Form and Strategy in Science: Studies Dedicated to Joseph Henry Woodger on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday PDF
Preview Form and Strategy in Science: Studies Dedicated to Joseph Henry Woodger on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday
FORM AND STRATEGY IN SCIENCE JOSEPH HENRY WOODGER FORM AND STRATEGY IN SCIENCE Studies dedicated to Joseph Henry Woodger on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday Edited by JOHN R. GREGG AND F. T. C. HARRIS D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY!DORDRECHT-HOLLAND ISBN -13: 978-94-010-3605-4 e-ISBN -13: 978-94-010-3603-0 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-3603-0 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1964 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means without permission from the publisher CONTENTS JOSEPH HENRY WOODGER, CURRICULUM VITAE 1 W. F. Floyd, Loughborough College F. T. C. Harris, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London EDITORS' NOTE 7 John R. Gregg, Duke University, Durham, N.C. F. T. C. Harris, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London FOREWORD 9 Sir Cyril Hinshelwood, Oxford University PART 1/ PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE METAPHYSICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS AND THE DESCRIPTION OF BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS 15 Morton Beckner, Pomona College, Claremont, Calif. SPECULA TIONS AND THEORIES 30 Peter Alexander, University of Bristol ON SIMPLE THEORIES OF A COMPLEX WORLD 47 W. van Orman Quine, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. THE DEVIOUS ROADS OF SCIENCE 51 N. Rashevsky, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. COMPLEXITY AND ORGANIZATION 59 H. F. Blum, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FORMALIZED LANGUAGES AND NATURAL LANGUAGES 66 Evert Willem Beth, University of Amsterdam V CONTENTS A SURVEY OF FORMAL SEMANTICS 82 Robert Rogers, University of Colorado, Boulder, Col. ANAL YTICITY VERSUS FUZZINESS 122 John G. Kemeny, Dartmouth Colledge, Hanover, N.H. TOWARD A LOGIC OF INTENSIONS 146 R. M. Martin, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Penn. PART II I LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THEORY STRUCTURE CREATIVE AND NON-CREATIVE DEFINITIONS IN THE CALCULUS OF PROBABILITY 171 Karl R. Popper, London School of Economics ALGEBRAIC SIMPLIFICATION OF REDUNDANT SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS 191 Frederic B. Fitch, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. ARISTOTLE'S SYLLOGISTIC AND ITS EXTENSIONS 203 Czeslaw Lejewski, University of Manchester PART III I MODELS IN SCIENCE A REPRESENTATION OF ANIMAL GROWTH 235 F. T. C. Harris, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London ANALOGIES IN BIOLOGY 251 John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University, Princeton, N.Y. PROBABILITY MODELS AND THOUGHT AND LEARNING PROCESSES 256 W. Mays, University of Manchester MODELS, MATHEMATICS AND METAPHORS 274 R. C. Lewontin, University of Rochester, Rochester, N. Y. THE GAME-THEORETICAL APPROACH TO ORGANIZATION THEORY 297 Olaf Helmer, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, Calf. VI CONTENTS DESIGN BY NATURAL SELECTION 306 B. Dunham, R. Fridshal, J. H. North, IBM Research Laboratory, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. D. Fridsha1, New York University, N. Y. PART IV I ANALYTIC BIOLOGY ON THE CONCEPT OF GENOTYPE 315 Marian Przel~cki, University of Warsaw GENTICAL SEMANTICS AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 330 Paul G. 'Espinasse, The University, Hull BIOLOGICAL FIELD PHENOMENA: FACTS AND CONCEPTS 343 Heinz Herrmann, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Conn. ANIMAL ORGANIZATION AS A PROBLEM IN CELL FORM 363 John Davison, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La. MORPHOLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE AND THE CONCEPT OF HOMOLOGY TI8 R. F. J. Withers, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London ON CATEGORY OVERLAPPING IN TAXONOMY 395 Abe Sklar, Illinois Institute o.fTechnology, Chicago, Ill. AN ANALYSIS OF SOME TAXONOMIC CONCEPTS 402 Leigh van Va1en, The American Museum of Natural History, New York LIFE CYCLES AS HIERARCHICAL RELATIONS 416 Aristid Lindenmayer, Queens College, Flushing, N. Y. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX PUBLICATIONS BY JOSEPH HENRY WOODGER 473 Michael Woodger, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington VII W. F. FLOYD AND F. T. C. HARRIS JOSEPH HENRY WOODGER, CURRICULUM VITAE Joseph Henry Woodger is a dedicated scholar, a teacher, a research worker in biology, the philosophy of biology, its theory and metatheory and a very delightful companion. His research covers four inter-dependent categories. His scientific work, as a descriptive embryologist at the laboratory bench, led him to an examination of the philosophical pre suppositions not only of embryology but also of the greater part of the range of biological theory. Having achieved this he embarked upon a search for, found and successfully applied rigorous methods of deriving non-numerical statements such as those relating cells to their parts. He has developed, and continues to develop and apply these methods in the construction of minutely analysed and rigorously deduced biological theory. In order to search out the axioms implicit in biological theory, and by extension, in scientific theory, he developed the technique of methodological analysis that led him to his characterisation of the structure of scientific theory. Woodger was born on the second of May, 1894. He was educated at Felsted School in Essex, at which he soon showed an interest in biology. His interest in living things originated with his early life in Norfolk. His family had been associated with the fishing industry in Great Yarmouth to an extent sufficient to convince his friends and associates that it was a Woodger who had invented the kipper. His small bearded figure, when seen vibrating down Reg1ent Street to the London Library topped by a tan sou' -wester in the pouring rain, gives substance to the idea. Certainly his pleasure in the Norfotk broads has never diminished. He went to University College, London, in the October of 1911 and enrolled under J. P. Hill in order to read Zoology. In each of his under graduate years his ability was rewarded with silver medals or class prizes and culminated in 1914 with the award of an honours degree, the College prize in Zoology and the Derby Research Scholarship. Of course the research on which he was starting was interrupted by the first of this century's great wars. His voluntary enlistment in the 1 w. F. FLOYD AND F. T. C. HARRIS April of 1915 is an example of the uncompromising moral earnestness that has characterised his work and life. He was commissioned in the Norfolk regiment, the regiment of his family's county. Fortunately for the early development of the axiomatic method in biology he did not serve long in the european war and was soon sent to Mesopotamia where his energy and determination earned him a mention in dispatches. The map reading and compass marching technique that he learned there has stood him in good stead subsequently for even now he steers a compass course homewards when the downs that border his home are enveloped in thick fog. But then, in the Mesopotamian desert, the lives of his infantry platoon and himself depended on his precision. In the November of 1917 he became protozoologist to the central laboratory in Amara. Despite the arduous conditions and extremely limited facilities, he made time from his heavy routine duties to carry out research. It was in these unlikely circumstances that his interest in the philosophy of science was first stimulated through his contact and friendship with Dr. Ian Suttie who was one of his comrades at the battle ofShumran Bend and the subsequent advance to Baghdad. Mter his demobilisation in the February of 1919 he resumed his Scholarship and carried out research until he left University College in 1922. During this period he was appointed Assistant in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, in 1919, and Senior Assistant in 1921. In the July of the following year the Department of Biology at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School was re-organised and W oodger was appointed to the newly created readership in the department. He was at once faced with a very heavy teaching time-table. He delivered and lectured alone not only the whole biology course but was also responsible for both the lectures and practical work in histology for those students attending the classes for the second medical examination and separately for the teaching relevant to the primary fellowship course. Despite this he was able to carry out work on the germ-line in birds and found time to write a much needed text-book for his biology students in which the illustrations, which are models of line illustration, came almost entirely from his own hand. He carried out the preliminary work for this book so thoroughly that some of the statements in it, for example those arising from his own obser vations on the anatomy of Periplaneta, are original and corrected in accuracies in the publications to which he referred. 2 JOSEPH HENRY WOODGER, CURRICULUM VITAE During these early years at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School he became fluent in German" somehow finding the time to teach himself the language from a linguaphone course. That he was able to carry out so many projects at the same time was to a large extent due to the encourage ment and assistance of his wife, Doris, whom he had married in 1921. His only technical assistance at his department was that provided by his technician, C. W. Fa1cone:r, who came from University College with him, and remained with him throughout his entire career at the Middlesex Hospital, a career that saw the passage of 38 years. In the spring of 1926 he was given a term's leave to study under Przibram in Vienna. Fortunately for the future development of his work his research plans received a severe set-back. When he arrived in Vienna his experimental material had already been collected for him. It had been decided that he should work on transplantation in annelids, but the species of worm gathered proved inoperable and the frozen ground could not be induced to yield a further harvest. Thus he was able to devote more time, than he could oth~:rwise, to the intra-departmental discussions of Przibram and his assistants and so refreshed his interest in the questions that had been aroused by his discussions with Suttie. He at once realised that there were fundamental unanalysed assumptions in the theories then in circulation amongst biologists and that his training had not equipped him, nor was it likely to have equipped anyone else, to examine or identify these assumptions. On his return to England he threw himself into a study of philosophy, or those aspects of philosophy that were the necessary pre-requisite for an analysis of biological theory. Within two years he had completed the necessary spadework and had gone on to analyse the assumptions implicit in the biological antitheses between vitalism and mechanism, structure and function, preformation and epigenesis, for example, and the theory of explanation in biology. This period of his work culminated in the publication of Biological Principles in 1929 for which he was awarded the degree of D.Sc. by his University. Even the most superficial reading of this book makes it clear that he had already appreciated that for his purposes it was necessary to develop more rigorous methods of examining biological statements and had embarked upon a study of logic. With remarkable intuition and insight for a man without formal mathematical training he saw that the mathematical logic of Whitehead and Russell's 3
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