Abstract
Basic problems of the epistemology of the natural sciences and the empirical basis and the thematic attitude of the natural sciences.
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Notes
- 1.
Popper’s early Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie written 1930–1932 and published 1979 by Hanssen was still written in the wake of Neo-Kantianism. Popper’s positive evaluation but also his critique of the Vienna School shows the traces of the influence of Kant’s Critique as well as Kant’s appraisal and critique of Hume, cf. Schäfer 1988, 35f.
- 2.
Mill 1977, Book III.
- 3.
Kant KGS III, Critique of Pure Reason, B 819 in “II. Transcendental Doctrine of Methods.”
- 4.
Cf. Lakatos 1976, 95f. Lakatos mentions no epistemologists who defended his “dogmatic falsificationism.” What has been called “naïve falsificationism” above he calls “naïve methodological falsificationism” as opposed to “sophisticated methodological falsificationism,” cf. 103ff and 116ff.
- 5.
- 6.
The answer of the sophisticated methodological falsificationism to the conventionalism of Lakatos also includes a sophisticated re-interpretation of Kuhn’s crises and revolutions in the sciences. The paradigm is understood as a research program and such research programs have protective belts against negative problem shifts. Cf. Lakatos et al. eds. 1976, 115ff; 135; 155.
- 7.
On statistical mechanics and the special situation in quantum mechanics, cf. Sect. 8.4 below.
- 8.
Kuhn 1970.
- 9.
They are revolutions in an old system of the distribution of political power prepared by long periods of economic, political, and intellectual changes in a society. A politically dominated but economically already dominating social class finally succeeds in a sudden and violent struggle for being the dominating factor in the distribution of political power. This implies, however, that the political revolution is precisely restricted to the political question of the distribution of power in a state. Kuhn never referred to Kant’s Copernican revolution. The image behind Kant’s metaphor is the image of the revolutions (original Latin meaning of revolutio) of the planets including sun and moon around the earth. According to the Copernican revolution of these “revolutions” the planets, including the earth, revolve around the sun. Kant’s metaphor connecting the Copernican problem of the revolutions of the stars with the French political revolution called his philosophical revolution a Copernican revolution emphasizing that his revolution, namely, the thesis that the a priori is not in the things, but in the understanding of the things in the transcendental unity of apperception. This really was a universal radical paradigm shift in epistemology. Kuhn’s revolutions in the sciences are only modifications of pre-given patterns.
- 10.
Kuhn 1976, mentions viewpoints that are able to soften the relativistic consequences of his incommensurability thesis of paradigms. He mentions in his defense Quine’s problem of radical translation, but this problem is a puzzle for a lingualistic understanding of the problem of translation, i.e., a problem for the epistemology of the human and not of the natural sciences. The real problem is that observation sentences are according to Quine always theory-laden, cf. Quine 1996, I, 2–4. It is questionable whether Quine’s problem of radical translations can be used to defend Kuhn’s incommensurability of paradigms. Cf. the discussion below.
- 11.
- 12.
Cf. Cushing 1994, on the fate of Bohm’s theory, e.g., 45; 144f; 175.
- 13.
- 14.
Cushing 1994, sections 2.2 and 2.3; the historical fact that this new epistemological approach was triggered by the specific epistemological problems of quantum mechanics is a contingent historical condition. Cushing’s description of the structure of theories covers classical as well as post-classical physics.
- 15.
The caveat refers to some remarks that seem to imply psychologism; cf., e.g., the short reflections in Cushing 1994, 11/12. The watershed between phenomenology and implicit or explicit psychologism is the understanding of “phenomenon.” Cushing’s way out is simply to declare phenomena to be the final court of approval for disputes about science.
- 16.
Cf. Cushing 1994, 10 and 13, on Kepler’s first law of planetary motion.
- 17.
Cf. Cushing 1994, 11 and 13ff.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
Cf. Gibbins 1987. The quietist attitude and instrumentalism, but also positivistic attempts to reduce the problems to an analytic logico-linguistic problem, surfaced in the wake of the problems of quantum mechanics.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
Ideas II uses occasionally “reduction” for “abstraction,” cf. Hua IV §§2–4, 25. The Crisis uses only abstraction. The precise meaning of “abstraction” and “reduction” needs further explication in the following §§.
- 24.
- 25.
A perfect interpretation of Hua VI, §§ 8–10, the last systematic version of Husserl’s reflections on the history of the mathematics and physics, can be found in Moran 2013 ch. 3. There are, however, as mentioned, other works of Husserl and secondary literature that are of interest for a phenomenological epistemology; cf. also below Sects. 8.1, 8.3.
- 26.
Hua VI, §35.
- 27.
Hua IV, §2.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
Examples are the striving of objects “below the moon” to move down to earth, a striving that can be more or less controlled by additional actions and their means, e.g., with bow and arrow; the attraction and repulsion of animals forcing them to move in certain directions, and the forces behind the movement of the celestial bodies influencing selection of viewpoints that are relevant for all of these methods.
- 31.
This was and is the case in astronomy.
- 32.
Cf. Mill 1977, Book III, especially 390ff. Mill and Herschel are immediate forrunners of the epistemological analyses of experimental research in the twentieth century. The tradition of the empiricists from Bacon to Locke and Hume praise observation and experiment but they never offered an epistemological analysis of the methodology of experiments. What follows is not an interpretation of an epistemological analysis of the methodology of experiments. What follows is not an interpretation of Mill’s methods; it is a selection of viewpoints that are relevant for all of these methods.
- 33.
Popper 1968, ch. 3, sect. 12, 59ff. introduced the terminological distinction between initial conditions and causal conditions in his logico-methodological analysis of the essential factors in experimental situations.
- 34.
- 35.
- 36.
Popper 1968, §§7, 8, 28.
- 37.
Quine 1960, ch. 2, §7f.
- 38.
Quine 1996, I, 1–4.
- 39.
What is said about theory-laden sentences in the sciences can be reduced to the gavagai puzzle if the terminological limits are supposed to be determined by incommensurable methodological paradigms. Cf. Sect. 7.2 above about Kuhn.
- 40.
Cf. Sect. 9.2 below.
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Seebohm, T.M. (2015). The Empirical Basis and the Thematic Attitude of the Natural Sciences. In: History as a Science and the System of the Sciences. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 77. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13587-8_7
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