Science and Relativism: Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science

By Larry Laudan

In recent years, many members of the intellectual community have embraced a radical relativism regarding knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular, holding that Kuhn, Quine, and Feyerabend have knocked the traditional picture of scientific knowledge into a cocked hat. Is philosophy of science, or mistaken impressions of it, responsible for the rise of relativism? In this book, Laudan offers a trenchant, wide-ranging critique of cognitive relativism and a thorough introduction to major issues in the philosophy of knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Aug 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9780226219332

Book preview

discussions.

1

Progress and Cumulativity

DAY 1, MORNING

Pragmatist: Gentlemen, I think we should begin, since we are already a bit behind schedule. Having been named chair of this committee, I should say that I interpret my charge to be that of seeing to it that our discussions remain focused on our central tasks and that we do not chase after too many wild hares. We already know one another, having crossed swords on several previous occasions, so I think that no preliminaries of that sort are called for. But we probably should give some thought to selecting the key topics that will form our agenda.

Relativist: Since our brief is relativism, especially as regards scientific knowledge, and since I am the only card-carrying relativist here, I have some suggestions to make about what the salient issues should be. Above all, I think that we should start with the collapse of positivism and foundationalism and move from there . . .

Realist: Forgive me for interrupting, Quincy, but the fact that you are keen on relativism gives you no special claim to set our agenda. All of us here have thought about relativism for a long while; the fact that we have rejected it, and that you have accepted it, is neither here nor there.

Positivist: I wonder if, rather than attempting to legislate our full agenda here and now, we couldn’t avoid this procedural wrangling by simply agreeing to start somewhere and then take up the topics as they flow naturally from the exchange?

Pragmatist: I wholeheartedly concur, Rudy. Why don’t you suggest a place for us to begin.

Positivist: Well, as we all know, one of the key issues in the epistemology of science has concerned the question of the growth of scientific knowledge; thinkers from Peirce to Popper have insisted on the centrality of that problem to scientific epistemology Nor is it philosophers alone who are preoccupied by it. Scientists and laymen similarly agree that one of the striking features of the diachronic development of science is the progress that it exhibits. The philosophical challenge is to find ways to characterize that progress as clearly and as unambiguously as we can. Perhaps therefore this would be an appropriate place for us to begin our explorations. And since our brief is to examine the status of contemporary relativism, maybe we could ask Quincy to kick off the discussion with a characterization of the relativist view of cognitive progress.

Relativist: I have no objections to our starting there, if you like, since I share your view that people have an abiding faith in the progress of science. Equally, however, I want to go on record straightaway as having grave reservations as to whether there is any robust, objective notion of the growth of knowledge. I happily grant you that our theoretical understandings and representations of the natural world change dramatically through time, though whether those changes represent progress or simply change is unclear. But I think that it would be reversing the natural logic of this subject for me to start things off. Most of us relativists reject the notion of progress because the two well-known accounts of scientific progress—associated with positivism and realism respectively—have been dismal failures. Accordingly, and I can assure you not out of any shyness on my part, I would urge Rudy or Karl to tell us whether they have a coherent theory of scientific progress to put forward. I will fill out my position in response to what they have to tell us.

Pragmatist: That’s certainly agreeable as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps we can call on Rudy to outline the problem of progress or theory change as he sees it, since the positivist account of scientific progress probably remains the best known.

Positivist: Gladly. In a nutshell: science is the attempt to codify and anticipate experience. The raw materials of science are observational data or measurements. We develop theories and laws to correlate, explain, and predict those data. A science progresses just to the extent that later theories in a domain can predict and explain more phenomena than their predecessors did. Since the seventeenth century, the sciences—at least the natural sciences—have done just that.

Relativist: Hang on a minute. When you talk about what a theory can predict and explain, are you referring to what it has explained and predicted or are you talking about everything that it might be able to predict and explain?

Positivist: You can take it in either sense since science exhibits impressive credentials of both sorts.

Relativist: Well, if we focus on the first sense, what one might call demonstrated progress, I will grant you that some theories have managed to predict and explain some things not guessed at by their rivals. But I’m not sure that this difference gives us a sound basis for maintaining that one theory is really better or truer than another. After all, the fact that one theory has more proven predictive successes to its credit than a rival might be just an artifact of how long each has been around, how assiduously their applications have been explored, how many scientists have worked on them, etc. You surely don’t want to argue that the goodness of a theory is a matter of such accidental circumstances as these?

Positivist: Well, as I said earlier, genuinely progressive theories are those which have the capacity to explain and predict a larger range of facts than their rivals. That is, in part, a prospective matter. I accept your point that one theory’s known successes might have more to do with these accidents of history than with anything about the theory itself.

Relativist: But if you’re saying that, in deciding whether one theory represents progress over another, we have to compare their prospective explanatory and predictive ranges, then I don’t see how we could ever settle that issue since—as you just noted—we can never know all the consequences of any theory, infinite as that set is. You face a dilemma, Rudy: comparing the known achievements of rival theories can be done but is indecisive since those achievements will be in part a function of various accidents of the distribution of labor in the scientific community; yet it is impossible to compare the potential but unknown capacities of rival