Abstract
In contemporary philosophy of science many theories of explanation are rooted in positivist or post-positivists accounts of explanation. This paper attempts to ground a phenomenological account of scientific explanation by using the works of Werner Heisenberg and Patrick Heelan. To explain something for Heisenberg is to describe what can be intersubjectively observed and conceptualized in an adequate language. However, this needs to be qualified, as not any adequate account will do. While Heisenberg thinks that Kant is right to think that a priori concepts are the conditions which make science, and thus explanation, possible, he also believes pure a priori concepts have a limited range of applicability. Neils Bohr shared this belief with Heisenberg, but thinks human thought can go no further. However, Heisenberg never gave up on the idea that we could create new concepts that act as a priori grounds for quantum entities. To go beyond Heisenberg, I believe that we should look to Husserl’s account of Evidenz and the material a priori to help us think about a phenomenological account of explanation.
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26 January 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09564-7
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de Regt, Henk W. “Understanding and Scientific Explanation” in Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Henk W. Regt, Sabina Leonelli, and Kai Eigner, (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 1. “Schrödinger then observes that philosophers from Hume to Mach to the positivists have not given positive answers to these questions. On the contrary, they have argued that scientific theories are merely economical descriptions of observable facts, which do not supply explanations. This view, which was endorsed by most of Schrödinger’s physicist colleagues.”
Friedman, Michael, “Explanation and Scientific Understanding,” in The Journal of Philosophy 71, no. 1 (1974) 18. “According to this argument, science merely transfers our puzzlement from one phenomenon to another; it replaces one surprising phenomenon by another equally surprising phenomenon.”
Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2007) 12. Heisenberg tells us in his Physics and Philosophy “During the months following these discussions an intensive study of all questions concerning the interpretation of quantum theory in Copenhagen finally led to a complete and, as many physicists believe, satisfactory clarification of the situation. But it was not a solution which one could easily accept. I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighboring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?”
Lindley, David, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science (New York:Random House, Inc, 2007), 70. We learn in David Lindley’s Uncertainty that Heisenberg was influenced by his fellow student Wolfgang Pauli whose godfather was Ernst Mach himself. Pauli proclaims that he was “baptized as ‘anti-metaphysical’.”
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 64. Heisenberg believes that Kant is correct in that his a priori concepts are “the necessary conditions for science,” but he “had not foreseen” that they have a “limited range of applicability.” Heelan, Patrick, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity: A Study of the Physical Philosophy of Werner Heisenberg, (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands). Heisenberg's phenomenological influences are best understood through the work of Patrick Heelan, who, in correspondence with Heisenberg, wrote Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity: A Study of the Physical Philosophy of Werner Heisenberg.
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Bxxxv. Critical philosophy is the opposite of dogmatism which is the “procedure of pure reason, without an antecedent critique of its own capacity.”
Carnap, Rudolf. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, edited by Martin Gardner, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
Carnap An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 6.
Ibid, 10.
Ibid, 7.
Hempel, Carl G. and Oppenheim, Paul, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science 15. No. 2 (1948) 135–175.
Von Fritz, Kurt, “Die ἐπᾰγωγή bie Aristoteles” (Münchin: Bayerische Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1964). Much of the difference is grounded in the difference between Aristotelian induction [epagoge] and the modern enumerative or probabilistic versions of induction. For Aristotle induction was the process by which we game to the realization of principles which allowed us to formulate valid syllogism and then demonstrate an understanding of the necessary relation between terms. For a detailed account of Aristotelian epagoge in the context of the history of philosophy see Kurt Von Fritz’s “Die ἐπᾰγωγή bie Aristoteles.”
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, translated by Johnathan Barnes, 2nd Edition (Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, 1993) 99b17.
Salmon, Wesley, Four Decades of Scientific Understanding (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989) 3.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II. 19. Here I am particularly referring to the “routing” analogy, where perception somehow is infused with a nascent principle until repeated perceptions form a full realization of the principle. Gasser-Wingate, Marc, “Aristotle on Induction and First Principles,” Philosopher’s Imprint 16, no. 4 (2016): 1–20. For more on this interpretation of Aristotle, see Marc Gasser-Wingate’s “Aristotle on Induction and First Principles.”
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I. 34. In this chapter Aristotle presents his conception of “Acumen” whereby one as a unique talent for quickly identifying a middle term which necessarily relates the first and third term and generates a fully valid deduction. Aristotle’s example is seeing that the earth is the necessary middle term that explains why there is a solar eclipse; because the earth blocks the light from reaching the moon.
Salmon, Four Decades of Scientific Understanding, 9. Hence why the deductive-nomological theory of explanation argues that “the event to be explained is deductively certain, given the explanatory facts (including the laws); in an I-S explanation the event to be explained has high inductive probability relative to the explanatory facts (including the laws).”
Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, Methods of Scientific Investigation (London: Forgotten Books, 2017) 232;Whewell, William, Theory of Scientific Method, edited by Robert E. Butts, 2nd edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989) 117; Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Donald A. Landes (Abingdon, Routledge, 2014) 116.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man,” The Primacy of Perception, translated by James M. Edie, edited by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964) 68–69.
A much forgotten, yet influential, intellectual rivalry over the proper method of science took place in the 1800s between William Whewell and John Stuart Mill. Mill believed that we could establish a probabilistic observation based method of scientific reasoning whereby science was a surveying of facts. Whewell on the other hand, thought that scientific genius and special insight were an essential part of science. “No maxims can be given which inevitably lead to discovery. No precepts will elevate a man of ordinary endowments to the level of a man of genius.” Mill ultimately ‘won’ the debate, and induction and scientific method since then has been predominantly Millian to some degree. For more on this see Von Fritz, but for a quick reference see Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology where he references the famousness of Mill’s methods, and see his “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man.”
Van Fraassen, Bas, The Scientific Image (Oxfordshire: Calendron Publishing, 1980). 23–25.
Ibid., 5.
Heelan, Patrick, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2016) 112. See Patrick Heelan’s The Observable. “Ontological reality…is the domain of what can be objectively (i.e. publicly or intersubjectively) observed and described.”
This does not refer to arbitrary-subjective creation and will be clarified in following sections.
Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, 127.“[Heisenberg] admired the practical utility of wave mechanics, the way it made simple calculations possible. But he didn’t like Schrodinger’s broader assertions and rose from the audience to express a few objections. If physics was to be once again entirely continuous, he asked, how was it possible to explain the photoelectric effect or Compton scattering, both of which by this time amounted to direct experimental evidence for the proposition that light came in discrete, identifiable packets?”
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 14.
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 50.
Bohr, Neils, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature: Four Essays with an Introductory Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 55.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A19/B33-B73.
Heelan, The Observable, 58. Heelan tells us in The Observable “Bohr represented a pragmatic “common sense” combination of Kantian tradition and the empiricist-inductivist tradition”.
Heelan, The Observable, 63–83 and Heelan, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity, 45–80.
Heelan, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity, 45.
Ibid., 46.
We can find an example of this limitation in language in the concept of spin, which is directly related to Heisenberg’s solution to the anomalous Zeeman effect. Electrons produce a magnetic field while in motion. A simple version of the story is that Heisenberg, after hearing that an electron has magnetic properties even while standing still assigned the stationary energy states half values, this is the “spin” of an electron. Spin, then, is simply our best way of describing something that is moving while staying in a single location. (For more detail see the footnote below).
Heisenberg’s first major contribution to quantum mechanics was his quantification of Zeeman spectroscopy of an atom in a stationary state before a magnetic field is applied. When electrons move, they create a magnetic field. At the time, every state of the electron had to be assigned three integral numbers to account for its orbit. The anomalous Zeeman effect, however, created problems for this explanation. As it turns out, heavier atoms were shown to have many more states that could be explained by quantum theory at that time. Additionally, prior to entering a magnetic field, the quantum energy states were observed to divide themselves to doublets or triplets of energy states depending on if the atom had one or two electrons. This resulted in a splitting of six or eight states when the magnetic field was applied. Heisenberg noticed that current formulation captured only the difference between two states rather than the frequency of one, stationary state, which, as noted above, was also shown to have magnetic properties. To account for this, he assigned stationary states a half value (1/2, 3/2, 5/2).
Heelan, The Observable, 58.
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 81–82.
Heelan, The Observable, 59.
Ibid., 112.
Heelan, The Observable, 140. Though, the Heideggerian influence will be minimized for the purposes of this paper.
Palma, Vittorio, “Die Fakta leiten alle Eidetik. Zu Husserls Begriff des materialen Apriori,” Husserl Studies 30 (2014) 195–223. My translation. “Was wir von den Dingen a priori erkennen, ist nach Kant das,,,was wir selbst in sie legen ‘‘, nach Husserl hingegen das, was im Wesen bzw. in der Struktur der Dinge selbst liegt, weil die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit der Erfahrung eidetisch sind (Hua XVI, 141 f.; Hua XVII, 456; Hua VII, 385). Die realen Kategorien gehö̈ren zum sinnlichen Ding, nicht zum erfahrenden Subjekt: Raum und Zeit sind nicht Formen unserer Sinnlichkeit, sondern Formen der individuellen Gegensände (Hua XXIV, 273 f.; Ms. B IV 1/33a-b). Die “apriorischen Bedingungen mo ̈glicher Erfahrung” sind also diejenigen “ontisch-apriorische[n] Wesensstrukturen, ohne die eine Welt als Welt möglicher Erfahrung undenkbar wäre” und die durch die “Methode der Wesensvariation der universalen Erfahrung und Erfahrungswelt” zu gewinnen sind (Hua XXXII, 118). Da die sachlichen Zusammenhänge. zwischen den Erscheinungen nicht den subjektiven Anschauungs- und Verstandesformen, sondern den sinnlich gegebenen Wasgehalten entspringen, ghört das synthetische Apriori nur insofern zur Erfahrung, als es zum jeweiligen Erfahrungsinhalt gehört. Eine notwendige Struktur hat nämlich nicht die Erfahrung überhaupt, sondern die in ihr liegenden Erfahrungsmöglichkeiten.”
Husserl, Edmund, Formal and Transcendental Logic, translated by Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Springer Publication, 1969).
Ibid., 161.
Ibid., 161.“To every fundamental species of objectivities—as intentional unities maintainable throughout an intentional synthesis and, ultimately, as unities belonging to a possible ‘experience’—a fundamental species of “experience”, of [Evidenz], corresponds, and likewise a fundamental species of intentionally indicated evidential style in the possible enhancement of the perfection of the having of an objectivity itself.”
Ryckman, Thomas. The Reign of Relativity: Philosophy in Physics 1915–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 136–142. Ryckman writes, “The obvious candidate [for translation is] evidence, while not quite a false cognate, wrongly suggests intersubjectively manifest proof or grounds for belief... Rather, it must be established later on, somewhat as Carnap, in §§148–149 of the Aufbau, constitutes an intersubjective world from the quasi-phenomenological standpoint of ‘methodological solipsism.’ Neither is the English term self-evidence completely accurate, for it lacks the connotation of intentional achievement stemming from the coincidence of the object as intended.”
See Murphy, Ronald. Hume and Husserl: Towards Radical Subjectivism, (Springer 1980). Additionally, Husserl himself lays out what he finds to be Hume’s greatest accomplishment in Formal and Transcendental Logic, 256. Husserl explains, “Hume's greatness (a greatness still unrecognized in this, its most important aspect) lies in the fact that, despite all that, he was the first to grasp the universal concrete problem of transcendental philosophy. In the concreteness of purely ecological internality, as he saw, everything Objective becomes intended to (and, in favorable cases, perceived), thanks to a subjective genesis. Hume was the first to see the necessity of investigating the Objective itself as a product of its genesis from that concreteness, in order to make the legitimate being-sense of everything that exists for us intelligible through its ultimate origins. Stated more precisely: The real world and the categories of reality, which are its fundamental forms, became for him a problem in a new fashion.”
Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, translated by David Carr (Northwestern University Press, 1970) 116. For more on this see Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences, section 31. “Kant and The Inadequacy of the Psychology of his Day.”
Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, 29.
Ibid.
Ibid. Husserl goes on to write, “ Accordingly they too have their Apriori, which, however is contingent and not an Apriori of pure reason; or, as we may also say, introducing an old world that tended blindly in the same direction, it is not an ‘innate’ Apriori.”
Ibid., 30. Here Husserl writes that there is a difference between the contingent a priori and an a priori of “pure reason” which is “formal Apriori in the most fundamental sense.”
Ibid., 115–116. My italics.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment, translated by Paul Guyer (New york: Cambridge.
University Press, 2000) 5:180. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Donald A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2014) lxxxi.This is reminiscent of the introduction to Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, where he says that “The reflecting power of judgment, which is under the obligation of ascending from the particular in nature to the universal, therefore requires a principle that it cannot borrow from experience, precisely because it is suppose to ground the unity of all empirical principles under equally empirical but higher principles, and is thus to ground the possibility of the systematic subordination of empirical principles under one another.” Which is to say, that we must presuppose the unity of the principles of nature. Husserl, rather than presupposing, feels he has demonstrated phenomenologically, that we are justified in thinking of nature as a unity, even if we have not unified it theoretically. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty in the introduction to Phenomenology of Perception, says that “Husserl takes up the Critique of Judgment when he speaks of a teleology of consciousness,” which, as I have said above, we know because of Evidenz.
Form and Transcendental Logic., 116.
Ibid, 160.
Heelan, The Observable, 94–95.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row Inc., 1962). 270 (227). No phenomenologist or transcendental thinker should argue that truth is merely whatever the subject arbitrarily wants it to be. Heidegger, in Being and Time, makes this clear when he says “Because the kind of Being that is essential to truth is of the character of Dasein, all truth is relative to Dasein’s Being. Does this relativity signify that all truth is ‘subjective’? If one interprets ‘subjective’ as ‘left to the subject’s discretion’, then it certainly does not.”
Heelan, The Observable, 95.
DeBrota, John B. and Stacey, Black C. “FAQBism” [arXiv:1810.13401]. This article is an explanation of a new interpretation of quantum mechanics called QBism, which, I believe, has many similarities with Heisenberg’s interpretation. At the very least, this interpretation also puts the observer at the center of our quantum descriptions.
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 32; Petersen, Aage. "The Philosophy of Niels Bohr," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 19. no. 7 (1963) 8–14.This resembles Aage Peterson’s famous paraphrase of Bohr, “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”
Heelan, The Observable, 113.
Heelan, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity, 174.
Ibid., 177–178.
Ibid.
Heelan, The Observable, 116.
Heisenberg, Werner, et.al. On Modern Physics. Potter, 1961. From The Observable, 117. “[I]t is first of all necessary to stress as von Weizsaecker has does, that the concepts of classical physics play a role in the interpretation of quantum theory similar to that of the a priori forms of perception in the philosophy of Kant. Just as Kant explains the concepts of space and time or causality a prioiristically, in the sense that they already formed the conditions of all experiences and could therefore not be considered the results of experience, so also the concepts of classical physics form an a priori basis for experiments in quantum theory, because we can conduct experiments in the atomic field only by using these concepts of classical physics.”
Ibid., 115.
Ibid., 114.
Ibid., 115.
I used this example as a nod to the scholastic-aristotelian tradition which commonly uses the heating of fire as a basic example of causal explanation.
Ibid., 117.
Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, 132.
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Mager, K. Heisenbergian explanation and Husserlian evidence: ontological significance in idealized language. Cont Philos Rev 54, 521–540 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09550-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09550-z