Discourse on a new method reinvigorating the marriage of history and philosophy of science

863 Pages·2010·4.052 MB·English

by  Friedman, Michael;Dickson, Michael;Domski, Mary

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that we can make the most informed PHILOSOPHY / HISTORY OF SCIENCE s s Discourse on a New Method $89.95
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decisions about our own methods and a
Philosophers of science and historians of science have long debated the relative strengths n New Method
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of their different approaches to understanding science. In recent decades, largely in
concepts as we attempt to move forward. “Friedman’s notion of historically in-
response to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn’s provocative
And in Friedman’s hands especially, synthesis of historical and philosophical insights, attention turned to the “marriage” of formed philosophy reaches beyond the
philosophy and history of science. Is this a sacred and productive intellectual bond? ND
we’ve seen that this idea has inspired A mere convenience? Or a candidate for annulment? Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science somewhat naive claim that our best
progress, for by granting history, science, philosophy must account for historical
In this volume twenty-six leading intellectuals advance the debate by charting and e
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and mathematics a voice in the pursuit of criticizing the work of Michael Friedman. Friedman’s influential writings on Kant, episodes. Too often we see this path
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Newton, Einstein, and other physicists and philosophers have consistently displayed
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philosophical questions, he has produced both technical philosophical sophistication and historical insight and sensitivity. Along taken in contemporary scholarship. A
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with the editors’ “manifesto” for a synthetic approach to history and philosophy of sci-
a corpus of considerable range and depth.” philosophical doctrine is put forward and
ence, and an extensive original essay by Friedman that presents his current positions on o
the issues raised here, these chapters concretely illustrate how a new method like Fried- M legitimized on the basis of the history of
—from “Discourse on a New Method,
man’s can reinvigorate the marriage of history and philosophy of science and further il-
or a Manifesto for a Synthetic Approach luminate our understanding of science, of philosophy, and their shared history. u science; history serves to justify philosophy
to History and Philosophy of Science” “These are superb essays by an outstanding collection of scholars. Each is worthy er simply in virtue of the scattered intersect-
of study in its own right and collectively they offer an enlightening and stimulating
ingpoints they share in the course of the
by Mary Domski and Michael Dickson ts
response to the seminal work of Michael Friedman on the interface between the history
and philosophy of science. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in how h history of ideas. However, as Friedman’s
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the philosophy of science has developed and how it should interact with the history
work illustrates, synthetically pursued
of science in the future.”
o
—JAMESLAdyMAN, PROFESSOROFPHILOSOPHy, UNIvERSITyOFBRISTOL o history does more than justify or legitimate;
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at its best, it informs contemporary phi-
“The complex relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of science
n
has recently become the subject of renewed attention. Michael Friedman has been a
losophy, offering us a mirror that allows
driving force behind the movement to bring these fields back into productive engage-

ment. Featuring a stellar list of contributors, it not only offers new insights on “synthetic us see where we now stand and what
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history” and “historically informed philosophy” but also presents original and provocative
Michael Friedman is the Frederick P. views on a range of issues in the history and philosophy of physics, Kantian philosophy, methods and ideas we should pursue in
and logical positivism, together with responses by Friedman himself. This is an out-
Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities order to improve our current philosophical
standing volume that repays repeated reading.”
at Stanford University and a leading philoso- —STEvENFRENCH, PROFESSOROFPHILOSOPHy, UNIvERSITyOFLEEdS condition.
pherand historian of science. Among his “Recognizing the dialectic between
Edited by
many writings are The Dynamics of Reason philosophy, science, history, and mathe-
Mary Domski and Michael Dickson
(Stanford, 2000) and A Parting of the Ways: matics, our task is to locate those issues
OPEN COURT
Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger(Open Chicago and La Salle, Illinois With a Concluding Essay by Michael Friedman that bind these disciplines together so
OPEN
www.opencourtbooks.com
Court, 2000). Cover design by Randy Martinaitis COURT
(continued on back flap)
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page i
Discourse on a New Method
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page ii
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page iii
Discourse on a
New Method
Reinvigorating the
Marriage of History and
Philosophy of Science
EDITED BY
Mary Domski and Michael Dickson
WITH A CONCLUDING ESSAY BY
Michael Friedman
OPEN COURT
Chicago and La Salle, Illinois
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page iv
Cover illustration: Newtonby William Blake.
Cover Illustration: frontispiece to Voltaire’s Elémens de la philosophie de
Neuton(1738).
To order books from Open Court, call toll-free 1-800-815-2280,
or visit our website at www.opencourtbooks.com.
Open Court Publishing Company is a division of Carus Publishing Company.
Copyright ©2010 by Carus Publishing Company
First printing 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, Open Court Publishing Company, a division of
Carus Publishing Company, 70 East Lake Street, Suite 300, Chicago IL, 60601.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Discourse on a new method : reinvigorating the marriage of history and
philosophy of science / edited by Mary Domski and Michael Dickson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8126-9662-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Science--philosophy. I. Friedman, Michael, 1947- II. Domski,
Mary, 1975- III. Dickson, Michael, 1968-.
Q175.D6634 2009
501—dc22
2009003556
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page v
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
1. Discourse on a New Method, or a Manifesto for a
Synthetic Approach to History and Philosophy of Science 1
Mary Domski and Michael Dickson
PART I
The Newtonian Era 21
2. The Axiomatic Tradition in Seventeenth-Century
Mechanics 23
Domenico Bertoloni Meli
3. The Reduction to the Pristine State in Robert Boyle’s
Corpuscular Philosophy 43
William R. Newman
4. Newton as Historically-Minded Philosopher 65
Mary Domski
5. Newton’s Forces in Kant’s Critique 91
Andrew Janiak
PART II
Kant 111
6. Kant and Lambert on Geometrical Postulates in the
Reform of Metaphysics 113
Alison Laywine
v
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page vi
vi Contents
7. Two Studies in the Reception of Kant’s Philosophy
of Arithmetic 135
Charles Parsons
8. Philosophy, Geometry, and Logic in Leibniz, Wolff,
and the Early Kant 155
Daniel Sutherland
9. Kant on Attractive and Repulsive Force:
The Balancing Argument 193
Daniel Warren
10. Mathematical Method in Kant, Schelling, and Hegel 243
Frederick C. Beiser
PART III
Logical Positivism and Neo-Kantianism 259
11. Validity in the Cultural Sciences? 261
John Michael Krois
12. Ernst Cassirer and Michael Friedman: Kantian or
Hegelian Dynamics of Reason? 279
Alan Richardson
13. From Mach to Carnap: A Tale of Confusion 295
Paul Pojman
14. Quine’s Objection and Carnap’s Aufbau 311
Thomas Ricketts
15. “Let me briefly indicate why I do not find this
standpoint natural.” Einstein, General Relativity, and
the Contingent A Priori 333
Don Howard
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Contents vii
PART IV
History and Philosophy of Physics 357
16. How Hume and Mach Helped Einstein Find
Special Relativity 359
John Norton
17. The Paracletes of Quantum Gravity 387
James Mattingly
18. Beauty Doth of Itself Persuade: Dirac
on Quantization, Mathematical Beauty, and
Theoretical Understanding 405
Michael Dickson
19. Theory, Coordination, and Empirical Meaning in
Modern Physics 423
Scott Tanona
20. The “Relativized A Priori”: An Appreciation and
a Critique 455
Thomas Ryckman
PART V
Post-Kuhnian Philosophy of Science 471
21. The Role of the Foundations of Mathematics in the
Development of Carnap’s Theory of Theories 473
William Demopoulos
22. The Construction of Reason: Kant, Carnap, Kuhn,
and Beyond 493
Richard Creath
23. How Should We Describe Scientific Change? Or:
A Neo-Popperian Reads Friedman 511
Noretta Koertge
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viii Contents
24. Synthesis, the Synthetic A Priori, and the Origins of
Modern Space-Time Theory 523
Robert DiSalle
25. Back to “Back to Kant” 553
Mark Wilson
PART VI
Concluding Essay 569
26. Synthetic History Reconsidered 571
Michael Friedman
Contributors 815
Index 823
Domski 7 6/22/10 12:03 PM Page ix
Preface and Acknowledgments
We have chosen a rather grand title for this book, one whose grandness
seems only fitting given the rather grand purpose of our project: to exam-
ine and honor Michael Friedman’s work in the history and philosophy of
science. As readers of this volume will quickly discern, our examination
does not take the form seen in most festschrifts. We do not simply aim to
bring attention to specific claims that Friedman has made over the course
of his career (though many of our contributors of course do so in their
essays). Rather, our aim is to turn attention to Friedman’s work in order
that we might glean and assess lessons about how best to approach the
interaction between the history of philosophy and the history of science.
In brief, our goal is methodological and historiographical.
In our introductory chapter, we spell out what we take to be important
and unique about Friedman’s approach to the history and philosophy of
science and cash out the features of the historiography that Friedman has
applied over the past few decades—a historiography which we have
dubbed a “new method” in the title of this book. Though Friedman is not
the only historian-philosopher to apply the methodology we describe and
encourage, we believe that attention to his course of work grants us impor-
tant insights into how best to understand the complexity and intimacy of
the relationship between the history of science and the history of philoso-
phy. Our intention in this volume is to explicate and pursue these insights
(though certainly not uncritically), and as our subtitle suggests, we hope
to thereby provide a means by which to reinvigorate the very marriage of
the history and philosophy of science that scholars have continued to bring
into dispute.
Given what we’ve aimed to accomplish with this collection of essays, it
is probably little surprise that this volume has been six years in the making.
Considering the number of authors involved, and especially the richness of
the issues they have engaged in their essays, six years actually seems a rather
short amount of time for the publication of a volume of this depth and
range (and with this many pages!). We could not have moved so quickly
and with so much success had it not been for the efforts and contributions
of various people and groups.
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