Abstract
Jim Bogen and James Woodward’s ‘Saving the Phenomena’, published only 20 years ago, has become a modern classic. Their centrepiece idea is a distinction between data and phenomena. Data are typically the kind of things that are publicly observable or measurable like “bubble chamber photographs, patterns of discharge in electronic particle detectors and records of reaction times and error rates in various psychological experiments” (p. 306). Phenomena are “relatively stable and general features of the world which are potential objects of explanation and prediction by general theory” and are typically unobservable (Woodward 1989, p. 393). Examples of the latter category include “weak neutral currents, the decay of the proton, and chunking and recency effects in human memory” (Bogen and Woodward 1988, p. 306). Theories, in Bogen and Woodward’s view, are utilised to systematically explain and predict phenomena, not data (pp. 305–306). The relationship between theories and data is rather indirect. Data count as evidence for phenomena and the latter in turn count as evidence for theories. This view has been further elaborated in subsequent papers (Bogen and Woodward 1992, 2005; Woodward 1989) and is becoming increasingly influential (e.g., Basu 2003; Psillos 2004; Mauricio Suárez 2005).
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Notes
- 1.
Although Basu agrees with much of what Bogen and Woodward have to say, he thinks that their distinction “is inadequate in handling cases of ‘revolutions’ in science” (p. 354).
- 2.
Observations, Basu claims, need not be theory-laden but they cannot play a direct role in confirmation: “…although one could legitimately hold that there are observations that are not theory infected, such observations cannotbe employed for theory resolution” (p. 356) [my emphasis].
- 3.
Priestley and Lavoisier agreed on various other observable results such as balance readings. They disagreed on whether the reaction only led to the production of black powder. Priestley thought that carbon dioxide was also produced. This disagreement is not important for our current discussion – Basu similarly sidelines it – as we are only interested in the inferential links between evidence and (commonly shared) observation statements.
- 4.
A1and A2have a more complicated structure that for the sake of simplicity I leave out. This should not affect the conclusion of my argument since both auxiliaries appeal to the same Stahlian hypotheses to determine the purity of samples.
- 5.
An alternative first condition does not exclude non-empty subsets of S, thereby allowing for partitions such as {S, \(\varnothing \)}.
- 6.
Overlapping properties such as being a mammal half a meter long and being a mammal named ‘Alexa’ do not of course belong to the same partitions∗of the property mammals.
- 7.
For simplicity, I use the same letters to denote predicates and their corresponding properties and sets. Context will determine which one I have in mind.
- 8.
Although some partitions∗of E1might not have B as a member, their members’ union will contain all the objects that are contained in B. From these we can reconstruct B, e.g., by further partitioning∗the members of a given partition∗and then taking the relevant union of the resulting partitions∗. That means that the partition∗choice does not really matter for the purposes of inferring something about B from E1. Choosing a partition∗that includes B as a member just makes the point easier to communicate.
- 9.
The complex proposition Ba⊕ C1 a…⊕ Cm aneed not be thoroughly observational, but at least one of its atomic components, i.e., Ba, will be.
- 10.
I say ‘can confirm’ instead of ‘confirms’ to avoid a controversial issue in confirmation theory, i.e. whether or not derived observational statements alwayshave confirmational power. The received view has been that they do always have such power but Laudan and Leplin (1991), amongst others, have challenged this view.
- 11.
In my view, some form of partial holism is highly plausible.
- 12.
Woodward (1989) makes some cursory remarks about novel predictions.
- 13.
Duhem ([1914]1991, p. 28) can be interpreted as being an advocate of temporal novelty.
- 14.
Mayo (1991, p. 525) states the relationship between the two notions clearly when she says “most scientific cases are equally accommodated by (and hence fail to discriminate between) temporal and use-novelty, unsurprising since temporal novelty is sufficient, though not necessary, for use-novelty”.
- 15.
- 16.
Mayo (op. cit.), for example, criticises the notion of novel prediction but does not deny that many of the cases that qualify as novel predictions have sharp confirmational power.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Ludwig Fahrbach and Gerhard Schurz for helpful feedback. I am also grateful for funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
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Votsis, I. (2010). Making Contact with Observations. In: Suárez, M., Dorato, M., Rédei, M. (eds) EPSA Philosophical Issues in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3252-2_25
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