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Historicism, Entrenchment, and Conventionalism

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Abstract

W. V. Quine famously argues that though all knowledge is empirical, mathematics is entrenched relative to physics and the special sciences. Further, entrenchment accounts for the necessity of mathematics relative to these other disciplines. Michael Friedman challenges Quine’s view by appealing to historicism, the thesis that the nature of science is illuminated by taking into account its historical development. Friedman argues on historicist grounds that mathematical claims serve as principles constitutive of languages within which empirical claims in physics and the special sciences can be formulated and tested, where these mathematical claims are themselves not empirical but conventional. For Friedman, their conventional, constitutive status accounts for the necessity of mathematics relative to these other disciplines. Here I evaluate Friedman’s challenge to Quine and Quine’s likely response. I then show that though we have reason to find Friedman’s challenge successful, his positive project requires further development before we can endorse it.

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Notes

  1. In the Continental tradition historicism traces to Herder (1970/1784) and Hegel (1981/1862). See Goldberg (2008) for discussion of historicism in semantics.

  2. Friedman’s side of the debate is part of his broader project of proposing a theory of conceptual change that does justice to the history of science. Friedman takes Quine’s account of theory confirmation as his foil, and central to that account is Quine’s grappling with the necessity of mathematical claims relative to those in physics and the special sciences. Friedman therefore grapples with that necessity also, which is why his broader project contains within it his alternative account of such necessity.

  3. Consider Quine’s assertion that as sciences advance uncritical assumptions are replaced by definitions. Hence “what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science” (2004c/1936, p. 3). Regardless of whether he is right, Quine does realize that changes occur to theories during their historical development. Also consider Quine’s observation that our “scientific heritage” (2006b/1951, p. 46) is relevant to contemporary theorizing. Finally, consider Quine’s appeal to Neurath’s “boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it” (1964, p. 3). The idea of rebuilding plank by plank presupposes a diachronic view of science, and such a view heeds changes in scientific theories from one historical era to another; cf. van Fraassen: “We must accept that, like Neurath’s mariner at sea, we are historically situated” (2004, p. 139, my emphasis).

  4. Quine’s (2004b/1992, pp. 13–14) agreement with Duhem is explicit.

  5. See Quine (1975/1968, p. 79; 2004b/1992, pp. 13–14) for other statements of his conjunctive holism. See DeRosa and Lepore (2004), Dummett (1993, p. chap. 17), Fodor and Lepore (1992, p. chap. 2), Friedman (2001, part 1, chap. 2), and Glock (2003, p. 77) for commentary.

  6. Though Friedman does not offer the ahistoricist objection that the coarse conjunctive structure of theories demanded by Quinean confirmation holism is incompatible with the fine-grained asymmetries required for Quinean entrenchment relations, see Dummett (1993, chap. 17) and Glock (2003, pp. 93–95) for versions of this objection and Quine (2006b/1951, p. 42) and Sher (1999) for responses.

  7. His discussion of Newtonian physics occurs in Friedman (2001, pp. 35–37, 39–40, 75–77), most of which repeats in Friedman (2002a, pp. 177–179) and (2002b, pp. 374–375). As I consider in §6, Friedman also discusses special and general relativity (2001, pp. 39–40, 61–63, 77–80, 83–4, 86–99; 2002a, pp. 179–180; 2002b, pp. 376–377, 380–381; 2008a), quantum mechanics (2001, pp. 120–123), modern chemical theory (2001, pp. 124–126), and evolutionary biology (2001, pp. 126–129). Nonetheless Friedman’s discussion of Newtonian physics represents his view generally.

  8. Friedmanian entrenchment therefore resembles Goodman’s (2005/1955) notion of entrenchment.

  9. See Fogelin (1997, 2004) for discussion of Quine’s naturalism.

  10. Brown highlights one aspect of Kuhn’s historicism by noting that “Kuhn’s claim is that in order to understand and evaluate scientific theory choice we must attend to the scientific process as well as the scientific product” (2005, p. 160, his emphasis). If Quine’s naturalism pushes him toward historicism, then Quine too would have to attend to the process as well as the product. And that process is distinct from any rational reconstruction of it. This also speaks in favor of his endorsing P2.

  11. Friedman later (2008a) urges that there is an additional sense in which episodes like the historical introduction of Newtonian physics are not accidental: they are driven by the “inner logic” of the nexus of the various scientific, philosophical, and at times theological and other views of their proponents.

  12. In fact Fogelin (1997, 2004) suggests that Quine is not a thoroughgoing naturalist, while Putnam (1990) calls Quine “the greatest logical positivist.” If aspects of Quine’s view are so at odds with themselves, then he has graver troubles than any that Friedman or I observe.

  13. See note 2.

  14. See Goldberg (2004b) for Davidson’s (2001, essay 13) argument against the intelligibility of such frameworks.

  15. See Goldberg (2004a) for discussion of Kant’s account of the acquisition of a posteriori concepts.

  16. Friedman (1999, 2001) focuses on Carnap (1988/1950), though Carnap’s distinction is prefigured in Carnap (2003/1934). Creath (2008) calls Carnap’s analytic and synthetic statements ‘constitutive’ and ‘substantive’; cf. Friedman’s (2001) ‘constitutive’ and ‘empirical’. (See Coffa 2008/1991 for similar treatment of Carnap.)

  17. Friedman (1999, chap. 3; 2001, part 1, chap. 2; 2002a, pp. 174–176; 2002b, pp. 371–372) traces the notion of coordinating principles to Reichenbach (1965/1920). Because my focus is on mathematical claims like (a), I do not discuss coordinating principles further.

  18. Admittedly Friedman’s “historical” analysis of Newtonian physics itself has elements of rational reconstruction. While Friedman writes as if at Newton’s hand the calculus achieved the status of conventional truth, Newton regarded the calculus as true in virtue of the structure of absolute space and time. Nonetheless there are two ways to reconcile this with Friedman’s otherwise historicist account. First, we might recognize that Friedman’s analysis occurs at two levels: properly historical and ahistorically reflective. Besides what the historical Newton thought that he was doing, Friedman can ahistorically reflect on what he was doing by attributing to Newton a kind of conventionalism. Second, we might recognize that from both the properly historical and ahistorically reflective levels, Friedman can maintain that Newton treated the calculus as a priori: Newton historically treated the calculus as a priori in a metaphysical sense, while Friedman ahistorically treats it as a priori in a conventional sense. By employing ‘a priori’ rather than ‘conventional’, Friedman’s description can therefore be historically and ahistorically accurate.

  19. There is much debate concerning how to read Quine’s arguments against the analytic-synthetic distinction. See Creath (2008, p. 327) for a survey. See Friedman (1999, chaps. 7, 9) for his take on the Carnap-Quine debate. See Soames (2003, chap. 16) for discussion more sympathetic to Quine, and Russell (2007) for current research on the analytic-synthetic distinction that includes an alternative summation of Quine’s arguments. I take my own summation to be plausible rather than necessarily definitive; along the way I reference others who agree with aspects of it.

  20. In interpreting (i) and (ii) I follow Gibson (1982, pp. 104–105) and Rey (1994, pp. 79–81) in taking Quine to argue from holism to no analytic-synthetic distinction. See Dummett (1993) and Sher (1999), who take Quine to argue the converse.

  21. This is perhaps the most criticized of Quine’s arguments; see Grice and Strawson (1956), Boghossian (1999), and Sober (2000). Quine’s (2006b/1951, §§1–5) point is not that no noncircular analytic-synthetic distinction can be drawn, since Quine (§6) offers a way of drawing it: unrevisable versus revisable statements. Hence I agree with Dummett that “the thesis … is not that these concepts [of the analytic and the synthetic] are incoherent or ill-defined” ([1991, p. 242), as Dummett once thought (1993/1973, pp. 375–416), “but that they are without application: there are no sentences of either of the two kinds” (1991, p. 242).

  22. Creath (2004, 2008) suggests that Quine’s attack on intensionalism, my (iv), collapses into his appeal to behaviorism, my (v). See also Burgess (2004, p. 51).

  23. See Kim (1994).

  24. “Two cardinal tenets of empiricism remain unassailable, however, and so remain to this day. One is that whatever evidence there is for science is sensory evidence. The other … is that all inculcation of meanings of words must rest ultimately on sensory evidence” (Quine 1975/1968, p. 75, his emphasis).

  25. See Friedman (2001, pp. 39–40, 61–63, 77–80, 83–84, 86–99), much of which repeats in Friedman (2002a, pp. 179–180; 2002b, pp. 376–377, 380–381), and Friedman (2008a), for its application to the relativity theories.

  26. See Becker (2002), Earman (1993), and Friedman (2001, pp. 18–19, 22, 41–43, 56–57), most of which repeats in Friedman (2002a, pp. 181–182) and (2002b, pp. 377–379), for connections between Kuhn and Carnap.

  27. See Friedman (2001, pp. 47–68, 93–104), most of which repeats in Friedman (2002a, pp. 184–190) and (2002b, pp. 379–83), and Friedman (2008b). Elsewhere (Goldberg 2009) I show that Friedman does not in fact succeed. I then offer my own way to surmount them.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Erich Conrad, Gerald Doppelt, Elisa Hurley, Nicholaos Jones, Mark LeBar, Chauncey Maher, James Mattingly, Thane Naberhaus, Wendy Parker, James Petrik, and Matthew Rellihan.

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    Nathaniel Jason Goldberg

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Goldberg, N.J. Historicism, Entrenchment, and Conventionalism. J Gen Philos Sci 40, 259–276 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-009-9097-x

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