[Critical-Realism] RTS Reading 1

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all

Majority opinion in our recent discussion seemed to favour a reading of RTS, followed by SRHE then DPF.

Ruth and I were mentioned as possible 'moderators'. We've therefore consulted and decided to start. I'll do the posting, headed by a list of TOPICS COVERED - my take on and 'index' of what the section is mainly about. Ruth will then make some comments, and we'll both 'moderate'.

We don't of course make any assumption that Bhaskar is the only contemporary philosopher and social theorist worth reading, only that he's an important thinker whose work repays systematic study.

We strongly recommend that all participants have a hard copy of RTS by them.

Off we go then.

Mervyn (and Ruth)

RTS1 Preface

TOPICS COVERED

 

The 'problems of philosophy's. Bhaskar's project to resolve them foreshadowed.

 

The relation between philosophy and science.  Relative autonomy. Underlabouring.

 

Aim of book: an adequate account of science, pre-empting a return to positivism.

The critique of positivism - an ongoing project.

 

Context: a Copernican revolution in the philosophy of science, critiquing positivism.

Issuing in the Bhaskarian elaboration of a revised ontology.

 

Philosophy must also show the limits of science. Scientific realism is not scientism.



***



{1978 Edition}

 

Preface

 

It has often been claimed, and perhaps more often felt, that the

problems of philosophy have been solved.  And yet, like the

proverbial frog at the bottom of the beer mug, they have always

reappeared. There was a phase in recent philosophy when it was

widely held that the problem was the problems and not their

solution.  In practice, however, this interesting idea was usually

coupled with the belief that termination of philosophical

reflection of the traditional kind would be in itself sufficient

to resolve the problems to which, it was held, philosophical

reflection had given rise.

         Whatever the merits of such a view in general, it is

quite untenable for any philosopher who is concerned with science.

For in one science after another recent developments, or in some

cases the lack of them, have forced old philosophical problems to

the fore.  Thus the dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus as

to whether being or becoming is ultimate lies not far from the

centre of methodological controversy in physics; while the dispute

between rationalists and empiricists over the respective roles of

the a priori and the empirical continues to dominate

methodological discussion in economics.  Sociologists are making

increasing use of the allegedly discredited Aristotelian typology

of causes.  And the problem of universals has re-emerged in an

almost Platonic form in structural linguistics, anthropology and

developmental biology.  The spectre of determinism continues to

haunt many of the sciences; and the problem of 'free-will' is

still a problem for psychology.

         In this context one might have expected a ferment of

creative activity within the philosophy of science, and to a

degree this has occurred.  But the latter's capacity for

autonomous growth is limited.  For the critical or analytical

philosopher of science can only say as much as the philosophical

tools at his disposal enable him to say.  And if philosophy lags

behind the needs of the moment then he is left in the position of

a Priestley forced, 

 

Preface 7

 

by the inadequacy of his conceptual equipment,

to think of oxygen as 'dephlogisticated air';1 or, of a Winch

baffled by an alien sociology.2

         Hegel may have exaggerated when he said that philosophy

always arrives on the scene too late.3  Yet there can be little

doubt that our theory of knowledge has scarcely come to terms

with, let alone resolved the crises induced by, the changes that

have taken place across the whole spectrum of scientific (and one

might add social and political) thought.  In this respect our

present age contrasts unfavourably with both Ancient Greece and

Post-Renaissance Europe, where there was a close and mutually

beneficial relationship between science and philosophy.  It is true

that in the second of these periods there was a progressive

'problem-shift' within philosophy from the question of the content

of knowledge to the meta-question of its status as such.4  This

shift was in part a response to the consolidation of the Newtonian

world-view, until by Kant's time its fundamental axioms could be

regarded as a priori conditions of the possibility of any

empirical knowledge.  However, those philosophers of the present

who insist upon their total autonomy from the natural and human

sciences not only impoverish, but delude themselves.  For they

thereby condemn themselves to living in the shadow cast by the

great scientific thought of the past.

         Anyone who doubts that scientific theories constitute a

significant ingredient in philosophical thought should consider

what the course of intellectual history might have been if gestalt

psychology had been established in place of Hartley's principle

of the association of ideas; or if the phenomena of electricity

and magnetism had come to be regarded as more basic than those of

impact and gravity; or if sounds and smells had been taken as

constitutive of the basic stuff of reality and the rich tapestry

of the visual-tactile world had been regarded, like a Beethoven

symphony or the perfume of a rose, as a mere effect of those

primary powers.  Suppose further that

 

 1 See e.g. S. E. Toulmin, 'Crucial Experiments: Priestley and

Lavoisier', The Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XVIII

(1957), pp. 205-20; and J. B. Conant, The Overthrow of the

Phlogiston Theory.

 2 p. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, p. 114.

 3 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Preface.

 Cf. G. Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science, p.

2

 

8 A Realist Theory of Science

 

philosophers had taken biology or economics as their paradigm of

a science rather than physics; or 16th not 17th century physics

as their paradigm of scientific activity.  Would not our

philosophical inheritance have been vastly different?  As this

is primarily a problem for the philosophy of philosophy rather

than the philosophy of science, I shall not dwell on this point

further here.  Its significance for our story will emerge in due

course.

         The primary aim of this study is the development of a

systematic realist account of science.  In this way I hope to

provide a comprehensive alternative to the positivism that has

usurped the title of science.  I think that only the position

developed here can do full justice to the rationality of

scientific practice or sustain the intelligibility of such

scientific activities as theory-construction and experimentation. 

And that while recent developments in the philosophy of science

mark a great advance on positivism they must eventually prove

vulnerable to positivist counter-attack, unless carried to the

limit worked out here.

         My subsidiary aim is thus to show once-and-for-all why

no return to positivism is possible.  This of course depends upon

my primary aim.  For any adequate answer to the critical meta-

question 'what are the conditions of the plausibility of an

account of science?' presupposes an account which is capable of

thinking of those conditions as special cases.  That is to say, to

adapt an image of Wittgenstein's, one can only see the fly in the

fly-bottle if one's perspective is different from that of the

fly.5  And the sting is only removed from a system of thought when

the particular conditions under which it makes sense are

described.  In practice this task is simplified for us by the fact

that the conditions under which positivism is plausible as an

account of science are largely co-extensive with the conditions

under which experience is significant in science.  This is of

course an important and substantive question which we could say,

echoing Kant, no account of science can decline, but positivism

cannot ask, because (it will be seen) the idea of insignificant

experiences transcends the very bounds of its thought.6

         This book is written in the context of vigorous critical

activity in The philosophy of science.  In the course of this the

twin

5 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 309.

6 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to the 1st Edition.

 

Preface 9

 

templates of the positivist view of science, viz. the ideas that

science has a certain base and a deductive structure, have been

subjected to damaging attack.  With a degree of arbitrariness one

can separate this critical activity into two strands.  The first,

represented by writers such as Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Feyerabend,

Toulmin, Polanyi and Ravetz, emphasises the social character of

science and focusses particularly on the phenomena of scientific

change and development.  It is generally critical of any monistic

interpretation of scientific development, of the kind

characteristic of empiricist historiography and implicit in any

doctrine of the foundations of knowledge.  The second strand,

represented by the work of Scriven, Hanson, Hesse and Harre among

others, calls attention to the stratification of science.  It

stresses the difference between explanation and prediction and

emphasises the role played by models in scientific thought.  It

is highly critical of the deductivist view of the structure of

scientific theories, and more generally of any exclusively formal

account of science.  This study attempts to synthesise these two

critical strands; and to show in particular why and how the

realism presupposed by the first strand must be extended to cover

the objects of scientific thought postulated by the second strand. 

In this way I will be describing the nature and the development

of what has been hailed as the 'Copernican Revolution' in the

philosophy of science. 7

         To see science as a social activity, and as structured

and discriminating in its thought, constitutes a significant step

in our understanding of science.  But, I shall argue, without the

support of a revised ontology, and in particular a conception of

the world as stratified and differentiated too, it is impossible

to steer clear of the Scylla of holding the structure dispensable

in the long run (back to empiricism) without being pulled into the

Charybdis of justifying it exlusively in terms of the fixed or

changing needs of the scientific community (a form of neo-Kantian

pragmatism exemplified by e.g. Toulmin and Kuhn).  In this study

I attempt to show how such a revised ontology is in fact

presupposed by the social activity of science.  The basic principle

of realist philosophy of science, viz. that perception gives us

access to things and experimental activity access to structures

that exist independently of us, is very simple.  Yet the 

 

7 R. Harre, Principles of Scientific Thinking, p. 15.

 

10 A Realist Theory of Science

 

full working out of this principle implies a radical account of the nature

of causal laws, viz. as expressing tendencies of things, not conjunctions of

events.  And it implies that a constant conjunction of events is no more a

necessary than a sufficient condition for a causal law.

     I do not claim in this book to solve any general problems of

philosophy.  It is my intention merely to give an adequate account of

science.  Philosophers, including philosophers of science, have for

too long regarded the philosophy of science as a simple substitution

instance of some more general theory of knowledge.  This is a

situation which has worked to the disadvantage of both philosophy and

knowledge.  If, however, we reverse the customary procedure and

substitute the more specific 'science' (or even better 'sciences') for

'knowledge', considerable illumination of many traditional

epistemological problems can, I think, be achieved.  And some even, in

so far as the 'knowledge' we are concerned with is that produced by

'science', become susceptible of definitive solution.  The result of

this reversal will also be a philosophy which has a greater relevance

than is the case at present for scientific practice.  In this sense my

objective could be said to be a 'philosophy for science'.  For I

willingly confess to Lockean motives.  That is to say, I believe it to

be an essential (though not the only) part of the business of

philosophy to act as the under-labourer, and occasionally as the

mid-wife, of science.8 I have therefore tried in this study both to

relate the philosophy of science to the more general historical

concerns of philosophy; and at the same time to indicate more

precisely than is usual the consequences for scientific practice of

the methodological strategies implied by different philosophies of

science.

     We are too apt to forget the frailty of both our science and our

philosophy.  There can be no certainty that they will survive and

flourish; or, if they do, that they will benefit mankind.

Civilisation is, like man himself, perhaps nothing more than a

temporary rupture in the normal order of things.9  It is thus also part

of the job of the philosopher to show the limits of science.  And, in

this broader sense, to seek to ensure that the Owl of Minerva takes

flight before the final falling of the dusk.

 

8 J. Locke, Essay

Concerning Human Understanding, Epistle to the Reader.

 

9 Cf. M. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. XXIII.

 

Preface 11

 

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to Alan

Montefiore and Rom Harre for reading earlier versions of this work; to

Rom Harre and Hilary Wainwright for their continual encouragement; to

many other colleagues and friends for their help; and to Mrs E. Browne

for typing the manuscript.

 

ROY BHASKAR

University of Edinburgh

April 1974

 

 

Preface to the 2nd edition

 

This edition includes a postscript and an index. The postscript

enables me to critically comment on the book. The index fills a major

lacuna in the first edition of the work. Francis Roberts and Robin

Kinross helped me to compile it.

 

ROY BHASKAR

University of Edinburgh

September 1977

 

  


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