Abstract
In this chapter I show how experimental skill enables the convergence of practices and the experience they produce. In chapter 8 I apply this idea to theory-testing and in chapters 9 and 10 to the process of theorizing new phenomena. Convergence in turn explains the belief that representations correspond to what they are representations of. I argue that the correspondence of representations to their objects is the end product of a process of making convergences which are subsequently reconstructed as correspondences. Reconstruction has a material and a verbal aspect. The material embodiment of skills into apparatus and techniques that we saw in section 6.9 establishes the objective distance of phenomena from representations of it, while narrative reconstruction imparts the logical structure found in published reports.
… if the mind does not have the ability to grasp external things or forms directly, then no mental act can give it the ability to single out a correspondence (or anything else external, for that matter).
Putnam
Willingness to accept countless alternative true or right world-versions does not mean that everything goes, that tall stories are as good as short ones, that truths are no longer distinguished from falsehoods, but only that truth must be otherwise conceived than as correspondence with a ready-made world.
Goodman
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Notes
See Gooding (1989c).
On the construction of “out-thereness” see Pickering (1981a, 1981b, 1984). The priority of technology to science is argued by Ihde (1983) and by Janich (1978).
Pickering, “Editing and Epistemology”, unpublished Ms.
On the relevance of discovery to argument see Nickles (1985).
The paper’s title explicitly links the new motions to theory: “On some new Electro-Magnetical Motions, and on the Theory of Magnetism”. It first appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Science and Art in October 1821. I refer to the reprint in volume 2 of Faraday (1839–55), vol. 2, pp. 127–147.
Ibid., p. 127.
See, e.g., Davy’s acknowledgement of Faraday in Davy (1821a). Faraday had become Superintendent of the House and Laboratory of the RI in May of 1821. For Faraday’s relationship to Davy see Knight (1985) and for his place at the RI, see Forgan (1985).
Davy succeeded Sir Joseph Banks as President of the Royal Society in November 1820. See Knight (1985) and Hall (1984), ch. 2.
See his letter to Wollaston of 30 October 1821 in Williams et al., eds. (1971), vol. 1, pp. 127–28.
Faraday (1821), p. 128
See the Diary, p.56, entry for 8 September, on the mobility of poles.
See Gooding (1978) for a discussion and references.
Faraday (1821), p. 129.
Ibid., p. 130.
Ibid., p. 131.
Ibid.
See, for example, Faraday (1839–55), vol. 3, p. 123, para. 2591.
Faraday (1821), p. 131 and ff.
I noted earlier that Kuhn’s early work (1961, 1962a) emphasized practice more than his (1962b) thesis about the revolutionary nature of scientific change. He argued that during a crisis skills are as likely to be challenged and appraised as intellectual precepts. Collins (1985) argues that all empirical judgements ultimately end in socially-validated judgements about competence. I discuss this experimenter’s regress in chapter 8. Skills are given a lesser role in the empirically-testable theory of method developed by Laudan, Donovan, and Laudan: see Laudan, R. (1988) and Gooding (1989d).
For discussion of forms of realism see Putnam (1982a, 1982b), Giere (1988), and Laudan (1981).
Gombrich (1980). Many of the phenomena scientists study are process phenomena.
This phrase is Goodman’s; see his (1978), chapter 7. Where Gombrich (1980) questions the truthfulness of images, Goodman argues a more general distinction between right and wrong renderings, pointing out that the distinction between truth and falsity of verbal representations is a special case of this (p. 109).
On Fresnel’s short-lived discovery see Ross (1965). On Ampère’s inability to acknowledge electromagnetic induction see chapter 2 and Thompson (1895).
Scientists define progress in terms of increased numerical precision, but the issue here is whether philosophers should accept this as an adequate description of how science progresses. There is a long tradition of argument that the methods of science will eventually bring theories closer to the truth, provided that methods are capable of correcting errors. Methods of approximation have had a more specific role within the general thesis (see Laudan, 1973), p. 282 ff.). Laudan points out that lack of justification for the self-correcting thesis meant that this became an article of faith for methodologists such as Peirce and Duhem (ibid., p. 294–95).
Goodman (1978), p. 107. I explore the analogy between representation in art and science in Gooding (1988).
See the studies in Harding (1976).
See the studies in Barnes and Shapin (1979).
I noted some who have, earlier. See Ryle (1949), chapter 2.
Millikan (1917), p. 4.
Kuhn (1961); references are to the reprint in Kuhn (1977), pp. 183-213. On the importance of qualitative procedures see also Agazzi (1978).
Ibid., pp. 185–86.
Ibid., p. 201. In 1962 Kuhn argued that “the manner in which science pedagogy entangles discussion of a theory with remarks on its exemplary applications has helped to reinforce a confirmation-theory drawn predominantly from other sources. Given the slightest reason for doing so, the man who reads a science text can easily take the applications to be the evidence for the theory” (1962b), p. 80.
Quoted in Millikan, op. cit. note 29. Smith and Wise have shown that such remarks owe as much to the link between precision and profit in William Thomson’s work as they do to serious epistemological reflection about science: see Smith and Wise (1986 and 1989). The emphasis on precision in the 19th century reflects the increasing importance of testing to the establishment of industrial standards, especially in the supply and use of electrical power. See, for example, Thomson (1867).
See Wise (1979a) and Smith and Wise (1989) on his construction of conservation concepts.
Intellectual and material practice are complementary; one does not have to assert ontological priority of one or the other (Ihde, 1983).
Kuhn (1961), Franklin (1986).
See Collins (1985), chapter 3, on calibration.
Versions of convergent realism are expounded in Brown (1982), Leplin (1979), Putnam (1975). It is criticised by Laudan (1981) who argues that the history of science does not show convergence. Epistemic realism is the thesis that we can know the reality that exists independently of the representations we construct of it. 39. I thank Nancy Nersessian for suggesting this name.
Thomas (1965), pp. 349–40.
‘God’s eye’ realism is Putnam’s term. This name implicitly recognizes that metaphysical realism draws upon a cosmology in which the independence of the created world of human knowing subjects is an article of faith. Would-be scientific realists have discarded the cosmology (in that they do not advance theological arguments for realism) yet as realists they still cling to the dualistic ontology it implies.
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Gooding, D. (1990). A realistic role for experiment. In: Experiment and the Making of Meaning. Science and Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0707-2_7
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