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Pliability and resistance: Feyerabendian insights into sophisticated realism

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Abstract

In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings (especially in Conquest of Abundance, 1999a), which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all the different conceptual systems that can be used to describe the world will be equally successful: the world offers resistance to some attempts to describe it. We show that, in spite of the later Feyerabend’s notorious antirealist leanings, the pliability thesis is fully compatible with a robustly realist view of science, and we suggest that, surprisingly, Feyerabend’s insights concerning the limited pliability of the world turn out to be those of a potential ally of sophisticated versions of scientific realism.

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Notes

  1. A brief account of these diverging interpretations will be offered in Section 3.

  2. For discussions of the argument, and of the relevant literature, see e.g. Preston (1997), Ch. 7, and Farrell (2003), Ch. 5. On Feyerabend’s pluralism, see especially Lloyd (2000 [1997]).

  3. Along similar lines, Munévar has argued that the later Feyerabend defended a position “similar to Bohr’s: experiments, ideas, and models strongly interfere with nature, but they do not reveal how nature is independently of that interference—they only reveal how nature responds to that interference” (Munévar 2002, p. 520).

  4. Among the countless book-length discussions of realism see, e.g., Psillos (1999); Niiniluoto (1999); Kuipers (2000); Chakravartty (2007); Sankey (2008). It must be mentioned that the central commitments of realists can be formulated also in terms of (appropriately qualified versions of) the axiological thesis that science aims at discovering the truth about the world (see e.g. Lyons 2005 for a discussion of the axiological component of realism, and Rowbottom 2013 for a recent criticism of talk of the “aim of science” in general).

  5. Idealization, widely used in all fields of science, has been studied, among many others, by Krajewski (1977); Nowak (1980); McMullin (1985); Cartwright (1983, 1989).

  6. Pihlström et al. (2007) offers an extended discussion of Niiniluoto’s work.

  7. For discussions of Feyerabend’s pluralistic ideal of knowledge—which Niiniluoto (1999, p. 294) aptly defines “an extremely cumulativist account of science”—see, among others, Motterlini (2006) and Oberheim (2006).

  8. Relatedly, Niiniluoto’s critical scientific realism eschews relativism because all the conceptual systems used to describe the world are viewed as fragments of the same world, “and therefore cannot be incompatible with each other” (1999, p. 224).

  9. “Depending on the choice of a suitable conceptual framework,” Niiniluoto claims elsewhere, “THE WORLD can be ‘sliced’ or ‘structured’ to a system of a momentary events, mass points, physical systems, etc.” (1999, p. 222).

  10. Thanks are due to an anonymous reviewer for pressing this point. The same reviewer rightly notes that similar remarks apply also, more generally, to the pragmatist tradition in philosophy of science.

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Acknowledgments

This paper started life as a contributed talk delivered at the international conference “Feyerabend 2012,” wonderfully organized by Eric Oberheim and Matteo Collodel at the Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. I am grateful to the audience, and especially Karim Bschir, Ronald Giere, and Howard Sankey, for questions and suggestions, and to Ian James Kidd for his extensive written remarks on the text of my presentation. Thanks are due to Gustavo Cevolani, Roberto Festa, John Preston, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of the paper. Usual disclaimers apply. Financial support from PRIN grant “Probability, Confirmation and Verisimilitude” is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Trieste, Via Casona, 7, 40043, Marzabotto, Italy

    Luca Tambolo

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Tambolo, L. Pliability and resistance: Feyerabendian insights into sophisticated realism. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 4, 197–213 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-014-0082-9

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