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Understanding HPS paradigms through Galison’s problems

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Abstract

In an Isis 2008 review of research in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), Galison opened discussion on ten on-going HPS problems. It is however unclear to what extent these problems, and constraints on their solutions, are of HPS’s own making. Recent research provides a basic resolution of these issues. In a recent paper Hooker (Perspect Sci 26(2): 266–291, 2018b) proposed that the discipline(s) of HPS should themselves also be understood to employ paradigms in HPS to understand science, analogously to those employed in science to understand scientific domains. The paper argued for recognising at least two paradigms, one based on logic, and analytic forms more generally, the other based on deliberative judgement making. The present paper aims to use paradigmatic responses to Galison’s problems to explore the differing natures, merits and limitations of these two paradigms. This exploration also reveals the basic inadequacy of the analytic paradigm to illuminate the conduct of science, thereby permitting many of his problems to be dissolved rather than solved.

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Notes

  1. See further Gunderson-Holling (2002), Hooker (2011b, Sect. 5.3), Hooker (2018a), McGlade and van der Leeuw (1997), and Van der Leeuw (2004).

  2. What is meant by logic being non-creative is very roughly that in a valid deductive argument content that appears in a conclusion must first occur in the premises. It is difficult to see how any purely formal inference could create content rationally. See e.g. Pap (1962), among many.

  3. See e.g. Chalmers [1976/] (2013), Newton-Smith (1981) and many others,

  4. Both the analytic and deliberative positions engaged here belong to a cognitive/ epistemic position that promotes an autonomous account of scientific rationality at its centre and may thus legitimately be labelled internalist and rationalist. The position does not include socio-economic and similar paradigms because the insistence on the inclusion of the capacity for deep problem solving (below) renders science deeply cognitively and epistemicly directed, though these capacities may arise through socio-economic activity, e.g. Shi (2001).

  5. The essential idea of HPS paradigms goes back at least to 1970's discussions by Hooker (1975a) and Brown (1979). Both authors reveal how a logicist approach to philosophy of science is characterised by a bundle of philosophical and meta-philosophical presuppositions. Both Brown and Hooker argued that the analytic bundle failed to provide a workable account of science and that it was necessary to search for an alternative. And both did so (Brown in the remainder of (1979) and in his (1987) and (1988), Hooker in his (1995), (2010) and (2018b)).

  6. Hereafter all unattributed page references are to this paper.

  7. See Christensen and Hooker (2002), Skewes and Hooker (2009), Moreno and Mossio (2016).

  8. Except that our capacity to initially overlook the inconsistency of our formal systems (Russell, Quine) supports scepticism, and quantum logic, incompatible with classical or Boolean logic, raises the prospect that even logic is empirical,

  9. See Farrell and Hooker (2007a, b, 2009), cf. Hooker (2017, 2018b).

  10. The selection of factors for a context may make all sorts of assumptions that are presently unknown or inaccurately assessed and so later may itself become the focus of examination, as drug prescription regularly illustrates. Sometimes reducing the ambition (scope, precision, etc.) of an experiment permits context simplification, e.g. ignoring magnetic effects in an electro-magnetic experiment. Thus characterised, contexts are constructs, not separate realities. At least, constructs within a single reality is an arguably sufficient frame for understanding science and cognate domains (and to critique their construction, cf. above) without appeal to multiple realities (cf. Hooker 2011b, Sect. 5.3, 6.1.1G).

  11. On inter-woven epistemic and pragmatic concerns see e.g. Schapin and Shaffer 1985. On normative/ descriptive interaction within science, there is e.g. “… the development of quantum logic on the normative side [/] and generalised theories of dynamics on the scientific side, … statistical inference [/] … sampling and other instruments … mathematical theories of problem solving/ artificial intelligence [/] … and psychology and behavoural economics, … rationality theory and ethics [/] … and psycho-social, economic and biological theories …” Hooker (2010, section I).

  12. For discussion of these see Hooker (2018a). Briefly, there are three features that make science especially hard to contain within any logically segregated development. (1) Scientific technologies typically also operate in a pragmatic social mode, free-er of epistemic constraints and with results opportunistically fed back into science. So there is no simple parameter set for modelling science. (2) Science involves specialised interactions that reach out beyond the immediate research context, and outlier risk-taking strategies that traduce collective agreements, all ephemeral but crucial to dynamics. (3) Scientists have many highly conditional, meta-stable commitments that can be triggered to shift by highly specialised signals. (e.g. a single new data point). Note that the foregoing offers a holistic product-of-processes characterisation of science quite different to decomposition into products of weakly interacting parts, e.g. Simon’s near-decomposability (1982), and decomposition into mean-field and fluctuation dynamics, e.g. in the bio-econo-social sciences—see Auyang (1998).

  13. For the analysis of the research itself and its connection to problem solving see references note 9.

  14. Fragments for which there are inferential analyses will retain them within the deliberative approach. But those many that have deliberative but not analytic characterisations will appear only in the deliberative account. Throughout clarity is best served by taking ‘basic’ as an alternative for ‘fundamental’, ignoring slightly different societal overtones.

  15. See also Hooker (1995, p. 33, 2018a). On wider technologies see e.g. Bechtel 2006 for the role of microscopes in the development of cellular biology, Gillies 2016 on technology and Einstein’s revolutions, Yeang 2013 for the role of radar as military detector and use in international radio transmission, and Hooker (Cl.), 2004, chapter 10, on its role extension in the origins of radio astronomy.

  16. Except by direct insertion of premises stating that certain processes are running. But this states that the process is running, it is not actually running the process.

  17. This example is abridged and revised from Hooker (1995, 77–79), in turn from its first appearance in Hooker (1989).

  18. That society is characterised by strong positive (amplifying) feedbacks, from improved science to improved testing that in turn leads either to improved empirical support or to improved identification and elimination of errors, both leading back to improved science. In addition, improved science gives rise to improved applications, in turn improving wealth and economic sophistication, thence contributing to improved funding support for science and improved technological developments than can in turn be adopted to improve science. And so on. See Hooker (1995, chapter 1, 2018a).

  19. Cf. Cummins and Collier (2009), Hooker (2011b, Sect. 6.1.1) and references, on adaptive systems identity. Again, if natural autonomy characterises normative agency (Moreno and Mossio 2016) and e.g. Bickhard (1993), Christensen and Hooker (2004) then such agents will be both found and made.

  20. See Fuller (1978, 1981), and discussion in Hoffmaster and Hooker (2018, chapter 8).

  21. That is, in the terms of Hooker (2004a, b, sect. 5, 2011c, 2013), if a new dynamical constraint is formed. Such changes can be represented mathematically but resist dynamical analysis in terms of particle–particle, component-component interactions, a significant limitation on analytic understanding. (See Hooker 2013, notes 40–42.) Nonetheless philosophers persist with the flawed analytic assumption that emergence and reduction must be logical relations, despite their proven illusiveness, and despite the obvious alternative of treating both relations as dynamical, with emergence as dynamical formation of novel dynamical constraint and reduction as not-emergent.

  22. See Hooker (2010), part B, its roots in Hooker (1976, 1987b, 1995), see generally Papineau (2015) and references.

  23. See also Oreskes and Conway (2010) on modelling, Martin (1979) on corruption.

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  1. Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia

    Cliff Hooker

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Hooker, C. Understanding HPS paradigms through Galison’s problems. Axiomathes 32, 931–956 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09554-7

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