A Realist Theory of Science

287 Pages·1978·32.651 MB·English

by  Roy Bhaskar

A Realist Theory of Science
ROY BHASKAR
Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh
THE HARVESTER PRESS · SUSSEX
HUMANITIES PRESS · NEW JERSEY
This edition first published in 1978 by
THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED
Publisher: John Spiers
2 Stanford Terrace, Hassocks, Sussex
and in the USA by
HUMANITIES PRESS INC.,
Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716
© Roy Bhaskar, 1975, 1978
First published in 1975 by
Leeds Books Ltd., Leeds
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bhaskar, Roy
A realist theory of science
1. Science philosophy
I. Title
501 Ql75
ISBN 0--85527-701-7
ISBN 0--75527-672-X pbk
Humanities Press Ine..
ISBN 0--391-00576-6
ISBN 0--391-00577-4 pbk
Printed in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge & Esher
All rights reserved
Contents
Preface 7
Preface to the Second Edition 11
Introduction 12
Chapter 1. Philosophy and Scientific Realism 21
1. Two Sides of 'Knowledge' 21
2. Three Traditions in the Philosophy of Science 24
3. The Transcendental Analysis of Experience 30
A. The Analysis of Perception 31
B. The Analysis of Experimental Activity 33
4. The Status of Ontology and Its Dissolution in
Classical Philosophy 36
5. Ontology Vindicated and The Real Basis of Causal
Laws 45
6. A Sketch of a Critique of Empirical Realism 56
Chapter 2. Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 63
1. Introduction: On the Actuality of the Causal
Connection 63
2. Regularity Determinism and the Quest for a
Closure 69
3. The Classical Paradigm of Action 79
4. Actualism and Transcendental Realism: The
Interpretation of Normie Statements 91
5. Autonomy and Reduction 105
6. Explanation in Open Systems 118
Appendix. Orthodox Philosophy of Science and
the Implications of Open Systems 127
Chapter 3. The Logic of Scientific Discovery 143
1. Introduction: On the Contingency of the Causal
Connection 143
4 A Realist Theory of Science
2. The Surplus-Element in the Analysis of Law-like
Statements: A Critique of the Theory of Models 148
3. Natural Necessity and Natural Kinds: The
Stratification of Nature and The Stratification
of Science 163
4. The Social Production of Knowledge by Means of
Knowledge 185
5. Objections to the Account of Natural Necessity
Proposed 199
6. The Problem oflnduction 215
Appendix. Natural Tendencies and Causal Powers 229
Chapter 4. Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science 239
Postscript to the Second Edition 251
Bibliography 263
Index of names 273
Index of subjects 275
To my mother
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 philosopical
reflection of the traditional kind would be in itself sufficient to
resolve the problems to which, it was held, philosophical reflec
tion 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 Aristo
telian 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 baffied 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 lo 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 pro
gressive '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 philoso-
1 See e.g. S. E. Toulmin, 'Crucial Experiments: Priestley and Lavoisier',
The Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XVIII (1951), 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.
4 Cf. G. Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science, p. 2
8 A Realist Theory of Science
phers 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 philo
sophical 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 o( a syste
matic 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 positi
vist 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. 6 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.