A Cognitive-Historical Approach to Meaning in Scientific Theories

Abstract

The creation of concepts through which to comprehend, structure, and communicate about physical phenomena constitutes much of the scientific enterprise. Concepts play a central role in the construction and testing of the laws and principles of a theory. The introduction of new concepts and/or the alteration of existing ones is a crucial step in most changes of theory. And, in many scientific controversies what is at issue is disagreement over the interpretation of fundamental concepts. In short, articulating concepts is a central aspect of scientific research. Thus, our understanding of science is seriously deficient if we fail to examine the question of how scientific concepts emerge and are subsequently altered. Yet, such examinations have played little role in the philosophy of science. This is especially surprising in view of the fact that problems of conceptual change in science, in the form of the problems of ‘meaning variance’ and ‘incommensurability’, have dominated so much of post-positivistic philosophy of science. Most responses to these problems have centered on discussion of the alleged nature and necessities of language per se; the presumption being that the results of such analysis can simply be transferred to the scientific case. Thus, actual linguistic practices in science, and in particular the processes of concept formation and change, have gone largely unexamined. The result of this neglect has been that philosophical accounts of ‘meaning’ and ‘meaning-change’ for scientific theories and scientific practices concerning meaning continue to be at odds with one another.