Abstract
This paper argues that talk of ‘the aim of science’ should be avoided in the philosophy of science, with special reference to the way that van Fraassen sets up the difference between scientific realism and constructive empiricism. It also argues that talking instead of ‘what counts as success in science as such’ is unsatisfactory. The paper concludes by showing what this talk may be profitably replaced with, namely specific claims concerning science that fall into the following categories: descriptive, evaluative, normative, and definitional. There are two key advantages to this proposal. First, realism and its competitors may be understood to consist of highly nuanced variants. Second, scientific realism and its competitors may be understood as something other than ‘all or nothing’ theses about science. More particularly, one may accept that there are general claims concerning science in some of the identified categories, but deny that there are such claims in the others.
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Notes
I have also used such talk, albeit somewhat unwillingly, in Rowbottom (2010). Interestingly, concerns involving the use of ‘the aim of science’ were responsible for major revisions of the initial version of that paper being requested. The second section of that paper was produced in response.
Note also that science may be ‘especially successful’ at achieving some end even when achieving said end is not constitutive of the activity. The significance of this will become apparent in due course.
Much more refined aggregation functions may be possible, e.g. after those used in social epistemological contexts; see List and Puppe (2009). But use of these will not change the underlying point here; the result of applying such a function would have to be determined by spade work.
It may be objected that I would have taken a win if the opportunity arose, e.g. if I spotted a way to force mate in a small number of moves. I accept this. But I was still playing with the aim of not losing, rather than the aim of winning.
This is to criticize the claim of Popper (1959, p. 11) that ‘Just as chess might be defined by the rules proper to it, so empirical science may be defined by means of its methodological rules.’ A simplified version of my criticism is as follows: to admit that science should perform particular functions (over time) is quite different from saying that scientists (taken as individuals) should obey any particular rules. For much greater detail, see Rowbottom (2011b); Rowbottom (2011d); Rowbottom (2013).
See also Resnik (1993).
This final element of disanalogy is perhaps not as troublesome as the others; see Rowbottom (2010, p. 211).
This is closely related to the distinction, made by Magnus and Callender (2004, p. 321), between retail and wholesale approaches: ‘Wholesale realism seeks to explain the success of science in general; wholesale anti-realism seeks to explain the history of science in general. Dissolving the debate... involves attending to the retail arguments without trying to settle the debate in an all-or-nothing, wholesale manner.’ I disagree, however, with the suggestion that wholesale anti-realism concerns history, rather than success; and I believe that this is illustrated by van Fraassen’s emphasis on success.
Resnik (1993, p. 230) is mainly concerned with how aims might justify methodological rules. And he notes, correctly, that this view will not do: ‘If we think of aims as characteristics which describe scientific conduct, then aims cannot justify methodological rules because these characteristics are too general and abstract to offer genuine guidance.’ Via this different route, he also comes to the conclusion that (1993, p. 231): ‘philosophers of science might achieve more useful results by shifting their attention away from the aims of science... [which] seem to have little... effect on working scientists’.
This is the kind of problem that van Fraassen (1994) grapples with in closing. It is always open to a philosopher to maintain that some activity is not science because it does not have the correct features.
Solving said problems might also be an aim of the scientists in that specific field, of course. Hence, one may speak of the current aims in said field; and such local aims, of small communities, are typically not troublesome to measure and appreciate. But there is still a significant gap, for example, between talking of the aims of biomechanists of human locomotion and talking of the aims of biomechanics of human locomotion.
Otávio Bueno has suggested to me that his position might be best understood as concerning what’s constitutive of science. I need not deny this, however. Rather, I think that constitutive claims can be broken down into claims falling into the aforementioned categories (especially descriptive, evaluative, and definitional).
Here’s my own view. I deny all of the first three descriptive theses, (a)–(c), where \(x\) is truth or approximate truth. I am also more of an anti-realist than most, in so far as I also deny these theses when \(x\) is structural adequacy, empirical adequacy, or even approximate empirical adequacy. [I am instead inclined toward thinking that (a) is true for \(x\) as ‘the elimination of empirically inadequate theories’; see Rowbottom 2010, 2011b.] Furthermore, I deny all of the first three evaluative theses, (e)–(g), when \(x\) takes any of the aforementioned values. On (h), however, I think that ‘empirical adequacy’, or even something less, will do the trick; for example, I see no value in discovering which of two completely empirically adequate theories is true (although I understand why others might see value here, at least in so far as they wish to satisfy their curiosity about how the world is). In the normative dimension, I deny (j) and (k) when \(x\) takes any of
the aforementioned values except ‘the elimination of empirically inadequate theories’. In addition, if \(x\) is instead something like ‘save the phenomena relevant to our practical concerns in an economical fashion’ then I am inclined to endorse both. Finally, I reject (l) and (m) in so far as I do not think we should define science in terms of what it can (or could conceivably) achieve. [I do not discuss (d) or (i) because this would require an extensive digression.]
In the normative dimension, naturally, we may be said to be discussing what we think scientists should aim for. But it is explicit, in this context, that we are discussing scientists.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Sydney’s Centre for the Foundations of Science for supporting this research, and an audience at the University of Sydney for prompting it. I should also like to thank Otávio Bueno, Maureen O’Malley, and several anonymous referees for helpful feedback.
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Rowbottom, D.P. Aimless science. Synthese 191, 1211–1221 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0319-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0319-8