Abstract
I argue that neither realist nor anti-realist accounts of theory-change can account for the transition from zymotic views of disease to germ views. The trouble with realism is its focus on stable and continuous elements that get retained in the transition from one theory to the next; the trouble with anti-realism is its focus on the radical discontinuity between theories and their successors. I show that neither of these approaches works for the transition from zymes to germs: there is neither continuity nor discontinuity, but, instead, a gradual evolution from zyme to germ views, during which germ elements are slowly incorporated into zymotic views until, eventually, none of the original zymotic constituents are left. I argue that the problem with both realism and anti-realism is that they rest on the unwarranted assumption that there are clearly delineated zymotic and germ theories as well as arguments for and against these theories, an assumption that does not hold.
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Notes
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Chakravartty (1998, 2007) proposes drawing a distinction between detection and auxiliary properties and argues that we ought to be (semi-)realists about those parts of our theories that involve detection properties. It would be interesting to see how this proposal, which is not as closely tied to the notion of theory as some of the others, would account for the zymotic case; however, it is not clear to me, for any of the views discussed, what the best candidates for detection and auxiliary properties are.
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For an excellent account of Farr’s many and diverse achievements, see Eyler (1979).
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The term is Hamlin’s (1982, p. 92).
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I will retain the term ‘theory’, even though I think it is misleading, until I have made my case.
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For details on Farr’s elevation law, see Eyler (1979), Chap. X; for details on the relation between Farr’s results and novel predictions, see Tulodziecki (unpublished manuscript) and Tulodziecki (forthcoming).
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Farr, for example, cites Liebig’s Animal Chemistry immediately after its publication, but this is also immediately evident from browsing any British medical journal at the time.
- 11.
For more detail on the involvement of miasma in the miasma theory’s successes, see Tulodziecki (unpublished manuscript). For an explanation of why the sanitary measures of the miasma theory cannot be regarded as unqualified successes, see Peters (2012, Chap. 5).
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For more on von Pettenkofer, see also Winslow (1980, Chap. XV).
- 14.
According to Richardson’s glandular theory, diseases are the result of corrupted glandular functions. It was thought that, when corrupted, the body would produce its own disease poison and spread disease through glandular secretions. For details, see Richardson (1877).
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I use the phrase ‘radical discontinuity’ here because it is common in the realism-literature, on both sides. Someone might object that all that is required for anti-realism is the rejection of the view that there are stable theoretical elements that get retained, regardless of how radical the theoretical changes involved were. I will not take this up here, since I have no stake in this, and since it does not affect the main point of this paper, namely that both realism and anti-realism are flawed through their reliance on the unwarranted assumption that theories are the right unit for evaluation in this context. Many thanks to Mathias Frisch for suggesting I make this explicit.
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Interestingly, Feest and Steinle (2012) have recently edited a volume on scientific concepts and investigative practice the contributions to which “take concepts, rather than theories, as their primary units of analysis” (1), and, similarly, Vickers (2013) has proposed that the literature on inconsistency in science would benefit from eliminating theory-discourse.
- 20.
It would be interesting to see how the zymotic case fits into the literature on historical epistemology, such as the volume by Feest and Sturm (2011).
- 21.
It is precisely this idea that is at the heart of the&HPS manifesto; cf. Arabatzis and Howard (2015). Wylie (1994) suggests, further, that this applies not just to the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science: “given the complex and multi-dimensional nature of scientific enterprises—a feature of science that is inescapable when you attend to its details—it is simply implausible that the sciences could be effectively understood in strictly philosophical, or sociological, or historical terms” (p. 394).
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Mike Jacovides for a number of helpful conversations and remarks, and, especially, to David McCarty for his careful comments on a previous draft. For helpful discussions, I thank Hildegard Tulodziecki.
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Tulodziecki, D. (2016). From Zymes to Germs: Discarding the Realist/Anti-Realist Framework. In: Sauer, T., Scholl, R. (eds) The Philosophy of Historical Case Studies. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 319. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30229-4_13
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