Abstract
The ancient Greeks introduced an important philosophical or methodological concept into astronomy based on our limitations to direct access to the world of the heavens. It was part of what philosophers call epistemology, a word introduced in Chap. 17, and which we will use in the rest of this chapter; the term refers to the process of acquiring knowledge of the world. Obviously, we can touch and handle rocks; we can smell the roses; we can even, with the wave of a hand, feel seemingly invisible air. But we have only visual access to the Moon, Sun, stars and everything above. How therefore can we really know anything about them, beyond hypothesizing? We can devise models and even test the models, but sometimes the same result comes from two different models. Without direct contact to the world above we can only deal with phenomena (what we see) not reality. Thus arose the epistemological distinction between realism (our direct knowledge of the earthly world), and what will call phenomenalism, for the appearances (phenomena) alone of the world of the heavens. Although originally directed to our knowledge of the heavens, it easily was transferred to the larger epistemological question: How do we know anything?
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Notes
- 1.
The word is derived from the Greek, episteme, meaning to know, from which we get empirical, experience, and importantly experiment.
- 2.
This again shows the significance of the invention of the spectroscope in the nineteenth century.
- 3.
The ancient Greeks often spoke of this as “saving the phenomena” or “saving the appearances.”
- 4.
In the medieval world, this distinction played out in the Scholastic duality between what was called realism and nominalism, although their idea of realism was more compatible with what we would call idealism.
- 5.
In private, he agonized over it.
- 6.
Note, importantly, that Mach’s anti-atomism had no influence on Einstein, since his non-relativity papers of 1905 were steeped in an atomistic worldview.
- 7.
Mach [134] [1912], Chap. 2, Sects. 6 and 7.
- 8.
Einstein Papers, Vol. 6, Doc. 29.
- 9.
Frankly, I find this a bit startling and erroneous.
- 10.
Einstein Papers, Vol. 6, Doc. 30.
- 11.
“Principles of Research,” an address delivered before the Physical Society of Berlin, reprinted in Einstein [47] [1918], pp. 224–227; quotation on p. 226.
- 12.
Variations of this phrase he will repeat many times more in his writings over the rest of his life.
- 13.
Mach’s rejection of relativity appeared in a preface to his book on optics, a posthumously published edition.
- 14.
Quoted in Holton [99], p. 248. This is a 1968 essay, “Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality,” reprinted as Chap. 7, pp. 237–277, of Holton’s book.
- 15.
The Herbert Spencer Lecture was delivered at Oxford on June 10, 1933: “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” reprinted in Einstein [47], pp. 270–276.
- 16.
Einstein [47] [1933], p. 271.
- 17.
“That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.” This is the first sentence of Kant’s, Critique of Pure Reason.
- 18.
Einstein [47] [1933], pp. 272–274.
- 19.
Einstein was actually speaking of induction here. In his writings he was often sloppy in his use of these logical terms, for he commonly used the terms induction and deduction interchangeably. I find this strange because he obviously knew the difference from his extensive reading in philosophy. Indeed, in an essay he was asked to write for the London Times in 1919 on “What is the Theory of Relativity?” he introduced a methodological distinction that he reiterated numerous times for the rest of his life. In it he distinguished between constructive theories that take a more inductive approach and are most common, and principle theories that start from first principles and are more deductive. The terminology (constructive- and principle-theories) was his own, and, as seen, the latter was the method of relativity. See Einstein Papers, Vol. 7, Doc. 25, which is reprinted from Einstein [47 ] [1919], pp. 227–232.
- 20.
Einstein [47] [1933], p. 274.
- 21.
Quoted in Van Dongen [205], p. 119. Letter to W. Mayer, February 23, 1933.
- 22.
Einstein [51☺] [1949], p. 21.
- 23.
I have used the term realist in a generic sense, which I have traced back to the ancient Greeks. For a closer reading of Einstein’s realism as imbedded within the context of the wider philosophical debates in Einstein’s time, see Howard [104].
References
Einstein, Albert. 1954. Ideas and opinions (trans and revisions by Sonja Bargmann.) New York: Bonanza Books. Based, in part, on Mein Weltbild. Edited by Carl Seelig, and others (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934); plus a further edition by Seelig published in Switzerland in 1953, and other sources, such as Out of My Later Years (1950), cited above. Seelig’s 1934 German edition was translated by Alan Harris as The World As I See It (but recent editions, see above, leave-out the scientific essays). See 1934, above, for translations of some of the scientific articles. Many of the essays in Ideas and Opinions do not cite original sources. According to Schilpp (ed.), 1949, Volume II, p.737, Seelig “gives no clue as to where items were originally published; some may never have appeared in print previously.”
Einstein, Albert. 1979. Autobiographical Notes. Translated and edited by Paul A. Schilpp. La Salle & Chicago: Open Court Publishing. This is the corrected version of the original 1947 German manuscript, first published in 1949. The uncorrected version is the more accessible one: see Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Two Volumes. Edited by Paul A. Schilpp. New York: Harper & Row, 1949, Vol. I, 3–95. The latter book is cited separately below under Schilpp (ed.), 1979.
Holton, Gerald. 1988. Thematic origins of scientific thought: Kepler to Einstein. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter 8 (pp. 279–370) is a reprint of the classic article, “Einstein, Michelson, and the ‘Crucial’ Experiment,” published in Isis, vol. 60 (1969), 133–197. Comments on subsequent work are on 477–480.
Howard, Don. 1993. Was Einstein really a realist? Perspectives on Science 1(2): 204–251.
Mach, Ernst. 1960. The science of mechanics: a critical and historical account of its development. Sixth Edition. (trans: Thomas J. McCormack.). New York: Open Court. The original German edition, Die Mechanik in Inrer Entwicklung, Historisch-Kritisch Dargestellet, was published in 1883. The German edition went through nine revisions.
Van Dongen, Jeroen. 2010. Einstein’s unification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Topper, D.R. (2013). Exit, Mach; or, the Perils of Positivism. In: How Einstein Created Relativity out of Physics and Astronomy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 394. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4782-5_27
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