Heuristics versus norms: On the relativistic responses to the Kaufmann experiments

The aim of this article is to provide a historical response to Michel Janssen’s (2009) claim that the special theory of relativity establishes that relativistic phenomena are purely kinematical in nature, and that the relativistic study of such phenomena is completely independent of dynamical considerations regarding the systems displaying such behavior. This response will be formulated through a historical discussion of one of Janssen's cases, the experiments carried out by Walter Kaufmann on the velocity-dependence of the electron's mass. Through a discussion of the different responses formulated by early adherents of the principle of relativity (Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and Max von Laue) to these experiments, it will be argued that the historical development of the special theory of relativity argues against Janssen's historical presentation of the case, and that this raises questions about his general philosophical claim. It will be shown, more specifically, that Planck and Einstein developed a relativistic response to the Kaufmann experiments on the basis of their study of the dynamics of radiation phenomena, and that this response differed significantly from the response formulated by Minkowski and Laue. In this way, it will be argued that there were, at the time, two different approaches to the theory of relativity, which differed with respect to its relation to theory, experiment, and history: Einstein's and Planck's heuristic approach, and Minkowski's and Laue's normative approach. This indicates that it is difficult to say, historically speaking, that the special theory of relativity establishes the kinematical nature of particular phenomena. Instead, it will be argued that the theory of relativity should not be seen as a theory but rather as outlining an approach, and that the nature of particular scientific phenomena is something that is open to scientific debate and dispute.     

A role for spatiotemporal scales in modeling

Bogen and Woodward's distinction between data and phenomena raises the need to understand the structure of the data-to-phenomena and theory-to-phenomena inferences. I suggest that one way to study the structure of these inferences is to analyze the role of the assumptions involved in the inferences: What kind of assumptions are they? How do these assumptions contribute to the practice of identifying phenomena? In this paper, using examples from atmospheric dynamics, I develop an account of the practice of identifying the target in the data-to-phenomena and theory-to-phenomena inferences in which assumptions about spatiotemporal scales play a central role in the identification of parameters that describe the target system. I also argue that these assumptions are not only empirical but they are also idealizing and abstracting. I conclude the paper with a reflection on the role of idealizations in modeling.     

A beautiful sea: P. A. M. Dirac's epistemology and ontology of the vacuum

This paper charts P.A.M. Dirac's development of his theory of the electron, and its radical picture of empty space as an almost-full plenum. Dirac's Quantum Electrodynamics famously accomplished more than the unification of special relativity and quantum mechanics. It also accounted for the ‘duplexity phenomena’ of spectral line splitting that we now attribute to electron spin. But the extra mathematical terms that allowed for spin were not alone, and this paper charts Dirac's struggle to ignore or account for them as a sea of strange, negative-energy, particles with positive ‘holes’. This work was not done in solitude, but rather in exchanges with Dirac's correspondence network. This social context for Dirac’s work contests his image as a lone genius, and documents a community wrestling with the ontological consequences of their work. Unification, consistency, causality, and community are common factors in explanations in the history of physics. This paper argues on the basis of materials in Dirac's archive that --- in addition --- mathematical beauty was an epistemological factor in the development of the electron and hole theory. In fact, if we believe that Dirac's beautiful mathematics captures something of the world, then there is both an epistemology and an ontology of mathematical beauty.     

Why history matters to philosophy of physics

Naturalized metaphysics remains the default presupposition of much contemporary philosophy of physics. As metaphysics is supposed to concern the general structure of reality, so scientific naturalism draws upon our best physical theories to attempt to answer the foundational question “par excellence ” viz., “how could the world possibly be the way this theory says it is?” A particular case study, Hilbert's attempt to analyze and explain a seeming “pre-established harmony” between mind and nature, is offered as a salutary reminder that naturalism's ready inference from physical theory to ontology may be too quick.     

The rise of cryptographic metaphors in Boyle and their use for the mechanical philosophy

This paper tracks the development of Boyle's conception of the natural world in terms of the popular “book of nature” trope. Boyle initially spoke of the creatures and phenomena of nature in a spiritual and moral register, as emblems of divine purpose, but gradually shifted from this ideographic view to an alphabetical account, which at times became posed in explicitly cryptographic terms. I explain this transition toward cryptographic metaphors in terms of Boyle's social and intellectual milieu and their concordance with the reductive and conjectural character of the mechanical philosophical program.     

From William Hyde Wollaston to Alexander von Humboldt - Star Spectra and Celestial Landscape

The discovery of dark lines in the spectrum of the sun as well as in some fixed stars since 1802 by William Hyde Wollaston, Joseph Fraunhofer and Johann Lamont is a relatively isolated phenomenon in the history of astronomy of the first half of the 19th century. Wollaston's representation of the sun's spectrum of 1802 can be seen as a simplification and reduction of the phenomenon by way of a seemingly clear connection with contemporary knowledge. Fraunhofer's famous colour etching of the dark lines, of about 1817, can be regarded as a meticulous and painstaking representation of the known facts, taken to a high aesthetic level.

Lamont's spectra of the fixed stars from 1836 are the first sketches of all of these phenomena. He emphasized the ‘oddness’, that is, the chaotic variety of identifiable lines. What was common to all of these representations was the general belief that something new and unimaginable could now be established as a scientific subject. The observations of these lines were coincidental with the thinking in other fields, as for example, in Alexander Humboldt's understanding of nature, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's theory of light and his interest in pictorial representations of nature, and in the new concept of landscape of the romantic painters.     

The Munsell Color System: A scientific compromise from the world of art

Color systems make accurate color specification and matching possible in science, art, and industry by defining a coordinate system for all possible color perceptions. The Munsell Color System, developed by the artist Albert Henry Munsell in the early twentieth century, has influenced color science to this day. I trace the development of the Munsell Color System from its origins in the art world to its acceptance in the scientific community.Munsell's system was the first to accurately and quantitatively describe the psychological experience of color. By considering the problems that color posed for Munsell's art community and examining his diaries and published material, I conclude that Munsell arrived at his results by remaining agnostic as to the scientific definition of color, while retaining faith that color perceptions could be objectively quantified. I argue that Munsell was able to interest the scientific community in his work because color had become a controversial topic between physicists and psychologists. Parts of Munsell's system appealed to each field, making it a workable compromise. For contrast, I suggest that three contemporary scientists with whom Munsell had contact – Wilhelm Ostwald, Ogden Rood, and Edward Titchener – did not reach the same conclusions in their color systems because they started from scientific assumptions about the nature of color.     

Defending the selective confirmation strategy

Most scientific realists today in one way or another confine the object of their commitment to certain components of a successful theory and thereby seek to make realism compatible with the history of theory change. Kyle Stanford calls this move by realists the strategy of selective confirmation and raises a challenge against its contemporary, reliable applicability. In this paper, I critically examine Stanford's inductive argument that is based on past scientists' failures to identify the confirmed components of their contemporary theories. I argue that our ability to make such identification should be evaluated based on the performance of the scientific community as a whole rather than that of individual scientists and that Stanford's challenge fails to raise a serious concern because it focuses solely on individual scientists' judgments, which are either made before the scientific community has reached a consensus or about the value of the posit as a locus for further research rather than its confirmed status.     

Unpublished boyle papers relating to scientific method.—I

In the late 1720s, Daniel Turner and James Blondel engaged in a pamphlet dispute over the power of the maternal imagination. Turner accepted the long-standing belief that a pregnant woman's imagination could be transferred to her unborn child, imprinting the foetus with various marks and deformities. Blondel sought to refute this view on rational and anatomical grounds. Two issues repeatedly received these authors' attention: the identity of imagination, and its power in pregnant women; and the process of generation and foetal development. In their discussions of these issues, differences between the authors' acceptance of general medical theories and philosophies became apparent. Blondel invoked Newtonian matter theory, experimental philosophy, and iatro-mechanism, while Turner adhered more to the authority of the Ancients and advocated a more direct role for the Creator as an alternative to mechanism in explaining natural phenomena. Additionally, the authors held differing views of what they regarded as experience. The widespread contemporary interest in their dispute suggests that Turner and Blondel raised the phenomenon of the maternal imagination from an issue of folk belief to a concern of eighteenth-century medicine.     

Rehabilitating the regulative use of reason: Kant on empirical and chemical laws

In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant asserts that laws of nature “carry with them an expression of necessity” (A159/B198). There is, however, widespread interpretive disagreement regarding the nature and source of the necessity of empirical laws of natural sciences in Kant's system. It is especially unclear how chemistry—a science without a clear, straightforward connection to the a priori principles of the understanding—could contain such genuine, empirical laws. Existing accounts of the necessity of causal laws unfortunately fail to illuminate the possibility of non-physical laws. In this paper, I develop an alternative, ‘ideational’ account of natural laws, according to which ideas of reason necessitate the laws of some non-physical sciences. Chemical laws, for instance, are grounded on ideas of the elements, and the chemist aims to reduce her phenomena to these elements via experimentation. Although such ideas are beyond the possibility of experience, their postulation is necessary for the achievement of reason's theoretical ends: the unification and explanation of the cognitions of science.     

The metaphor of epigenesis: Kant,Blumenbach and Herder

Over the last few decades, the meaning of the scientific theory of epigenesis and its significance for Kant's critical philosophy have become increasingly central questions. Most recently, scholars have argued that epigenesis is a key factor in the development of Kant's understanding of reason as self-grounding and self-generating. Building on this work, our claim is that Kant appealed to not just any epigenetic theory, but specifically Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's account of generation, and that this appeal must be understood not only in terms of self-organization, but also in terms of the demarcation of a specific domain of inquiry: for Blumenbach, the study of life; for Kant, the study of reason. We argue that Kant adopted this specific epigenetic model as a result of his dispute with Herder regarding the independence of reason from nature. Blumenbach's conception of epigenesis and his separation of a domain of the living from the non-living lent Kant the tools to demarcate metaphysics, and to guard reason against Herder's attempts to naturalize it.     

The epistemological virtues of assumptions: towards a coming of age of Boltzmann and Meinong’s objections to ‘the prejudice in favour of the actual’?

Two complementary debates of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century are examined here: the debate on the legitimacy of hypotheses in the natural sciences and the debate on intentionality and ‘representations without object’ in philosophy. Both are shown to rest on two core issues: the attitude of the subject and the mode of presentation chosen to display a domain of phenomena. An orientation other than the one which contributed to shape twentieth-century philosophy of science is explored through the analysis of the role given to assumptions in Boltzmann’s research strategy, where assumptions are contrasted to hypotheses, axioms, and principles, and in Meinong’s criticism of the privileged status attributed to representations in mental activities. Boltzmann’s computational style in mathematics and Meinong’s criticism of the confusion between representation and judgment give prominence to an indirect mode of presentation, adopted in a state of suspended belief which is characteristic of assumptions and which enables one to grasp objects that cannot be reached through direct representation or even analogies. The discussion shows how assumptions and the movement to fiction can be essential steps in the quest for objectivity. The conclusion restates the issues of the two debates in a contemporary perspective and shows how recent developments in philosophy of science and philosophy of language and mind can be brought together by arguing for a twofold conception of reference.     

Thomas Harriot—Sir Walter Ralegh's tutor—On population

The empiricism of eighteenth-century experimental science meant that the development of scientific instruments influenced the formulation of new concepts; a two-way process for new theory also affected instrument design. This relationship between concept and instrumentation will be examined by tracing the development of electrical instruments and theory during this period. The different functions fulfilled by these devices will also be discussed. Empiricism was especially important in such a new field of research as electricity, for it gave rise to phenomena that could not have been predicted by theory alone. However, the interpretation of these phenomena, and what the natural philosopher thought he observed, were often unconsciously determined by current ideas and attitudes; the interaction between instrumentally induced phenomena and observation was more complex than was realized at the time. The shortcomings of this empirical approach will be discussed. In the case of electricity this became increasingly apparent during the latter part of the century. The many discoveries had to be placed in a unifying framework before new advances could be made. Instruments, however, continued to play an important role in scientific progress, for they made visible what was hidden in nature.     

Spacetime Models for the World

In this paper I take a sceptical view of the standard cosmological model and its variants, mainly on the following grounds: (i) The method of mathematical modelling that characterises modern natural philosophy—as opposed to Aristotle's—goes well with the analytic, piecemeal approach to physical phenomena adopted by Galileo, Newton and their followers, but it is hardly suited for application to the whole world. (ii) Einstein's first cosmological model (1917) was not prompted by the intimations of experience but by a desire to satisfy Mach's Principle. (iii) The standard cosmological model—a Friedmann–Lemaı̂tre–Robertson–Walker spacetime expanding with or without end from an initial singularity—is supported by the phenomena of redshifted light from distant sources and very nearly isotropic thermal background radiation provided that two mutually inconsistent physical theories are jointly brought to bear on these phenomena, viz the quantum theory of elementary particles and Einstein's theory of gravity. (iv) While the former is certainly corroborated by high-energy experiments conducted under conditions allegedly similar to those prevailing in the early world, precise tests of the latter involve applications of the Schwarzschild solution or the PPN formalism for which there is no room in a Friedmann–Lemaı̂tre–Robertson–Walker spacetime.     

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

In response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755, and the subsequent seismic activity in Europe, Kant wrote several articles on earthquakes and volcanic phenomena. Full translations of the most important parts of these articles are presented, and summaries for the remainder. Kant developed a carefully worked out theory to account for seismic activity, based on his reading of the scientific literature, the reports received in Königsberg of the Lisbon earthquake and associated events, and his general theory of the origin of the Earth's crust, as presented in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte of 1755. Following Lémery, Kant supposed that volcanic action was due to the subterranean combination of sulphur and iron, and he rejected the suggestion that earthquakes might be due to the gravitational pull of heavenly bodies. Kant's theory was naturalistic, but his account was not wholly divorced from physicotheological considerations.     

On Understanding: Maxwell on the Methods of Illustration and Scientific Metaphor

In this paper I examine the notion and role of metaphors and illustrations in Maxwell's works in exact science as a pathway into a broader and richer philosophical conception of a scientist and scientific practice. While some of these notions and methods are still at work in current scientific research—from economics and biology to quantum computation and quantum field theory—, here I have chosen to attest to their entrenchment and complexity in actual science by attempting to make some conceptual sense of Maxwell's own usage; this endeavour includes situating Maxwell's conceptions and applications in his own culture of Victorian science and philosophy. I trace Maxwell's notions to the formulation of the problem of understanding, or interpreting, abstract representations such as potential functions and Lagrangian equations. I articulate the solution in terms of abstract-concrete relations, where the concrete, in tune with Victorian British psychology and engineering, includes the muscular as well as the pictorial. This sets the basis for a conception of understanding in terms of unification and concrete modelling, or representation. I examine the relation of illustration to analogies and metaphors on which this account rests. Lastly, I stress and explain the importance of context-dependence, its consequences for realism-instrumentalism debates, and Maxwell's own emphasis on method.     

Realism on the rocks: Novel success and James Hutton's theory of the earth

In this paper, I introduce a new historical case study into the scientific realism debate. During the late-eighteenth century, the Scottish natural philosopher James Hutton made two important successful novel predictions. The first concerned granitic veins intruding from granite masses into strata. The second concerned what geologists now term “angular unconformities”: older sections of strata overlain by younger sections, the two resting at different angles, the former typically more inclined than the latter. These predictions, I argue, are potentially problematic for selective scientific realism in that constituents of Hutton's theory that would not be considered even approximately true today played various roles in generating them. The aim here is not to provide a full philosophical analysis but to introduce the case into the debate by detailing the history and showing why, at least prima facie, it presents a problem for selective realism. First, I explicate Hutton's theory. I then give an account of Hutton's predictions and their confirmations. Next, I explain why these predictions are relevant to the realism debate. Finally, I consider which constituents of Hutton's theory are, according to current beliefs, true (or approximately true), which are not (even approximately) true, and which were responsible for these successes.