Abstract
The present work constitutes an attempt at identifying those pragmatic aspects of empirical science that contribute to its continuity. The source of scientific continuity has remained unclear after the incommensurability thesis dramatically challenged the truth-cumulative view of science (which was developed within the traditional view of empirical science as a corpus of theories). The first part of the paper provides a clarification of the pragmatic approach adopted here, in many points close to Nicholas Rescher’s methodological pragmatism. Although, as opposed to it, truth and usefulness are kept totally separate on the present account, being the latter just related to empirical soundness instead. The second part of the paper offers an application of such account to some historical examples, which will illustrate the pragmatic continuities displayed by the development of astronomy, from the Babylonian period to Copernicus.
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Notes
- 1.
For a clarification on the main different senses in which the term ‘pragmatism’ has historically been used in the current literature on the subject, see Susan Haack’s introduction of Haack (2006), pp. 15–67, pp. 16–19.
- 2.
- 3.
It is noteworthy that even in Susan Haack’s recent monograph on pragmatism no contemporary discussion of the pragmatic dimension of science is included among the works within the new pragmatism (Cfr. Haack 2006).
- 4.
This idea is emphatically underlined by one of the most acknowledged figures in history of astronomy, O.E. Neugebauer. In his article “Exact Science in Antiquity” (1941), we find: “The method and even the general mental attitude of the work of Copernicus is much more closely related to that of Ptolemy, a millennium and a half before, than to the methods and concepts of Newton, a century and a half later” (in Neugebauer 1983b, p. 23).
- 5.
See Gerhard Schurz’s article (Schurz 1998, p. 39).
- 6.
As P.P. Wiener points out, this idea leads to a fallibilist theory of knowledge. Success implies effective performance, which directly refers to practice. Justification of beliefs is, thus, dependent on practice, rather than on any a priori system of justification. Pragmatism entails therefore a rejection of any a priori conception of belief justification, based on some a priori conception of knowledge or knowledge capacities (Cfr. Wiener 1973–74).
- 7.
In “Pragmatism in Physics” (1998), Patrick Suppes argues that the focus on practice as opposed to foundations is clearly recognizable in modern physics, and discusses the different, coexisting interpretations of quantum mechanics relying on the same experimental data (Cfr. Schurz 1998, pp. 246–251). He also draws attention to other pragmatic aspects of science for which the present work provides some further historical evidence. First, the fact that “there is much broad agreement by both theoretical and experimental physicists on the truth or falsity of many kinds of observations made with or without refined instrumentation” (p. 237). Second, “the pragmatic way in which physicists (…), can use observations, computations and fragmentary theoretical models from many different viewpoints over many different centuries and take from the past work just that which is relevant and relatively sound” (p. 238).
- 8.
See ibid., chapter 4.
- 9.
- 10.
The argument for the hierarchic character of usefulness is similar to that for the hierarchic character of ends, which can be traced back to Aristotle. In the opening passage of his Nicomachean Ethics, as he explains how different actions have different ends, he makes the following remark: “(…) then in all the cases the end of the master science is more worthy of choice than the ends of the subordinate sciences, since these latter ends are pursued also for the sake of the former. And it makes no difference whether the ends of the actions are the activities themselves, or something else additional to them, as in the sciences just mentioned” (Book I, Ch. I, 1094a). Aristotle explains the hierarchy of ends in terms of a certain dependence of some ends on the others. Attaining particular ends would always contribute to attain more general ones. The value of the first would always derive (and therefore depend), to some extent, on the value of the second, hence the superiority of the second over the first. The hierarchy of useful beliefs and practices asserted here is explained in similar terms. As the value of particular ends depends on the value of some more general ends, so the usefulness of some beliefs and practices depend on the usefulness of other beliefs and practices from which the usefulness of the former, to some extent, derive. It must be noticed that the dependency pointed out here steams from a kind of generality different from the one Aristotle appeals to. Both of them are, nevertheless, compatible, since one refers to theories and the other to practices. In the former, one thing is more valuable than other things if it includes the others, in the latter, if it is included in (or presupposed by) the others.
- 11.
Cfr. Neugebauer (1983, 159). The same author asserts in a previous work: “I think that this relationship between the Greek form of Babylonian astronomical computation and the older Hindu decimal number systems explains the creation of a decimal number system with place value notation, which was transferred by the Arabs to Europe and finally became our number system” (Neugebauer 1983b, p. 27).
- 12.
In Astronomy and History. Selected Essays, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1983, pp. 23–31.
- 13.
- 14.
G. Huxley points out that the Babylonians were well aware of lunar eclipse cycles (Huxley 1964, pp. 3–13, p. 5).
- 15.
Cfr. Neugebauer (1983a, p. 166). This Babylonian procedure was later expanded by the Greeks by using a linear variation of the extremal length of day light but otherwise unchanged pattern. According to the resultant scheme one distinguishes between “climates” of equal length of daylight, arranged in the simple pattern of half-hour increment of the longest day. “(…), as a concept, the sequence of the climates of linearly increasing length of the longest day remained unchanged and dominated geographical lore from antiquity through Islam and the western Middle Ages”, ibid., p. 162.
- 16.
Cfr. Neugebauer (1983a, p. 163). In emphasizing the accuracy of the Babylonian, arithmetical models accounting for the moon’s elements, G. Huxley remarks that Babylonian arithmetical progressions permitted to accurately predict lunar phenomena to within a few minutes of time, “The Interaction of Greek and Babylonian Astronomy”, cit., p. 7.
- 17.
Cfr. ibid., p. 160.
- 18.
Cfr. ibid., p. 161.
- 19.
Cfr. ibid., p. 164. For a clear description of the trigonometric procedures employed by Ptolemy in the Almagest see Toomer (1984), pp. 7–9.
- 20.
The later relevance of these two points has been emphasized in Swerdlow and Neugebauer (1984), p. 41. They actually highlight three points of Ptolemy’s astronomy that consider of great importance for later astronomy in general and for Copernicus in particular. The first concerns the explicit use of observations for deriving numerical parameters. The second relates to implicit used of observations for the purpose of describing apparent motions and deriving the appropriate models. The third, which I have skipped given its lower pragmatic value in comparison to the former ones, concerns “the physical representations of the models that are supposed to exist in the heavens and produce the apparent motion of the planets”.
- 21.
“At not point, however did he [Copernicus] question the soundness of Ptolemy’s models for representing the apparent motions of the planets, and so at no time did he carry out the sort of analysis that Ptolemy had, and that Kepler did later, to determine what really constituted an appropriate model for the planets” (Swerdlow and Neugebauer 1984, p. 77). The same idea appears again later, being expressed even more emphatically: “(…) Copernicus’ object was to find physically permissible heliocentric models that would reproduce, as far as possible, the apparent motions of Ptolemy’s models”, p. 79.
- 22.
In his classical work (Kuhn 1979, pp. 100–101), T. S. Kuhn, after a thorough analysis of the historical episode, concludes that no new data prompted the astronomical revolution. According to him, Copernicus inherited Aristotle's and Ptolemy's astronomy. The former depended very much on the latter's observations, there were little new in his mathematics, and no better predictions. Furthermore, Copernicus offered a new mathematical description of the motion of the planets, but no physical explanation of that motion.
- 23.
Aristotle begins chapter 8 of On the Heavens with the following remark: “Since both the stars and the heavens as a whole are observed to change position, the change must occur either with both the heavens and the stars being at rest, or with both moving, or with the one moving and the other at rest” (DC, Book Ii, Ch. 13 (289b1)).
- 24.
“Ancient and medieval astronomical data allow us to form 25 independent estimates of the important acceleration parameter D'', at various epochs from about −700 to +1300. These estimates, combined with modern data, show that D'' has had surprisingly large values and that it has undergone large and sudden changes within the past 2,000 years. It even changed sign about the year 800. The uncertainty in the value of D'' at any epoch from –700 to +1300 is about 2''/century” (Newton 1974, p. 115).
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de la Concepción Caamaño Alegre, M. (2012). Pragmatic Continuities in Empirical Science: Some Examples from the History of Astronomy. In: Pombo, O., Torres, J., Symons, J., Rahman, S. (eds) Special Sciences and the Unity of Science. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2030-5_2
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