Volume 2, Issue 6: The Rational Reconstruction of the History of Philosophy of Science

The Rational Reconstruction of the History of Philosophy of Science

John Losee, The Golden Age of Philosophy of Science 1945 to 2000: Logical Constructionism, Descriptivism, Normative Naturalism, and Foundationalism. London–New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. ISBN: 9781350169135, 319 pages, paperback, $39.95

 

 

History of philosophy of science is a relatively new field where systematic philosophers, historians, sociologists are working together to get a clearer picture of the unfolding of what is called “philosophy of science”. Since we are talking about the history of a concrete discipline, its practice consists of hundreds, if not thousands of years, thus ranging from Aristotle to Carnap and beyond. Nonetheless, one of the major focuses of historians has been the twentieth century; the main reason is that in the last few decades, philosophy of science became institutionalized, funded, and professionally practiced in journals, conference proceedings, and congresses. It has matured, so to say, in previously unknown and unseen forms.

            Be as it may, beyond dealing with individual contributions, providing locally-focused narratives, a comprehensive and general story about how philosophy of science evolved and changed during the last century is still missing from the palette. Given the title of John Losee’s new book, The Golden Age of Philosophy of Science 1945 to 2000: Logical Reconstruction, Descriptivism, Normative Naturalism, and Foundationalism, one could hope for a very important first step in the direction of unfolding that general and comprehensive history; at least for the second half of the twentieth century. Without spoiler, not everyone will be happy after finishing the last chapter of the book. Let’s see why not.

            Losee identifies four major approaches of philosophy of science from the 1945-2000 period. These are, according to the quite explicit subtitle of the book, (1) logical reconstructionism, (2) descriptivism, (3) normative naturalism, (4) foundationalism. The main aim here is to show and reconstruct the core points and most important arguments of these approaches, to contrast them, and to see how they evolved. Losee formulates thus four major questions that he sets to answer in the book:

 

(I) Should philosophy of science be a normative-prescriptive discipline?

(II) If so, can philosophy of science achieve normative-prescriptive status without designating as inviolable some evaluative principles?

(III) How ought competing philosophies of science be evaluated?

(IV) What is the role of the history of science in this appraisal?

 

These are indeed important and fundamental questions about how to think and do philosophy of science. While the formation of these questions highlights some background assumptions of Losee (e.g. in (I) whether philosophy of science shall be normative or not, leaving out a pluralist option), one shall go through all the chapters to see how Losee’s narrative and evaluation workf to answer his questions.

            The book is structured simply but helpfully: each option got a longer chapter (though evidently “logical reconstructionism” is the longest), with a short interlude in the middle. 

            By logical reconstrucionism, Losee generally means, obviously, the philosophy of science of logical empiricism, though he starts from a rather forgotten and somewhat obscure figure, Norman Campbell. The backbone of the book, however, is given on page 17, where Losee identifies the main panels of what he calls the “orthodox program for philosophy of science. It should be familiar to everyone as it consists mainly of a sharp separation of the observational and theoretical language, the objectivity and neutrality of that observational language, a deductive scheme for explanation (and prediction), a declaration of the rationality and progress of science, a normative ideal of conceptual clarification and explication. Losee sets forth all these ideas in some detail and shows the main strength of the orthodox position.

            After reconstructing logical reconstructionism, Losee moved on to its critics. But at this point, one cannot recognize any general pattern or general motivation beyond the wish to criticize the orthodox view. Following the previous chapter, Losee presents various critical authors concerning each topic. We see thus how Feigl, Achinstein, Feyerabend, and Quine attacked the sharp separation of the observational-theoretical languages (and how Nagel, Hempel, Putnam, Scheffler, and others reacted to the charges), and how Mary Hesse attacked the orthodox analysis of theory-testing; moving forward we got a section about the doubts regarding explanation, confirmation (mainly Goodman’s riddle, Lakatos’ and Popper’s ideas on Carnap); got criticism of the ontological status and view of theories (whether they are models, statements, sentences, uninterpreted formulas); and see how views on scientific change and progress evolved (mainly due to the charges of Feyerabend and Kuhn). When the chapter is over, we are left without any proper solutions or general narrative about how these critics evolved, or on what bases were they selected—besides, of course, the factual line that they criticized the orthodox view. But were they the only scholars to attack logical reconstructionism? That is, on what base did Losee select his authors and approaches?

            Very interestingly, only at this point, after 160 substantive pages, we got a “classificatory matrix for philosophies of science”. It is centered on two basic ideas, namely that certain philosophies claim to have normative-prescriptive goals regarding science, that is they aim to analyze and evaluate the practice of scientists to provide better (whatever that means) methods. The other idea is that certain philosophies presuppose “inviolable principles within philosophy of science” (p. 161).

 

 

	N	¬N
I	N & I	¬N & I
¬I	N & ¬I	¬N & ¬I

 

In this matrix, N means normative-prescriptive intent (that is, ¬N means a purely descriptive philosophy of science) and I stands for the commitment that there exist trans-historical, inviolable principles within philosophy of science. Given that, we got four options. One would say that that there is no such philosophy that is purely descriptive (¬N), but still concerns with trans-historical and inviolable principles as there are no such strange creatures (thus ¬N & I is empty). But there might be such philosophies of science that are descriptive and are concerned with accidental principles of scientific practice (¬N & ¬I); there are also those who try to prescribe new principles and methods to science either be imposing on it certain trans-historical inviolable principles (N & I), or by dehydrating certain actually followed and identified principles (N & ¬I), the former is called foundationalism, the latter as normative naturalism. As it turns out, Losee devotes the remainder of the book to foundationalists, normative naturalists, and what he calls “descriptivists” (¬N & ¬I).

            So right after this helpful tool, we got to know “Descriptivism” in Chapter 4. Losee distinguishes two versions of descriptivism: the modest one is similar to detective work where one aims to find and note the actual “evaluative practice” that led the scientists to their preferences (p. 163) without much further ado. But there is a more robust descriptivism, which aims at—besides making quasi protocols about the evaluative practices of scientists—giving a theory about those practices; the robust descriptivist “purports to explain why science is as it is” (ibid.). It won’t make it better, won’t prescribe new medicine to the scientists to do their job better in any sense, but goes beyond mere recognition and notification by giving various forms of explanation for the work of science. (It is a further question, of course, whether by seeing in detail with the help of explanations how science is done, one might try to revise the practice by eliminating those elements that are deemed problematic given our expectations or official goals of science. This won’t be possible on the modest version as there we see only that there is a problematic issue, but will not know how the problem emerges or what causes that problem.)

            Among descriptivists, we are introduced to the approaches of Paul Meehl, Gerald Holton, Ron Giere, Paul Thagard, Alison Gopnik, Stephen Toulmin, and other defenders of the evolutionary views, and finally to the Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. The main virtue of this chapter is its diversity and the fact that Losee discussed (though painfully shortly) many such figures that are often neglected due to their temporal closeness to us. From this perspective, Losee provides a welcomed and hitherto missing systematic account of the history of (close-enough) contemporary philosophy of science.

            We have no time, however, to noodle and to lament over descriptivism as Losee keeps the wheels turning. By the time he finished the last paragraph on the strong programme (noting that the burden of proof on its defenders ‘is heavy indeed”, p. 208), he starts off with normative naturalism. Adherents of this approach claim that 

 

normative naturalism is a prescriptive enterprise whose acknowledged aim is to uncover standards for the appraisal of scientific theories and explanations. It is the normative naturalist position that such standards, like scientific theories themselves, have provisional status only. They are subject to correction or abandonment in the light of further experience. (p. 209)

 

It might be easy, one could say, to be a descriptivist, go for the archives, write the detective stories; though robust descriptivists have the burden of providing theories and well beyond the stories, it is not a task that cannot be completed (as Losee notes, theories are abundant). But providing standards, based on historical considerations without falling back on pure historicism or doing a simple rational reconstruction under historical veil, sounds indeed a complex and challenging thing to do.

            It should not be surprising thus that the first author we meet here is Otto Neurath, the most colorful figure of the Vienna Circle to whom we might thank the famous boat-repair image. According to Neurath, human life, including science and philosophy, is changing constantly and we do not have any solid foundation to step on while leaving the circle to rethink our enterprises. We always work on the open sea, like sailors who have to rebuilt and repair their ships while sailing. Everything is changing and all standards and recipes we can hope for are given already within our practices (hence the naturalism and hence the normativity).

            So far so good. But Losee closes the discussion of Neurath by claiming that “normative-prescriptive decisions may be required at any point during the voyage. [Still good.] Normative status is conferred upon these decisions by theinviolable directive principle ‘seek coherence within the corpus of scientific propositions’. Neurath’s version of normative naturalism falls within the [N & I] box” (p. 212). This is really strange. It might be true that Neurath put extra emphasis on the role science plays in our evaluation strategies. But that is true of all naturalists; in fact that goes to the core of the definition of what naturalism amounts to. Thus we have two options, either to classify all naturalists as adherents of N & I, that is, opting for normative claims based on inviolable principles, or to make explicit what Losee is emphasizing in the context of Dudley Shapere a few pages later:

 

[Shapere] noted that evaluative standards are developed in the course of the practice of science. [Ta-da, Neurath agrees!] These standards have prescriptive force. [Neurath follows.] They specify how scientific theories ought to be formulated and appraised. [Yep-yep.] No such standard is inviolable, however. [Neurath is nodding vehemently.] Standards are subject to revision and replacement within the history of science. [That’s is the main claim of Neurath the historian.] (p. 220).

 

This is not a book on Neurath, of course; it is still sad though that he is used only as a springboard.

            But at least his normative-naturalist company is quite respectful. We got almost two pages of Quine; four and a half pages of Arthur Fine and his followers; two and a half of Kitcher; nine pages of Shapere; and sixteen pages of Larry Laudan (with some Kuhn and Feyerabend). Who knows what were the editing standpoints of Losee; how got Shapere such extra place against Quine, or Laudan above Kitcher. This is a big issue. In a historical, or at least an officially historically aimed book that lists and discusses many-many divergent authors, one would expect to get an explicit guide or policy-note about what were the selective methods, the substantive points that determined whom we got to discuss and at which length (influence? relevance? detailedness of the original proposal? interestingness? fruitfulness? strength? – who knows).

            But do not waste too much time on thinking about this; Losee is moving forward as well. The sixth and almost last chapter is devoted to “Foundationalism”. Foundationalists claim, in general, that among our accepted sentences / statements / beliefs / propositions, whatever, there is a peculiar subset which is accepted without support from the others, and the others are accepted on the base or foundation of the elements of this subset. There are many candidates for this special role, and also for those values that the elements of this subset shall exemplify to count as foundational.  Among these, we find internal consistency, observations, or confirmations, operational definitions, etc. Losee guides us through many (already) historical and contemporary accounts, such as of Schlick, Cartwright, Lakatos, van Fraassen, Feigl, and others. We see all their merits and drawbacks, and Losee really helps us with many examples to see what is at stake.

            At the end of the chapter, we are left again without a prompt conclusion. The last, chapter, however, gives some very important, but really sketchy ideas about what Losee thinks about this whole endeavor. As he has shown in the particular chapters, as soon as one position is seemingly defeated by a counterargument, a new position, similar to the defeated one, emerges and handles the counterargument at a certain cost. But life and history move forward, just as philosophy, and another counterargument raises its head against the one refined position. And so and so forth. “It might seem,” says Losee, “that to argue on behalf of one of these alternatives is to beg the question against the other” (p. 281). But we are not lost entirely. Losee quotes affirmatively Friedrich Waismann’s idea that we shall build cases, “to gain a favorable verdict” (ibid.). 

            So, in the end, Losee quickly shows how to build a compelling case both for descriptivism and foundationalism. (He dismisses normative naturalism because it either fails to establish, after all, normative status for historically excavated principles, or imports trans-historical principles. Though it is not made that explicit, but presumably Losee wants to say that normative naturalism, in the end, falls back either on descriptivism or foundationalism.) The cases are both centered on actual, compelling features and at least in principle not impossible counter-cases. That is, we see that science and its standards, principles are always changing and historically philosophers only reacted to these changes and not initiated them, thus descriptivism could be a virtuous position. Nonetheless, here comes foundationalism, even if hitherto no inviolable principle was found means nothing about future possibilities. Be as it may, argue as we wish, Losee ends the book with the following quote from Worrall, “ultimately we must stop arguing and ‘dogmatically’ assert certain basic principles of rationality” (p. 284). Quite a statement.

            After finishing Losee’s book, one has very mixed feelings. On the one hand, Losee shows a really important talent in simplifying complex matters and delivers an educationally compelling book for the interested reader about the various positions in the philosophy of science. He provided countless examples, many diagrams; his style is, though far from being literary, it is really focused and leaves no room for misunderstanding and unfruitful aesthetical variations. From this angle, students and teachers of philosophy will benefit the most from the book. A very detailed course could be based on the book.

            On the other hand, as a book about the history of philosophy of science, it is deceptive. Or, to be more precise, it is disappointing if you approach history from a peculiar perspective. Losee’s book does the same to the history of philosophy of science what Scott Soames’s recent volumes did to the history of analytic philosophy. Both Soames and Losee provide abstract conceptual clarifications, rational reconstructions of those events and key notions that they deemed useful or interesting, and still reproduce some old received views in various forms (e.g. on page 6: “logical positivists sought to provide a secure epistemological foundation for the sciences”). This is one important form of doing history of philosophy. But for those, who waited for more nuanced, contextual reconstructions that uncover motives, interchanges of ideas, conceptual embededness in further webs of ideologies, Losee book is not the required reading. As I said, the rational reconstruction of history is an important project; one could be sorry only because the history of philosophy of science still does not have its own textbook or engaging monograph that provides a systematic narrative, and from thisperspective, Losee book, based on its title, might deceive us.

            But, if you approach it with the right expectations, you will learn from it more than you can imagine at first, and at every page, Losee gets better and better in delivering complex historical positions in an actualist framework. Use it, teach, deal with it, but do not think that only this is what history consists of. Be as it may, put it on your bookshelf—it looks amazing, contains no typos, and will be handy on several occasions.

 

Adam Tamas Tuboly

Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Supported by the MTA Lendulet Morals and Science Research group and by the MTA Premium Postdoctoral Scholarship.