the sensory properties (e.g., atoms and Newtonian particles are colorless). Furthermore, although the causes of sensor experience have some properties (e.g., shape and size) which we can perceive, the causes themselves are too small to be perceived. The question this raises is whether, or how, the senses can provide evidence against which accounts of the causes of perception can be checked, and how or whether they can help in the discovery of what actually goes on in the physical world.
A further question, raised by the Hooke selection, is how the role of observational instruments (like the microscope) should be understood. Are they simply aids which increase the power or the range of the senses? If so, how can they do more than add perceptions of secondary qualities which are not themselves either intrinsic to physical objects, nor explanatory of effects in our perceptual systems and in other physical things? Or are they sources of information of a different kind than what the senses can provide? If so, how can this be squared with the fact that their input must be perceived?
Readings
Burtt. chapter 3 (on Galileo).Descartes. Meditations I, VI (on the degree to which the senses can be trusted).
Hall. 230-63 (selections on color from Boyle, Hooke, Newton).
Locke. Essay II, ii-ix (on primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities).
3.2 Methodology: the Discovery and Testing of Theories. The readings listed below represent a debate over methodology. Bacon and Newton both hold versions of the idea that scientific theories should be reached by inference from particular "phenomena", "observations" or empirical facts. Descartes argues that explanatory principles should be deduced from geometry, mathematics, and other non-empirical knowledge; empirical information serves to determine their applicability to natural phenomena, rather than to establish their truth. Yet both Newton and Descartes agree that explanations in physics should be essentially mathematical or geometrical. The first question this raises is how their common commitment to mathematical physics can be squared with their disagreement over the role of empirical investigation. The second question (which connects with material in the following sections) is what Newton, Bacon and Descartes considered the input of empirical investigation to be. It is clear that the phenomena from which Newton thought theories should be extracted were not sense data, the ways in which things appear to observers, or other such things. The same holds for Bacon, but Newton's phenomena don't seem to be the same sorts of data as Bacon mentions in his examples of the study of heat. Nor is it clear just what Descartes took "experiences" to be.
Readings
Bacon. New Organon: Aphorisms, Book II.Descartes. Rules for the Direction of the Mind.
Descartes. Principles: IV, para. 203, 204; III, pans 4, II.
Newton. 3-8, 45, 12-40.
3.3 Historical Examples of Scientific Reasoning. The material in this section is intended to provide examples to be compared against the Baconian, Newtonian, and Cartesian accounts of scientific reasoning. The question is to what extent any of these accounts seem faithful to the reasoning by which some crucial theories in astronomy and physics were argued for.
Readings
Cohen. 3-185 (background reading).Hall. 53-96 (selections from Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo on astronomy).
3.4 Historical Examples of Experiments and Observations. The readings in this section focus on experiments, observations, and their results. They should be considered (along with Boyle, Hooke, and Newton on color) in connection with the question of what empirical investigation provides, and the earlier question (topic 3.1) of whether empirical results obtained from the use of instruments differ importantly in kind from the perceptions of the unaided senses.
Readings
Hall. 136-71 (selections from Harvey and Lower).Hall. 184-215 (selection from Torricelli, Pecquet, Boyle).
Cohen. 185-93 (on Galileo and the telescope).
3.5 Epistemic Status of Principles of Reasoning and A Priori Truths. These readings represent a central dispute between the Empiricists and the Rationalists on the status of mathematical and other non-empirical truths and principles of reasoning which scientists and philosophers of both camps agree to be essential to scientific knowledge.
Readings
Descartes. Meditations II-V.Locke. Book I Book IV: v, vi.
3.6 Phenomenalism and Its Motivation. Newton rejects Descartes' characterization of motion (Descartes: Principles II) on the grounds that it doesn't define motion in terms of absolute space or time. But (as he admits) there seems no way to measure either space or time except relatively. Newtonian physical explanations rely upon at least two quantities which don't seem to be accessible to direct empirical observation or measurement -- force and mass. Descartes' physics characterizes physical objects as having no essential features beyond extension. But it is unclear both how extension can be empirically measured or observed, and how (even if it could be determined) objects with no essential features could accomplish what they are required to do in Newtonian and Cartesian theories. Both Descartes and Newton appeal to the influence of God to ground the interactions of physical objects, but God's role in the explanatory scheme appears to conflict with the strategy of explaining physical phenomena by appeal to the doings of Newtonian physical particles or Cartesian corpuscles.
The Berkeley readings present a drastic solution to all such difficulties: a phenomenalist analysis of both science and common sense (or folk science) which dispenses with mind-independent physical things altogether, treats space, time, their properties, as well as physical objects and their properties as reducible to sensations, and replaces the traditional idea of efficient causality with a constant conjunction account which was taken over, developed, and popularized by Hume. In addition, Berkeley's account was supposed to eliminate the difficulties of inferring the intrinsic and explanatory features of physical objects from sensations or perceptions, as these were construed by everyone in the readings from Galileo to Locke. It is arguable that phenomenalism (both Berkeley's version, and its descendants, developed by C. I. Lewis and the logical positivists) is best understood as a response to crucial problems in the philosophy of science, such as those illustrated by these readings.
Readings
Berkeley. Principles, De Motu, Dialogue I.Newton. 41-67. 105-134.