Abstract
It is a common view in cognitive psychology that there is a fundamental difference between what may be called descriptive information, on the one hand, and depictive information, on the other. While the first kind of information is — ideally spoken — non-pictorial and usually equated with the content of a proposition, the second kind of information is pictorial by defmition and accordingly equated with the content of a mental image. Granting the correctness of this distinction, cognitive scientists differ on the role played by mental images in epistemic processes. One faction, represented by the writings of Zenon Pylyshyn, asserts that mental images are merely an epiphenomenon of a more general and abstract processing system, and that they are in principle dispensable since they do not have any truth value.1 Another faction, represented by the writings of Stephen Kosslyn, favors the opposite view, maintaining that mental images are indispensable since they play, in spite of their lack of truth value, a fundamental role in human thinking.2 As Arthur I. Miller has proposed in his book Imagery in Scientific Thought (1986), these two factions may be labeled as the “antiimagist” and the “pro-imagist” view, respectively.3
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, for example, Zenon Pylyshyn, “What the Mind’s Eye Tells the Mind’s Brain: A Critique of Mental Imagery”, in: Psychological Bulletin 80, 1973, pp.1–24.
See, for example, Stephen Kosslyn, Image and Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1981.
See Arthur I. Miller, Imagery in Scientific Thought: Creating 2i7 -Century Physics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1986, p. 224.
For details, see Martin J. Klein, “Mechanical Explanation at the End of the Nineteenth Century”, in: Centaurus 17, 1973, pp.58–82.
For the details of that controversy, see Robert J. Deltete, The Energetics Controversy in Late Nineteenth Century Germany: Helm, Ostwald, and their Critics (Yale University doctoral dissertation, 2 volumes). Ann Arbor: UMI 1983. For a brief summary, see Erwin N. Hiebert. Deltete, The Energetics Controversy in Late Nineteenth Century Germany: Helm, Ostwald, and their Critics (Yale University doctoral dissertation, 2 volumes). Ann Arbor: UMI 1983. For a brief summary, see Erwin N. Hiebert, “The Energetics Controversy and the New Thermodynamics”, in: D.H.D. Roller (Ed.), Perspectives in the History of Science and Technology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1971, pp. 6786.
Thus writes Georg Helm, himself an energeticist, in 1898: “And so, in the [energetics] controversychwr(133) it is not really a question of atomism or of matter continuously filling space, not a matter of the inequality sign in thermodynamics, or of the energetic foundations of mechanics. All of these are only details. In the final analysis, what is at stake are the principles of our knowledge of nature”. And directly referring to the picture debate, Helm asserts: “What was opposed and defended about energetics [at the 1895 Naturforscherversammlung in Lübeck] was the method of being able to talk about natural processes in a language free of pictures.” See Georg Helm, The Historical Development of Energetics. Translated by Robert J. Deltete. Dordrecht: Kluwer 2000, pp. 404 and 402.
This is not to say that the first question is not worth discussing. But a satisfactory treatment of it would require a thorough consideration of the very complex history that lead to the introduction of the picture concept in the late nineteenth-century physical community. Since this would be a task of its own, I must ignore it here.
See Wilhelm Ostwald, “Die Ueberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus”, in: Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft deutscher Naturforscher and Ärzte I,1. Leipzig: Vogel 1895, pp. 155–156.
This train of thought is elaborated at greater length in Wilhelm Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie. Leipzig: Veit and Comp. 1902, pp. 206–208.
See Ostwald, “Die Ueberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus”, op.cit,p.159. See also Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie, op.cit,pp.211–214, where Ostwald is more explicit about this point.
For details, see Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie, op.cit,pp.207–208.
Ostwald, “Die Ueberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus”, op.cit,p.162.
By the way, it is not at all clear whether this conception of the metaphysical as the not directly measurable is held consistently throughout Ostwald’s writings. To some extent it seems to conflict with his substantial interpretation of the energy concept. But this is a large issue, which I cannot address adequately here. For further information, see Wilhelm Burkamp, Die Entwicklung des Substanzbegriffs bei Ostwald Leizig: Emanuel Reinicke 1913, esp. pp.84–89 and 104109.
See Ostwald, “Die Ueberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus”, op.cit,p.160.
See Ludwig Boltzmann, Populäre Schriften Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth 1905, pp.105128.
For a fair evaluation of Boltzmann’s physical objections, see Deltete, The Energetics Controversy, op.cit,pp.462–477.
See Boltzmann, Populäre Schriften, op.cit,p.104.
A lot has been written on that topic. For more recent contributions, see the references in Henk W. De Regt, “Ludwig Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie and Scientific Understanding”, in Synthese, 119, 1999, pp. 113–134.
Boltzmann, Populäre Schriften, op.cit,pp.136.
Among the examples cited by Boltzmann are the mechanical “pictures” of sound, heat and crystallography, which on his view had been confirmed “almost up to the point of certainty”. See Boltzmann, Populäre Schriften, op.cit,p.135. A revealing passage, by the way, if one bears in mind that Boltzmann’s own work in theoretical physics was mainly devoted to what he here characterized as the mechanical picture of heat
Without explicitly referring to Boltzmann, Ostwald in fact espouses this view in his 1902 lectures on natural philosophy. See Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie, op.cit, pp.213–215. For a very similar contemporary account, see Pierre Duhem, La Théorie Physique, son objet et sa structure. Paris: Chevalier et Rivière 1906, p. 32.
Boltzmann, Populäre Schriften, op.cit,p.130; italics added.
Ludwig Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems. Edited by Brian McGuinness and translated by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1974, p. 42.
Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge 1999, p. 211.
Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics, op.cit,p.42.
The chosen notation is somewhat bizarre, but for the sake of the argument I rely on Ostwald’s original formulation. See Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie, op.cit,p.214.
See Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics, op.cit,p.43: “On closer scrutiny the differential equation is merely the expression for the fact that one must first imagine a finite number; this is the first prerequisite, only then is the number to grow until its further growth has no further influence.”
For a more detailed comment on Boltzmann’s (finitist) interpretation of the calculus, see Martin Curd, Ludwig Boltzmann’s Philosophy of Science: Theories, Pictures and Analogies (University of Pittsburgh dissertation). Ann Arbor: UMI 1978, pp. 241–254.
This, by the way, is the point where Psillos would dissociate himself from Boltzmann. For on Psillos’ view, “in the case of the reference of theoretical terms, `the existentially given thing’ is nothing but a causal agent, i.e an agent which is posited to have the causal power to produce certain effects”. See Psillos, Scientific Realism, op.cit,p.290. Boltzmann did, as far as I see, never think of the existence of such “hidden” causes as implied by his all-picture-view (see next footnote).
Or in his own words: “What might be the true cause for [the phenomenal world] to run as it does, what is as it were concealed behind it and acts as its motor, these things we do not regard as the business of natural science to explore”. See Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics, op.cit,p.109. There are several other passages where Boltzmann says pretty much the same (see, for example, ibid,pp.16, 88, 111, 265n). I can therefore not approve of Yehuda Elkana’s claim that “Boltzmann never gave up the idea that the task of science is to explain and not only to predict the phenomena”. See Yehuda Elkana, `Boltzmann’s Scientific Research Program and its Alternatives“, in Y. Elkana (Ed.): The Interaction between Science and Philosophy Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press 1974, p.268n. To be sure, it is likely that Boltzmann as a working physicist indeed was driven by the hope to find out something about the causal structure of the world. But as a philosopher of science he, in fact, refrained from articulating such a hope.
Arnold Sommerfeld, “Das Werk Boltzmann”, in: Wiener Chemiker Zeitung 47, 1944, p.25.
Max Planck, Vorträge and Erinnerungen, Stuttgart: Hirzel 1949, p. 12.
Robert A. Millikan, The Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1950, p. 85.
Carlo Cercignani, Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, pp. 26–27.
Henk Visser, `Boltzmann and Wittgenstein or How Pictures Became Linguistic“, in: Synthese 119, 1999, p.152.
Ernst Mach, Principles of the Theory of Heat. Edited by Brian McGuinness and translated by Martin J. Klein. Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1986, p. 333.
It is astonishing (but not untypical) that one of the chief proponents of the so-called semantic view, Frederick Suppe, blames Mach for ignoring the fact “that scientific principles contain mathematical relationships not reducible to sensations alone”. See Frederick Suppe, “The Search of Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories”, in: F. Suppe (Ed.): The Structure of Scientific Theories Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1977, p.1 1. Mach, as we have seen, conceded that mathematical equations have the status of analogical constructions being, as such, applicable but not at all reducible to what can be immediately perceived by our senses.
This agreement between Mach and Boltzmann is nicely reflected by the latter’s confession that Mach’s critique of Ostwald’s tendency toward a mathematical mythology had “greatly helped in clarifying my own world view”. See Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics, op.cit,p.51 n.
Mach, Principles of the Theory of Heat, op.cit,p.445n.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Neuber, M. (2002). Physics without Pictures? The Ostwald-Boltzmann Controversy, and Mach’s (Unnoticed) Middle-Way. In: Heidelberger, M., Stadler, F. (eds) History of Philosophy of Science. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [2001], vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1785-4_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1785-4_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5976-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-1785-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive