Abstract
In asking what it means to be an empiricist, the present volume does not seek to provide a definitive or authoritative introduction to the foundation and establishment of empiricism. Instead, our objectives are to deconstruct some misleading preconceptions and to propose some new perspectives on this much used but still somehow ambiguous concept. It marks the beginning of a new reflection rather than a conclusion.
Throughout this volume, we aim to present empiricism as the result of two parallel dialogues. First, it was born out of an exchange between several distinct observational and experimental traditions in Europe. We therefore advocate speaking in the plural about empirical methods, underlining the distinctions between local uses and grand, national standards, while also highlighting the complex discussion around the values and norms of empiricism.
Secondly, it emerged as part of a dialog between several positions within the theory of knowledge which for too long have been reduced to a simple dualism. The most important lesson to be learned from the eighteenth century is that there wasn’t such a thing as a war between rationalism and empiricism, but rather a constant attempt to accommodate both. This forces us to conceive of a more complex and fruitful relationship, but also a much more interesting one.
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Notes
- 1.
Chambers (1728), vol. 1, 303.
- 2.
Ibid. See also Jaucourt, “Empirique” in, Encyclopédie, vol. 5, 586.
- 3.
Janiak (2008).
- 4.
Hamou (2003):
The first question to arise regards the type of conceptual unity that can be granted to the notion of anti-Newtonianism. The word has more than a whiff of jargon and invites distrust. What category is this? Voltaire, who disliked all ‘-isms’, criticized Algarotti for using the term Newtonianism in the title of his popularizing work on Newtonian optics. It is, he wrote, ‘the privilege of [being in] error to have one’s name given to a sect’ (see Voltaire 1992).
- 5.
It is this identification between “Newtonianism and classical mechanics” that Simon Schaffer contests.
- 6.
Cohen (1980).
- 7.
- 8.
For a good study, see Charrak (2006).
- 9.
Norton (1981).
- 10.
- 11.
Terrall (2014).
- 12.
Markie (2015).
- 13.
Anstey (2005). Anstey admittedly draws this distinction for the latter half of the seventeenth century and only for an English context. Nonetheless, there is something irrevocable about it: “As natural philosophers became disillusioned with speculative systems such as the Cartesian vortex theory in the final decades of the century, the critical attitude towards hypotheses hardened and in the 1690s the experimental/speculative distinction appears to have become more firmly entrenched. This is reflected in the writings of Newton, whose changes to the hypotheses of the Principia in this decade are indicative of the broader intellectual climate as reflected in the writings of theologians, poets and philosophers alike” (Anstey 2005, 237–8). As several chapters of this book show, many eighteenth century natural philosophers still tried to conciliate experimental and speculative approaches instead of widening the gap.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Sprat (1667). In this text, he depicts the construction of consensus, in an assembly, concerning the description of an experiment and its conclusions.
- 17.
- 18.
Even if Shapin and Schaffer themselves often propose a more sophisticated and nuanced view, with their influential book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, they contribute greatly to the consolidation of both myths. The controversy between Boyle and Hobbes stand since for the assumed antagonism between empiricism and rationalism. They also emphasized the importance of English empiricism for modern science: “Boyle’s air-pump experiments were designed to provide (and have since provided) a heuristic model of how authentic scientific knowledge should be secured” (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 4).
- 19.
- 20.
Reference to the views of third parties has often provided an opportune refuge for a certain interpretation of France in the first half of the eighteenth century. See for example Borghero (2011).
- 21.
For an influential contribution to this late reconstruction, see Draper (1875).
- 22.
- 23.
This part follows the path traced by Zvi Biener and Eric Schliesser: “The coupling of Newton and empiricism is not without problems … there is no single tradition that is ‘empiricism’ “(Biener and Schliesser 2014, 1–2).
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Bodenmann, S., Rey, AL. (2018). Introduction. In: Bodenmann, S., Rey, AL. (eds) What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist?. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69860-1_1
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