Abstract
Hoyningen-Huene (Systematicity: the nature of science, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) develops an account of what science is, distinguishing it from common sense. According to Hoyningen-Huene, the key distinguishing feature is that science is more systematic. He identifies nine ways in which science is more systematic than common sense. I compare Hoyningen-Huene’s view to a view I refer to as the “Continuity Thesis.” The Continuity Thesis states that scientific knowledge is just an extension of common sense. This thesis is associated with Quine, Planck, and others. I argue that Hoyningen-Huene ultimately rejects the Continuity Thesis, and I present further evidence to show that the Continuity Thesis is false. I also argue that it is the systematicity of science that ultimately grounds the epistemic authority of science. Hoyningen-Huene thus draws attention to an important feature of science that explains the place of science in contemporary society.
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Notes
I thank one of the referees for Synthese for alerting me to both Huxley’s and Eddington’s discussions of the relationship between science and common sense.
Einstein’s view on the relationship between science and everyday thinking is more complex than Hoyningen-Huene suggests. For example, in “Physics and Reality” Einstein presents a multi-stage theory of the development of the sciences. In the first stage there is little difference between scientific thinking and the thinking of daily life (see Einstein 1936/1993, p. 63). In the second stage the “elementary concepts [used in science] ... are no longer directly connected with complexes of sense experiences” (Einstein 1936/1993, p. 63). Further stages are even less directly connected with observations made by the senses (see Einstein 1936/1993, p. 63). As scientists seek “increasing simplicity” in their theories, “the logical basis [of their theories] departs more and more from the facts of experience, and ... the path of our thought from the fundamental basis to these resulting theorems, which correlate with sense experiences, becomes continually harder and longer” (Einstein 1936/1993, p. 96).
Even the fact that the light from the sun that reaches us now left the sun about 8 min ago is somewhat hard to reconcile with our everyday experience. Though the layperson may think that light takes time to travel, when he think about the time that the light from a star 20 light years away takes to reach us, it is bound to be startling.
These themes are developed further and more extensively by Ladyman and Ross (2007). Although their principal aim is to show that “standard analytic metaphysics ... systematically misrepresents the relative significance of what we do know on the basis of science,” they also present a picture of reality, derived from contemporary science, that is at odds with the layperson’s view of the world (see Ladyman and Ross 2007, p. vii).
This description of science pedagogy matches Thomas Kuhn’s description of science pedagogy (see Kuhn 1962/2012). Wieman does not contest the accuracy of the description of the common practice. His concern is with the effectiveness of the practice.
Part of Wieman’s motivation is due to his conviction that “we now need to make science education effective and relevant for a large and ... diverse fraction of the population” (Wieman 2007, p. 9). Wieman is concerned that we now “need a more scientifically literate populace to address the global challenges that humanity faces ... as well as to make wise decisions, informed by scientific understanding” (p. 9). Interestingly, these are the same sorts of concerns that motivated J. B. Conant, the President of Harvard, to develop the General Education Science courses at Harvard in the 1940s (see Conant 1948/1965, p. 1). This was the dawn of the Cold War.
Popper has in mind here J. L Austin, but also, most importantly, Wittgenstein’s later work.
Scientists are concerned about how they are perceived by the public. They do believe that mistaken judgments issuing from scientists are apt to undermine their epistemic authority. John Beatty discusses an interesting example where biologists were enlisted by the government to determine safe levels of exposure to radiation. The biologists did not think we had adequate knowledge to determine an answer, but they also felt compelled to provide one in an effort to prevent someone else from determining an answer (see Beatty 2006).
Cole (1992) notes that at the research frontier even experts disagree. Consequently, when lawyers draw on such research it should not surprise us that scientists can be found representing competing views.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Karim Bschir, and Lori Nash for feedback on earlier drafts. I also thank the referees for their helpful comments. Much of the work on this paper was done while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Fall 2015. I thank the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT for their hospitality. I also thank SUNY Oswego for supporting my sabbatical leave in the 2015–2016 academic year.
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Wray, K.B. Systematicity and the Continuity Thesis. Synthese 196, 819–832 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1088-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1088-y