Re: [Critical-Realism] RTS Reading 1

[Wendy Olsen <Wendy.Olsen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Enjoyed re-reading the preface.  What a writer.

Thanks for your commentaries so far, enjoying lurking.

May I send the preface to an Indian contact, prof. D. N. Reddy of univ. of
Hyderabad.

No copyright problems I suppose.

Yours
wendy

Quoting 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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