Proper Ambition of Science

240 Pages·2000·2.06 MB·English

by  M.W.F. Stone

The Proper Ambition of
Science
London Studies in the History of Philosophy is a unique series of tightly-
focused edited collections. Bringing together the work of many scholars,
some volumes will trace the history of formulations and treatment of a
particular problem of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to the present
day, while others will provide an in-depth analysis of a period or tradition of
thought. The series is produced in collaboration with the Philosophy
Programme of the University of London School of Advanced Study.
Series Editors: Tim Crane, Thomas Pink, M.W.F.Stone and Jonathan
Wolff.
1 Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy
Edited by Jill Kraye and M.W.F.Stone
2 The Proper Ambition of Science
Edited by M.W.F.Stone and Jonathan Wolff
London studies in the history of philosophy
Series editors: Tim Crane, Thomas Pink, M.W.F.Stone
and Jonathan Wolff.
London Studies in the History of Philosophy is a unique series of tightly-
focused edited collections. Bringing together the work of many scholars,
some volumes will trace the history of formulations and treatment of a
particular problem of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to the present
day, while others will provide an in-depth analysis of a period or tradition of
thought. The series is produced in collaboration with the Philosophy
Programme of the University of London School of Advanced Study.
1 Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy
Edited by Jill Kraye and M.W.F.Stone
2 The Proper Ambition of Science
Edited by M.W.F.Stone and Jonathan Wolff
The Proper Ambition
of Science
Edited by M.W.F.Stone and
Jonathan Wolff
London and New York
First published 2000 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

© 2000 selection and editorial matter, M.W.F.Stone and Jonathan Wolff;
individual chapters, respective contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The proper ambition of science/edited by M.W.F.Stone and Jonathan
Wolff.
240 pp. 13.8×21.6 cm (London studies in the history of philosophy: 2)
I. Science—Philosophy. II. Science and civilization. I. Stone, M.W.F.
(Martin William Francis) 1965– . II. Wolff, Jonathan. III. Series.
Q175.3.P786 2000
501–dc21 99 39024
CIP

ISBN 0-203-44626-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75450-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-18617-X (Print Edition)
Contents
List of contributors vii
1 Introduction 1
JONATHAN WOLFF
2 Science, philosophy and human life in the Ancient
World 7
R.W.SHARPLES
3 Theology, philosophy and ‘science’ in the thirteenth
century: the case of Albert the Great 28
M.W.F.STONE
4 The seventeenth century and the reconstruction of
knowledge 56
G.A.J.ROGERS
5 The end of hierarchy: physics and metaphysics in the
scientific revolution 76
J.R.MILTON
6 Science in the service of life: Nietzsche’s objectivism 91
AARON RIDLEY
7 Pragmatism: commonsense and the limits of science 103
CHRISTOPHER HOOKWAY
v
vi Contents
8 Husserl and the crisis of the European sciences 122
DERMOT MORAN
9 Some scientism, some historicism, some critics:
Hayek’s and Popper’s critiques revisited 151
THOMAS E.UEBEL
10 The rise of physicalism 174
DAVID PAPINEAU
11 Against the completability of science 209
NANCY CARTWRIGHT
Index 223
Contributors
Nancy Cartwright is Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and
Scientific Method at the London School of Economics (part-time),
Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, and
Director of the LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science.
Her books include How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983), Nature’s
Capacities and Their Measurement (1989), Otto Neurath: Philosophy
Between Science and Politics, with Thomas Uebel et al. (1996) and The
Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999).
Christopher Hookway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Sheffield, having previously taught at the University of Birmingham. His
publications include Peirce (1985), Quine: Language, Experience and
Reality (1988), Scepticism (1990) and Truth, Rationality and Pragmatism:
Themes from Peirce (2000). He was President of the Peirce Society for
1995.
J.R.Milton is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, King’s
College London. He is interested in late medieval and early modern science
and philosophy, and is currently working on a biography of John Locke.
Dermot Moran is Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin. A
graduate of University College Dublin and Yale University, he has taught
at Yale University, Connecticut College, Queen’s University of Belfast,
and Maynooth College. He is the author of The Philosophy of John Scottus
Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (1989) and other studies
in medieval and contemporary European philosophy. He is currently Editor
of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.
David Papineau is Professor of Philosophy of Science at King’s College
London, having previously taught at Cambridge and Reading Universities
in England and at Macquarie University in Australia. He is author of For
vii
viii Contributors
Science in the Social Sciences (1978), Theory and Meaning (1979), Reality
and Representation (1987) and Philosophical Naturalism (1993). He was
Editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science from 1993 to
1998.
Aaron Ridley is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Associate Director of
the Centre for Post-Analytic Philosophy at the University of Southampton.
His books include Music, Value and the Passions (1995) and Nietzsche’s
Conscience: Six Character Studies from the ‘Genealogy’ (1998).
G.A.J.Rogers is Professor of the History of Philosophy at Keele University.
He is the author of Locke’s Enlightenment (1998) and the editor with the
late Peter Nidditch of the Drafts of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke). He has
also edited eight other books and is the author of over sixty articles and
parts of books. He is the founder-editor of the British Journal for the
History of Philosophy.
M.W.F.Stone is Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion, King’s College
London. His main research interests lie in the field of medieval philosophy.
He is the author of the forthcoming two-volume work The Subtle Arts of
Casuistry and has also edited with Jill Kraye Humanism and Early Modern
Philosophy (2000), and published articles on medieval and early modern
psychology and ethics.
R.W.Sharples is a Professor of Classics at University College London and
current Head of the Department of Greek and Latin. He is the author of
Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (1996) and has published on Plato,
Theophrastus, Cicero and Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Thomas E.Uebel is a member of the Centre for Philosophy in the Department
of Government at the University of Manchester. His research concerns
epistemology, philosophy of social science and history of philosophy of
science; his publications include Overcoming Logical Positivism From
Within (1992) and (with N.Cartwright et al.) Otto Neurath: Philosophy
Between Science and Politics (1996).
Jonathan Wolff is Reader in Philosophy at University College London. He
was the Founding Director of the Philosophy Programme in the University
of London School of Advanced Study. His publications include Robert
Nozick (1991), An Introduction to Political Philosophy (1996) and papers
in contemporary political philosophy and the history of political thought.
He is Editor of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
1 Introduction
Jonathan Wolff
We make our beginning with a change which set in at the turn of the
past century in the general evaluation of the sciences. It concerns not
the scientific character of the sciences but rather what they, or what
science in general, had meant and could mean for human existence.
The exclusiveness with which the total world-view of modern man,
in the second half of the nineteenth century, let itself be determined
by the positive sciences and be blinded by the ‘prosperity’ they
produced, meant an indifferent turning-away from the questions which
are decisive for a genuine humanity…. It excluded in principle
precisely the questions which man, given over in our unhappy times
to the most portentous upheavals, finds the most burning: questions
of the meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of this human
existence…. Scientific, objective truth is exclusively a matter of
establishing what the world, the physical as well as the spiritual world,
is in fact. But can the world, and human existence in it, truthfully
have a meaning if the sciences recognize as true only what is
objectively established in this fashion…?
(Husserl 1970:5–7)

In the Preface to his The Crisis of European Sciences, Husserl presents a
picture in which science, having banished the most burning of human
questions from its domain, comes increasingly to dominate culture and serious
thought. The first decisive turn, it is suggested, was taken by Galileo, in the
attempt to subject all of nature to mathematics. This, by stages, led eventually
to the prejudice that the only things that truly exist are those that can be
weighed, measured or counted in some way. Against this background, the
‘lived world’ is displaced and value and meaning can no longer find purchase.
Philosophy, says Husserl, becomes a struggle for its own existence (Husserl
1970:13).
1