The roots of the silver tree: Boyle,alchemy, and teleology

Though Robert Boyle called final causes one of the most important subjects for a natural philosopher to study, his own treatise on the subject, the Disquisition about Final Causes, has received comparatively little scholarly attention. In this paper, I explicate Boyle's complex argument against the use of teleological explanations for inanimate bodies, such as metals. The central object of this argument is a mysterious allusion to a silver plant. I claim that the silver plant is best understood as a reference to alchemical product: the Arbor Dianae, an offshoot of George Starkey's recipe for the Philosophers' Stone. Then, I show how the context of alchemy not only clarifies Boyle's argument but also places it within a wider dialectic about matter and teleology. I then contrast the parallel arguments of Boyle and John Ray on the question of whether metals have divine purposes and show that the difference is explained by Boyle's belief in the transmutation of metals.     

Hobbes on natural philosophy as “True Physics” and mixed mathematics

In this paper, I offer an alternative account of the relationship of Hobbesian geometry to natural philosophy by arguing that mixed mathematics provided Hobbes with a model for thinking about it. In mixed mathematics, one may borrow causal principles from one science and use them in another science without there being a deductive relationship between those two sciences. Natural philosophy for Hobbes is mixed because an explanation may combine observations from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles from geometry (the ‘why’). My argument shows that Hobbesian natural philosophy relies upon suppositions that bodies plausibly behave according to these borrowed causal principles from geometry, acknowledging that bodies in the world may not actually behave this way. First, I consider Hobbes's relation to Aristotelian mixed mathematics and to Isaac Barrow's broadening of mixed mathematics in Mathematical Lectures (1683). I show that for Hobbes maker's knowledge from geometry provides the ‘why’ in mixed-mathematical explanations. Next, I examine two explanations from De corpore Part IV: (1) the explanation of sense in De corpore 25.1-2; and (2) the explanation of the swelling of parts of the body when they become warm in De corpore 27.3. In both explanations, I show Hobbes borrowing and citing geometrical principles and mixing these principles with appeals to experience.     

Inference to the best explanation and Norton's material theory of induction

I argue that we should consider Norton's material theory of induction as consisting of two largely independent claims. First, there is the claim that material facts license inductions - a claim which I interpret as a type of contextualism about induction. Second, there is the claim that there are no universal rules of induction. While a good case can be made for the first claim, I believe that Norton's arguments for the second claim are lacking. In particular, I spell out Norton's argument against the claim that all induction may be reduced to inference to the best explanation, and argue that it is not persuasive. Rejecting this part of Norton's theory does not however require us to abandon the first claim that material facts license inductions. In this way, I distinguish the parts of the material theory of induction we should happily accept from the parts about which we should be more skeptical.     

The material theory of induction and the epistemology of thought experiments

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. The argument view of thought experiments claims that thought experiments are arguments, and that they function epistemically however arguments do. These two views have generated a great deal of discussion, although there hasn't been much written about their combination. I argue that despite some interesting harmonies, there is a serious tension between them. I consider several options for easing this tension, before suggesting a set of changes to the argument view that I take to be consistent with Norton's fundamental philosophical commitments, and which retain what seems intuitively correct about the argument view. These changes require that we move away from a unitary epistemology of thought experiments and towards a more pluralist position.     

Two arguments for scientific realism unified

Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central to the most influential arguments for scientific realism. Challenges to such inferences, however, based on radical discontinuities within the history of science, have motivated a distinctive style of revision to the original argument. Conceding the historical claim, selective realists argue that accompanying even the most revolutionary change is the retention of significant parts of replaced theories, and that a realist attitude towards the systematically retained constituents of our scientific theories can still be defended. Selective realists thereby hope to secure the argument from success against apparent historical counterexamples. Independently of that objective, historical considerations have inspired a further argument for selective realism, where evidence for the retention of parts of theories is itself offered as justification for adopting a realist attitude towards them. Given the nature of these arguments from success and from retention, a reasonable expectation is that they would complement and reinforce one another, but although several theses purport to provide such a synthesis the results are often unconvincing. In this paper I reconsider the realist’s favoured type of scientific success, novel success, offer a revised interpretation of the concept, and argue that a significant consequence of reconfiguring the realist’s argument from success accordingly is a greater potential for its unification with the argument from retention.     

Kant and the scope of analogy in the life sciences

In the present paper I investigate the role that analogy plays in eighteenth-century biology and in Kant's philosophy of biology. I will argue that according to Kant, biology, as it was practiced in the eighteenth century, is fundamentally based on analogical reflection. However, precisely because biology is based on analogical reflection, biology cannot be a proper science. I provide two arguments for this interpretation. First, I argue that although analogical reflection is, according to Kant, necessary to comprehend the nature of organisms, it is also necessarily insufficient to fully comprehend the nature of organisms. The upshot of this argument is that for Kant our understanding of organisms is necessarily limited. Second, I argue that Kant did not take biology to be a proper science because biology was based on analogical arguments. I show that Kant stemmed from a philosophical tradition that did not assign analogical arguments an important justificatory role in natural science. Analogy, according to this conception, does not provide us with apodictically certain cognition. Hence, sciences based on analogical arguments cannot constitute proper sciences.     

Scientific freedom: its grounds and their limitations

In various debates about science, appeal is made to the freedom of scientific research. A rationale in favor of this freedom is rarely offered. In this paper, two major arguments are reconstructed that promise to lend support to a principle of scientific freedom. According to the epistemological argument, freedom of research is required in order to organize the collective cognitive effort we call science efficiently. According to the political argument, scientific knowledge needs to be generated in ways that are independent of the major political powers because of the important role it plays for the citizens and their capacity to form well informed political preferences. Both arguments are examined critically in order to identify their strengths and limitations. I argue that the scientific freedom established by both rests on a number of critical preconditions, and that the arguments’ force must be weighed against competing societal interests and values in each case of their application. Appeal to a principle of scientific freedom should therefore never mark the end, but rather the beginning of a public debate about the ends and means of science.     

Un-conventional wisdom: theory-specificity in Reichenbach's geometric conventionalism

The standard account portrays Hans Reichenbach's argument for geometric conventionalism as based upon general epistemological concerns of verifiability. As such, his version of conventionalism ought to be equally well applicable to all theories that posit a geometric structure to space–time. But when Reichenbach's writings from the period between the publication of Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori and Axiomatik der Raum-Zeit-Lehre, i.e., between 1920 and 1924, are examined, a very different picture emerges. The argument for the conventionality of geometry that appears in these writings is tied to discussions of the theory of general relativity and Reichenbach explicitly argues that geometry in Minkowski space–time is not conventional once the definition of simultaneity is put in place. In light of this, the received interpretation of Reichenbach's position needs to be replaced with a theory-specific picture of geometric conventionalism. This change has interesting consequences for both the standard arguments against Reichenbach's view and for questions in Reichenbach scholarship.     

On Popper’s strong inductivism (or strongly inconsistent anti-inductivism)

It is generally accepted that Popper‘s degree of corroboration, though “inductivist” in a very general and weak sense, is not inductivist in a strong sense, i.e. when by ‘inductivism’ we mean the thesis that the right measure of evidential support has a probabilistic character. The aim of this paper is to challenge this common view by arguing that Popper can be regarded as an inductivist, not only in the weak broad sense but also in a narrower, probabilistic sense. In section 2, first, I begin by briefly characterizing the relevant notion of inductivism that is at stake here; second, I present and discuss the main Popperian argument against it and show that in the only reading in which the argument is formally it is restricted to cases of predicted evidence, and that even if restricted in this way the argument is formally valid it is nevertheless materially unsound. In section 3, I analyze the desiderata that, according to Popper, any acceptable measure for evidential support must satisfy, I clean away its ad-hoc components and show that all the remaining desiderata are satisfied by inductuvist-in-strict-sense measures. In section 4 I demonstrate that two of these desiderata, accepted by Popper, imply that in cases of predicted evidence any measure that satisfies them is qualitatively indistinguishable from conditional probability. Finally I defend that this amounts to a kind of strong inductivism that enters into conflict with Popper’s anti-inductivist argument and declarations, and that this conflict does not depend on the incremental versus non-incremental distinction for evidential-support measures, making Popper’s position inconsistent in any reading.     

Newton and action at a distance between bodies—A response to Andrew Janiak's “Three concepts of causation in Newton”

This article responds to Professor Andrew Janiak's recent attempt to defend the proposition that Isaac Newton did not believe in action at a distance between bodies (or any other kind of substance) (Janiak, 2013). His argument rests on a distinction between “three concepts of causation in Newton”, which leads him to conclude that although Newton did not believe in action at a distance between bodies, he was able to accept that gravity was a “distant action”. I critically examine Janiak's arguments here, and the historical evidence he brings to bear upon it, and argue that Professor Janiak's latest claims do nothing to undermine the view to which he is opposed, namely, that Newton did believe in the possibility of action at a distance between bodies.     

How to (properly) strengthen Bell's theorem using counterfactuals

Bell's theorem in its standard version demonstrates that the joint assumptions of the hidden-variable hypothesis and the principle of local causation lead to a conflict with quantum-mechanical predictions. In his latest counterfactual strengthening of Bell's theorem, Stapp attempts to prove that the locality assumption itself contradicts the quantum-mechanical predictions in the Hardy case. His method relies on constructing a complex, non-truth functional formula which consists of statements about measurements and outcomes in some region R, and whose truth value depends on the selection of a measurement setting in a space-like separated location L. Stapp argues that this fact shows that the information about the measurement selection made in L has to be present in R. I give detailed reasons why this conclusion can and should be resisted. Next I correct and formalize an informal argument by Shimony and Stein showing that the locality condition coupled with Einstein's criterion of reality is inconsistent with quantum-mechanical predictions. I discuss the possibility of avoiding the inconsistency by rejecting Einstein's criterion rather than the locality assumption.     

The use of the information-theoretic entropy in thermodynamics

When considering controversial thermodynamic scenarios such as Maxwell's demon, it is often necessary to consider probabilistic mixtures of macrostates. This raises the question of how, if at all, to assign entropy to them. The information-theoretic entropy is often used in such cases; however, no general proof of the soundness of doing so has been given, and indeed some arguments against doing so have been presented. We offer a general proof of the applicability of the information-theoretic entropy to probabilistic mixtures of macrostates that is based upon a probabilistic generalisation of the Kelvin statement of the second law. We defend the latter and make clear the other assumptions on which our main result depends. We also briefly discuss the interpretation of our result.     

The third law in Newton’s Waste book (or, the road less taken to the second law)

On the basis of evidence drawn from the Waste book, Westfall and Nicholas have argued that Newton arrived at his second law of motion by reflecting on the implications of the first law. I analyze another argument in the Waste book which reveals that Newton also arrived at the second law by another very different route. On this route, it is the consideration of the third law and the principle of conservation of motion—and not the first law—that prompts Newton to formulate the second law. The existence of these two routes is significant because each employs a distinct kind of reasoning about forces. Whereas the Nicholas-Westfall route via the principle of inertia bears the mark of Descartes’s influence, the alternative route proceeds from the action-reaction principle, which is widely regarded as an original Newtonian contribution to mechanics. In the course of exploring this alternate route to the second law, the origins and justification of the third law are examined.     

On value-laden science

Philosophical work on values in science is held back by widespread ambiguity about how values bear on scientific choices. Here, I disambiguate several ways in which a choice can be value-laden and show that this disambiguation has the potential to solve and dissolve philosophical problems about values in science. First, I characterize four ways in which values relate to choices: values can motivate, justify, cause, or be impacted by the choices we make. Next, I put my proposed taxonomy to work, using it to clarify one version of the argument from inductive risk. The claim that non-epistemic values must play a role in scientific choices that run inductive risk makes most sense as a claim about values being needed to justify such choices. The argument from inductive risk is not unique: many philosophical arguments about values in science can be more clearly understood and assessed by paying close attention to how values and choices are related.     

Cosmology and convention

I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are 'conventionalist’ in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in response to observations that falsified the standard model as it existed at the time. The use of conventionalist stratagems in response to unexpected observations implies that the field of cosmology is in a state of 'degenerating problemshift’ in the language of Imre Lakatos. I show that the 'concordance’ argument, often put forward by cosmologists in support of the current paradigm, is weaker than the convergence arguments that were made in the past in support of the atomic theory of matter or the quantization of energy.     

Energy Conservation in GTR

The topics of gravitational field energy and energy-momentum conservation in General Relativity theory have been unjustly neglected by philosophers. If the gravitational field in space free of ordinary matter, as represented by the metric g_ab itself, can be said to carry genuine energy and momentum, this is a powerful argument for adopting the substantivalist view of spacetime.This paper explores the standard textbook account of gravitational field energy and argues that (a) so-called stress-energy of the gravitational field is well-defined neither locally nor globally; and (b) there is no general principle of energy-momentum conservation to be found in General Relativity. I discuss the nature and justification of the zero-divergence law for ordinary stress-energy, and its possible connection with the failure of General Relativity to realise Mach's principle.     

It ain't necessarily so: Gravitational waves and energy transport

I review and critically examine the four textbook arguments commonly taken to establish that gravitational waves (GWs) carry energy-momentum: 1. the increase in kinetic energy that a GW confers on a ring of test particles, 3.Bondi/Feynman's Sticky Bead Argument of a GW heating up a detector, 3. nonlinearities within perturbation theory, construed as the gravity's contribution to its own source, and 4. the Noether Theorems, linking symmetries and conserved quantities. As it stands, each argument is found to be either contentious, or incomplete in that it presupposes substantive assumptions which the standard exposition glosses over. I finally investigate the standard interpretation of binary systems, according to which orbital decay is explained by the system's energy being dissipated via GW energy-momentum transport. I contend that for the textbook treatment of binary systems an alternative interpretation, drawing only on the general-relativistic equations of motions and the Einstein Equations, is available. It's argued to be even preferable to the standard interpretation. Thereby an inference to the best explanation for GW energy-momentum is blocked. I conclude that a defence of the claim that GWs carry energy can't rest on the standard arguments.     

A new twist to the No Miracles Argument for the success of science

J. D. Trout has recently developed a new defense of scientific realism, a new version of the No Miracles Argument. I critically evaluate Trout's novel defense of realism. I argue that Trout's argument for scientific realism and the related explanation for the success of science are self-defeating. In the process of arguing against the traditional realist strategies for explaining the success of science, he inadvertently undermines his own argument.     

On geometric objects,the non-existence of a gravitational stress-energy tensor,and the uniqueness of the Einstein field equation

The question of the existence of gravitational stress-energy in general relativity has exercised investigators in the field since the inception of the theory. Folklore has it that no adequate definition of a localized gravitational stress-energetic quantity can be given. Most arguments to that effect invoke one version or another of the Principle of Equivalence. I argue that not only are such arguments of necessity vague and hand-waving but, worse, are beside the point and do not address the heart of the issue. Based on a novel analysis of what it may mean for one tensor to depend in the proper way on another, which, en passant, provides a precise characterization of the idea of a “geometric object”, I prove that, under certain natural conditions, there can be no tensor whose interpretation could be that it represents gravitational stress-energy in general relativity. It follows that gravitational energy, such as it is in general relativity, is necessarily non-local. Along the way, I prove a result of some interest in own right about the structure of the associated jet bundles of the bundle of Lorentz metrics over spacetime. I conclude by showing that my results also imply that, under a few natural conditions, the Einstein field equation is the unique equation relating gravitational phenomena to spatiotemporal structure, and discuss how this relates to the non-localizability of gravitational stress-energy. The main theorem proven underlying all the arguments is considerably stronger than the standard result in the literature used for the same purposes (Lovelock's theorem of 1972): it holds in all dimensions (not only in four); it does not require an assumption about the differential order of the desired concomitant of the metric; and it has a more natural physical interpretation.     

Science,self improvement and the first industrial revolution

This study considers Newton's views on space and time with respect to some important ontologies of substance in his period. Specifically, it deals in a philosophico-historical manner with his conception of substance, attribute, existence, to actuality and necessity. I show how Newton links these “features” of things to his conception of God's existence with respect of infinite space and time. Moreover, I argue that his ontology of space and time cannot be understood without fully appreciating how it relates to the nature of Divine existence. In order to establish this, the ontology embodied in Newton's theory of predication is analysed, and shown to be different from the presuppositions of the ontological argument. From the historical point of view Gassendi's influence is stressed, via the mediation of Walter Charleton. Furthermore, Newton's thought on these matters is contrasted with Descartes's and Spinoza's. In point of fact, in his earliest notebook Newton recorded observations on Descartes's version of the ontological argument. Soon, however, he was to oppose the Cartesian conception of the actuality of Divine existence by means of arguments similar to those of Gassendi. Lastly, I suggest that the nature and extent of Henry More's influence on Newton's conception of how God relates to absolute space and time bears further examination.