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CLARENDON LIBRARY OF LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY General Editor: L. Jonathan Cohen THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE The Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy brings together books, by new as well as by established authors, that combine originality of theme with rigour of statement. Its aim is to encourage new research of a professional standard into problems that are of current or perennial interest. Also published in this series Quality and Concept by George Bealer The Probable and the Provable by L, Jonathan Cohen The Diversity of Moral Thinking by Neil Cooper The Metaphysics of Modality by Graeme Forbes Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals by R. G. Frey The Logic of Aspect: An Axiomatic Approach by Antony Galton Relative Identity by Nicholas Griffin Ontological Economy by Dale Gottlieb Equality, Liberty, and Perfectionism by Vinit Haksar Experiences: An Inquiry into some Ambiguities by J. M. Hinton The Fortunes of Inquiry by N. Jardine Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem by Michael E. Levin The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation by J. L. Mackie Truth, Probability, and Paradox by J. L. Mackie The Nature of Necessity by Alvin Plantinga Divine Commands and Moral Requirements by P. L. Quinn Simplicity by Elliott Sober The Logic of Natural Language by Fred Sommers The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne The Emergence of Norms by Edna Ullmann-Margalit Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism by Peter Unger The Matter of Minds by Zeno Vendler What is Existence? by C. J. F. Williams Works and Worlds of Art by Nicholas Wolterstorff THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0X2 6DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Beirut Berlin Ibadan Nicosia Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York © Bas C. van Fraassen 1980 First published 1980 Reprinted 1983, 1985, 1987 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 permission of Oxford University Press This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including thié'condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Van Fraassen, Bas C. The scientific image.—(Clarendon library of logic and philosophy) 1. Science—Philosophy I. Title 501 Q175 79-42793 ISBN 0-19-824427-4 Pbk. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd. Guildford and Kings Lynn To the friendly people of Tigh-na-Coille •'Vif Preface THE aim of this book is to develop a constructive alternative to scientific realism, a position which has lately been much discussed and advocated in philosophy of science. To this end, I shall present three theories, which need each other for mutual support. The first concerns the relation of a theory to the world, and especially what may be called its empirical import. The second is a theory of scientific explanation, in which the explanatory power of a theory is held to be a feature which does indeed go beyond its empirical im- port, but which is radically context-dependent. And the third is an explication of probability as it occurs within physical theory (as opposed to: in the evaluation of its evidential support). The first two chapters form a brief and relatively popular introduction to the debates concerning scientific realism, and will thereby explain the organization and strategy of the remainder. I have kept the exposi- tion non-technical throughout, referring for technical details to journal articles where they seem to me more rightfully to belong. My debts are numerous; many of them will be clear from the notes. I would like to add here a few personal acknowledgements. My greatest debt in philosophy of science has always been to Adolf Griinbaum : this debt was renewed when I attended his lecture on Dirac's electrodynamics at Santa Margharita in 1976, a paradigm of philosophical exposition of science which I can scarcely hope to emulate. To Glymour, Hooker, Putnam, Salmon, Smart, and Sellars I owe the debt of the challenge of their philosophical positions and their willingness to discuss them with me, both on public occasions and in personal correspondence. The title of this book is a phrase of Wilfrid Sellars's, who contrasts the scientific image of the world with the manifest image, the way the world appears in human observa- tion. While I would deny the suggestion of dichotomy, the phrase seemed apt. Toraldo di Francia gave me the opportunity to take part in the Fermi Institute Summer School on Foundations of Physics in Varenna, where I learned a great deal, not least from his and Dalla Chiara's lectures on their theory of the structure of physics. An older debt recalled in writing various parts of this book is to Henry Margenau, from whom I learned much about prob- viii PREFACE abilities and states in quantum mechanics. Many friends and col- leagues helped at various stages during the writing of this book by reacting, at once sympathetically and ruthlessly, to my arguments, ideas, and didactic stories; Paul Benacerraf, Nancy Cartwright, Ronald de Sousa, Hartry Field, Yvon Gauthier, Ronald Giere, Karel Lambert, Edwin Levy, Margot Livesey, Hugh Mellor, Ben Rogers, Richmond Thomason, and Roger Woolhouse, to mention only a few. The main theses of this book were presented in lectures at a number of occasions, the last before press being three lectures at Princeton University in May 1979. Finally, the aid of the Canada Council in support of the research projects during which this book took shape was invaluable, especially in facilitating the contacts with other scholars necessary for that research. B. C. v. F. July, 1979 Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. ARGUMENTS CONCERNING SCIENTIFIC REALISM 6 §1. Scientific Realism and Constructive Empiricism 6 §1.1 Statement of Scientific Realism 6 §1.2 Alternatives to Realism 9 §1.3 Constructive Empiricism II §2. The Theory/Observation 'Dichotomy' 13 §3. Inference to the Best Explanation 19 §4. Limits of the Demand for Explanation 23 §5. The Principle of the Common Cause 25 §6. Limits to Explanation: a Thought Experiment 31 §7. Demons and the Ultimate Argument 34 3. TO SAVE THE PHENOMENA 41 §1. Models 41 §2. Apparent Motion and Absolute Space 44 §3. Empirical Content of Newton's Theory 46 §4. Theories and their Extensions 47 §5. Extensions: Victory and Qualified Defeat 50 §6. Failure of the Syntactic Approach 53 §7. The Hermeneutic Circle 56 §8. Limits to Empirical Description 59 §9. A New Picture of Theories 64 4. EMPIRICISM AND SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY 70 §1. Empiricist Epistemology and Scepticism 71 §2. Methodology and Experimental Design 73 §2.1 The Roles of Theory 73 §2.2 Measuring the Charge of the Electron 74 §2.3 Boyd on the Philosophical Explanation of Methodology 77 §2.4 Phenomenology of Scientific Activity 80 §3. The Conjunction Objection 83 X CONTENTS §4. Pragmatic Virtues and Explanation 87 §4.1 The Other Virtues 87 §4.2 The Incursion of Pragmatics 89 §4.3 Pursuit of Explanation 92 5. THE PRAGMATICS OF EXPLANATION 97 §1. The Language of Explanation 97 #1.1 Truth and Grammar 97 §1.2 Some Examples 101 §2. A Biased History 103 §2.1 Hempel: Grounds for Belief 103 §2.2 Salmon: Statistically Relevant Factors 106 §2.3 Global Properties of Theories 109 §2.4 The Difficulties: Asymmetries and Rejections 111 §2.5 Causality: the Conditio Sine Qua Non 112 §2.6 Causality: Salmon's Theory 118 §2.7 The Clues of Causality 123 §2.8 Why-questions 126 §2.9 The Clues Elaborated 129 §3. Asymmetries of Explanation : A Short Story 130 §3.1 Asymmetry and Context: the Aristotelian Sieve 130 §3.2 The Tower and the Shadow' 132 §4. A Model for Explanation 134 §4.1 Contexts and Propositions 134 §4.2 Questions 137 §4.3 A Theory of Why-questions 141 §4.4 Evaluation of Answers 146 §4.5 Presupposition and Relevance Elaborated 151 §5. Conclusion 153 6. PROBABILITY: THE NEW MODALITY OF SCIENCE 158 §1. Statistics in General Science 159 §2. Classical Statistical Mechanics 161 §2.1 The Measure of Ignorance 161 §2.2 Objective and Epistemic Probability Disentangled 164 §2.3 The Intrusion of Infinity 167 §3. Probability in Quantum Mechanics 169 §3.1 The Disanalogies with the Classical Case 170 t
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