Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science

310 Pages·1996·6.232 MB·English

by  Pierre Duhem

Pierre Duhem
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Essays in the History and
Philosophy o f Science
Translated and Edited, with Introduction, by
Roger Ariew and peter barker

P ierre D u h em
ESSAYS IN THE HISTORY AND
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Translated and Edited, with Introduction, by
R o g er A riew
and
P e t e r B arker
Hackett Publishing Company
Indianapolis & Cambridge
Pierre Duhem: 1861-1916
Copyright © 1996 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For further information, please address
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Text design by Dan Kirklin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie, 1861-1916.
Essays in the history and philosophy of science/translated and
edited, with introduction, by Roger Ariew and Peter Barker,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87220-308-5 (pbk.) ISBN 0-87220-309-3 (cloth)
1. Physics—Philosophy. 2. Science—Philosophy. I. Ariew,
Roger. II. Barker, Peter, 1949- III. Title.
QC6.2.D84 1996
530\01—dc20 95-52525
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Contents
Introduction
Pierre Duhem: Life and Works vii
A Note on the Translation xv
Acknowledgments xvi
Selected Bibliography of Duhem’s Works xvii
Selected Bibliography of Works on Duhem xviii
Essays
1. Some Reflections on the Subject of Physical
Theories (1892) 1
2. Physics and Metaphysics (1893) 29
3. The English School and Physical Theories (1893) SO
4. Some Reflections on the Subject of Experimental
Physics (1894) 75
5. Analysis of Mach’s The Science of Mechanics: A
Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1903) 112
6. From To Save the Phenomena: Essay on the Concept of
Physical Therapy from Plato to Galileo (1908) 131
7. Letter to Father Bulliot, on Science and Religion
(1911) 157
8. History of Physics (1911) 163
9. The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning (1912) 222
10. Logical Examination of Physical Theory (1913) 232
11. Research on the History of Physical Theories (1913) 239
12. Some Reflections on German Science (1915) 251
Index 277
v
For SAA and CMW
Introduction
Pierre Duhem: Life and Works
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem was born in Paris on June 9, 1861. His
father, Pierre-Joseph Duhem, was of Belgian origin, the oldest of eight
children residing in the northern industrial city of Roubaix. After the
death of his parents, Pierre-Joseph Duhem abandoned his studies to pro­
vide for the family, but it is said that, later in life, he was always seen with
the work of a Roman author under his arm. Pierre Duhem’s mother, Marie
Fabre, was descended on her mother’s side from the Hubault-Delormes,
who had settled in Paris during the seventeenth century. Her father’s fam­
ily had originally come from the southern town of Cabesprine, near Car-
casonne, and it was there, in a house they still maintained, that Pierre
Duhem died on September 14, 1916.
Duhem was well educated. Starting at the age of seven, he was given
private lessons in a group of four students, in grammar, arithmetic, Latin,
and catechism. Those were difficult years in Paris, with the Franco-Prus-
sian War raging until the armistice in February 1871 and the Paris Com­
mune following in March. The fall of 1872 brought personal tragedies to
the Duhem family: A diphtheria epidemic killed Duhem’s younger sister
Antoinette and his recently born brother Jean, leaving only Pierre and
Antoinette’s twin sister Marie. Duhem continued his education as z demi-
pensionnaire (or external student) at a Catholic boarding school, the Col­
lège Stanislas in Paris, in 1872 and for the next ten years. In 1882 he
entered a prestigious secular institution of higher education, the Ecole
Normale Supérieure. He was first in his class when he entered the Ecole
vu
viii Introduction
Normale, and he remained first throughout his five years there. He
received a license in mathematics and another in physics at the end of the
academic year 1883-1884. In his final year, Duhem was offered a position
in Louis Pasteur’s laboratory as a chemist-bacteriologist, though he
refused it because of his desire to work in theoretical physics.
One of the turning points in Duhem’s career occurred during the aca­
demic year 1884-1885. Duhem presented a thesis in physics for his doc­
torate. The thesis, Le Potentiel thermodynamique et ses applications à la
mécanique chimique et à l’étude des phénomènes électriques, was rejected by a
panel of three scholars. The speculation was that the panel, chaired by
Gabriel Lipmann, made a political decision. A version of the thesis was
published the following year by the prestigious French scientific publisher
Hermann. Duhem defended another thesis in applied mathematics, Sur
l’aimantation par influence, and received his doctorate in October 1888.
It would be difficult to fully understand these events without delving
deeply into the social, cultural, and intellectual context of France at the
end of the nineteenth century. At a time when French scientists were pre­
dominantly liberal and antireligious, Duhem’s conservative political and
religious views were certainly significant factors. The structure of the
French scientific community was also surely a force in the affair. The spe­
cific motives generally cited in the case, however, were Lipmann’s “jeal­
ousy” and the fact that Duhem’s thesis refuted the cherished theses of
Marcelin Berthelot, a friend of Lipmann, and a power in the French sci­
entific establishment. It was reported that Berthelot had said: “This young
man will never teach in Paris.” Berthelot’s edict came true. Duhem spent
his academic career in provincial universities far from Paris, the center of
academic life in France. His teaching positions brought him from Lille to
Rennes and to Bordeaux, but not to Paris.
Duhem assumed the position of Maître de Conférences at the Faculté
des Sciences at Lille in October 1887. There he met Adèle Chayet, whom
he married in October 1890. Their daughter, Hélène, was born in Septem­
ber 1891. Tragically, Adèle died in childbirth the following summer. The
newborn child also did not survive. Duhem did not remarry. He left the
upbringing of Hélène to his mother, who lived with him after Pierre-
Joseph died. The situation in Lille soured for Duhem. Never one to back
off from a dispute, he fought with the dean of his faculty over a minor mis­
understanding. The misunderstanding escalated to enormous propor­
tions. Duhem requested and received a change of positional the end of the
academic year 1893.
Pierre Dtthem: Life and Works
IX
During these formative years, Duhem worked very hard on his science.
He published six books: a two-volume work on hydrodynamics, elasticity,
and acoustics; his lectures on electricity and magnetism, in three volumes;
and an introduction to physical chemistry. He also began a scries of articles
describing his philosophy of science (see chapters 1 and 2 of this volume).
In October 1893, Duhem left Lille for Rennes. He remained there for
only one year, leaving for Bordeaux in October 1894. Duhem was hoping
for a position in Paris. His friends advised him to accept the position in
Bordeaux, saying improbably: “The road to Paris goes through Bor­
deaux.” But the road to Paris got longer and longer. Duhem remained in
Bordeaux until the end of his life, a little more than twenty years later.
The prodigious quantity and quality of Duhem’s publications in many
fields of science, the philosophy of science, and the history of science did
not change his situation. Very late in life, he was approached about the
newly created chair in the History of Science at the Collège de France, but
he refused to be a candidate for it. The proud and stubborn Duhem told
his daughter: “I am a theoretical physicist. Either I will teach theoretical
physics at Paris or else I will not go there.”
Duhem’s productivity during the Bordeaux years was incredible. His
curriculum vitae, written in 1914 on the occasion of his nomination to the
Académie des Sciences, lists more than three hundred fifty items, about
fifty of which were books, including such masterpieces as The Aim and
Structure of Physical Theory and To Save the Phenomena (see chapter 6 of
this volume). The main difficulty in interpreting Duhem’s work is not its
quantity, but Duhem’s habit of using earlier work in new contexts, some­
times changing it in subtle ways. This practice has passed unnoticed by
many earlier readers and is one of the main motives for presenting our new
translations.
Duhem’s early views reflected late-nineteenth-century positivism.
Physical theory was no more than an aid to memory,1 summarizing and
classifying facts by providing a symbolic representation of them, and quite
different from common sense and metaphysics, especially the mechanical
theories fashionable at the time (see chapter 1). Duhem’s position was
immediately attacked by a Catholic engineer, Eugène Vicaire, on the
ground that separating physics from metaphysics implied that physics was
the only real knowledge (another positivistic thesis) and thus conceded too
much to skepticism. Vicaire had raised an important point for turn-of-the- 1
1. For an exposition and criticism of this positivistic view, see Duhem’s review
of Mach’s Mechanics, chapter 5.
Introduction
X
century Catholics, because the Church was officially committed to neo-
Thomism, with its generally rationalist apologetics.2 In reply, Duhem
adopted a quasi-Thomist position: Metaphysics is a real form of knowl­
edge, more excellent than physics but separated from it in that it has dif­
ferent objects and is governed by different methods (see chapter 2). This
immediate response fitted well into the framework of neo-Thomism,
though it did not go as far as to reunite the disparate forms of knowledge
into an overall system of subaltern and subalternated sciences. Duhem’s
mature position was somewhat different and elaborated two key ideas: the
underdetermination of theory by fact and the natural classification as the
end point of physical theory (see chapters 3 and 4). The first of these is
well known, but the importance of the second in Duhem’s thought has not
been sufficiently appreciated.
The natural classification will ultimately provide the true ontology of
nature when it appears at the historical end point of physical theory. The
degree to which any existing theory reflects the natural classification is not
to be judged by the mind’s logical faculties. It is not, for example, a ques­
tion of whether a theory can be reduced to some preferred ontology. At
present, we lack scientific access to the preferred ontology. Instead, the
judgment is to be made by the intuitive mental faculty that Blaise Pascal
had called bon sens. The doctrine of the natural classification, with its cor­
relative concepts of the geometrical, or logical, mind and the intuitive
mind, played an important role in Duhem’s mature system, from the Aim
and Structure of Physical Theory to German Science (see chapter 12).
In his own eyes, Duhem was primarily a physicist.3 Like Ernst Mach,
Wilhelm Ostwald, and others, he defended the position called energetics
or energeticism, believing that generalized thermodynamics provided the
foundation for all of physics and chemistry (see the conclusion of chapter
5). Duhem spent his whole scientific life advancing energetics, from his
failed dissertation in physics to his mature treatise Traité d’énergétique
(1911). Thus, Duhem’s work in the history and philosophy of science can
be viewed—and has been viewed4—as an attempt to defend the aims and
methods of energetics. More recently, Niall Martin and others have
2. See R.N.D. Martin, Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and History in the Work of a
Believing Physicist (La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1991), chap. 2.
3. His scientific legacy includes the Gibbs-Duhem and Duhem-Margules
equations.
4. See A. Lowinger, The Methodology of Pierre Duhem (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1941).