Methodological Essentialism in Science and in Philosophy

Abstract

The successive ideal-type models of language, of its essential structure and function, which one finds in Russell’s logical atomism, early Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP)¹ and Carnap’s earlier formulations of the principle of logical empiricism all proceed from what might be called the methodological framework of essentialism. For the problem they address themselves to is the problem of identifying/ defining the one and only one essential structure of our language (especially the languages of the sciences). And they do so with a view to effecting a clear and sharp demarcation between the cognitively/ factually meaningful languages and the ‘language’ which is not meaningful. This commonly shared philosophical concern with the essential logico-semantical structure — the logically necessary properties — of all languages is of course traceable to their deeper commitments to the equally essentialistic enterprise of traditional epistemology — i.e. the traditional problem of defining knowledge, its essential structure and its foundations. In a way, it might be a useful strategy to tackle the problem of the structure of knowledge by tackling the problem of the structure of our language. For it is only in language that all knowledge-states can find adequate and objective expression. And from this one might conclude that any constraints on meaningful language, once these are identified, will entail principles concerning the structure and limits of knowledge.

The world we live in has a structure, and even though there may be several different ways of looking at it, each providing some insights, they would all have to respect that structure, which is as “real” as the person whose portrait a painter is doing.

C. H. Waddington (1977)