SYNTHESE LIBRARY MONOGRAPHS ON EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND OF KNOWLEDGE, AND ON THE MATHEMATICAL METHODS OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Editors: DONALD DAVIDSON, Rockefeller University and Princeton University JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Academy of Finland and Stanford University GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden WESLEY C. SALMON, University of Arizona VOLUME 64 BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE EDITED BY ROBERT S. COHEN AND MARX W. WARTOFSKY VOLUME XX PSA 1972 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 1972 BIENNIAL MEETING PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ASSOCIATION Edited by KENNETH F. SCHAFFNER AND ROBERTS. COHEN D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY I DORDRECHT-HOLLAND BOSTON-U.S.A. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72---{j24l69 Cloth edition: ISBN 90 277 0408 2 Paperback edition: ISBN 90 277 0409 0 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc. 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Mass. 02116, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher Printed in The Netherlands by D. Reidel, Dordrecht PREFACE This book contains selected papers from symposia and contributed sessions presented at the third biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, held in Lansing, Michigan, on October 27-29, 1972. We are grateful to Michigan State University, and especially to Professor Peter Asquith and his students and colleagues, for their friendly and efficient hospitality in organizing the circumstances of the sessions and of the 'intersessions', the unscheduled free time which is so important to any scholarly gathering. Several of the symposium papers have unhappily not been made available: those of Alasdair MacIntyre and Sidney Morgenbesser in the session on the social sciences, that of Ian Hacking in the session on randomness and that of Imre Lakatos in the session on discovery and rationality in science. Department of History and KENNETH F. SCHAFFNER Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy and ROBERT S. COHEN History of Science, Boston University TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE v PART I/SYMPOSIUM: SPACE, TIME AND MATTER: THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOMETRODYNAMICS ADOLF GRUNBAUM / Space, Time, and Matter: The Foundations of Geometrodynamics. Introductory Remarks 3 CHARLES W. MISNER / Some Topics for Philosophical Inquiry Concerning the Theories of Mathematical Geometrodynamics and of Physical Geometrodynamics 7 JOHN STACHEL / The Rise and Fall of Geometrodynamics 31 PART II / PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY STUART KAUFFMAN / Elsasser, Generalized Complementarity, and Finite Classes: A Critique of His Anti-Reductionism 57 WILLIAM C. WIMSATT / Complexity and Organization 67 RICHARD F. KITCHENER / B. F. Skinner - The Butcher, The Baker, The Behavior-Shaper 87 PART 111/ SYMPOSIUM : FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS IN THE CONCEPT OF RANDOMNESS WESLEY C. SALMON / Fundamental Problems in the Concept of Randomness. Dedication to Leonard J. Savage 101 J. ALBER TO COFFA / Randomness and Knowledge 103 IRVING JOHN GOOD / Random Thoughts about Randomness 117 HENRY E. KYBURG / Randomness 137 VIII T ABLE OF CONTENTS PART IV / HISTORICAL ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE JILL VANCE BUROKER / Kant, the Dynamical Tradition, and the Role of Matter in Explanation 153 PART V / PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES THOMAS MCCARTHY / The Operation Called Verstehen: To- wards a Redefinition of the Problem 167 N. KOERTGE / On Popper's Philosophy of Social Science 195 LAIRD ADDIS / Monistic Theories of Society 209 PART VI/SYMPOSIUM: VALUES, IDEOLOGY AND OBJECTIVITY IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES MICHAEL SCRIVEN / The Exact Role of Value Judgments in Science 219 PART VII / PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES NANCY CARTWRIGHT / A Dilemma for the Traditional Inter- pretation of Quantum Mixtures 251 PAUL FITZGERALD / Nowness and the Understanding of Time 259 PART VIII / SYMPOSIUM: MODALITY ANb THE ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC PROPOSITIONS ALDO BRESSAN / On the Usefulness of Modal Logic in Axiomat- izations of Physics 285 PATRICK SUPPES / The Essential but Implicit Role of Modal Concepts in Science 305 ALDO BRESSAN / Comments on Suppes' Paper: The Essential but Implicit Role of Modal Concepts in Science 315 T ABLE OF CONTENTS IX BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN / Bressan and Suppes on Modality 323 ALDO BRESSAN / Replies to van Fraassen's Comments: Bressan and Suppes on Modality 331 PART IX/SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION JAMES H. FET Z ER / Statistical Explanations 337 RONALD C. HOPSON / The Objects of Acceptance: Competing Scientific Explanations 349 PART X/TRUTH AND REALISM IN SCIENCE MICHAEL BRADIE / Is Scientific Realism a Contingent Thesis? 367 HENR Y c. BYERL Y / Realist Foundations of Measurement 375 PART XI/SYMPOSIUM: DISCOVERY, RATIONALITY AND PROGRESS IN SCIENCE STEPHEN TOULMIN / Rationality and Scientific Discovery 387 DUDLEY SHAPERE / Discovery, Rationality, and Progress in Science: A Perspective in the Philosophy of Science 407 PART XII/INDUCTIVE LOGIC ALEX C. MICHALOS / Rationality Between the Maximizers and the Satisficers 423 PART I SYMPOSIUM: SPACE, TIME, AND MATTER: THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOMETRODYNAMICS ADOLF GRUNBAUM* SPACE, TIME AND MATTER: THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOMETRODYNAMICS Introductory Remarks At the 1960 International Philosophy of Science Congress, J. A. Wheeler gave a synoptic paper entitled 'Curved Empty Space-Time as the Building Material of the Physical World'. In this paper, Wheeler (1962a) posed the following question (p. 361): Is space-time only an arena within which fields and particles move about as 'physical' and 'foreign' entities? Or is the four-dimensional continuum all there is? Is curved empty geometry a kind of magic building material out of which everything in the physical world is made: (1) slow curvature in one region of space describes a gravitational field; (2) a rippled geometry with a different type of curvature somewhere else describes an electromagnetic field; (3) a knotted-up region of high curvature describes a concentration of charge and mass-energy that moves like a particle? Are fields and particles foreign entities immersed in geometry, or are they nothing but geometry? It would be difficult to name any issue more central to the plan of physics than this: whether space-time is ouly an arena, or whether it is everything .... In 1870 Clifford put the issue before the Cambridge Philosophical Society in a more explicit form than anyone ever had before - or anyone was to do for many decades: "I hold in fact (I) that small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which is on the average flat; namely, that the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid in them; (2) that this property of being curved or distorted is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave; (3) that this variation of the curvature of space is what really happens in that phenomenon which we call the motion of matter, whether ponderable or ethereal; (4) that in the physical world nothing else takes place but this variation, subject (possibly) to the law of continuity." Wheeler epitomized his own attitude toward the monistic ontology en visioned by W. K. Clifford by declaring (Wheeler, 1962b, p. 225): There is nothing in the world except empty curved space. Matter, charge, electromagnetism, and other fields are only manifestations of the bending of space. Physics is geometry. And Wheeler (1962a, pp. 365-368) points out that in 1956, Charles Misner - one of our symposiasts - rediscovered a forgotten result due to Rainich as follows: electromagnetism can be geometrized along with gravitation in a unified way (via one set of purely geometrical 4th order equations) within the framework of Einstein's 1916 theory. In this way, Misner showed, as Wheeler puts it, how we can have 'electromagnetism without electromagnetism' (Wheeler, 1962a, p. 368) by building the elec tromagnetic field out of space-time geometry, as it were. By the same Kenneth F. Schaffner and Robert S. Cohen (eds.) , PSA 1972, 3-5. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland 4 ADOLF GRUNBAUM token, Misner showed how Einstein's theory can evade Pauli's jocular complaint that unified theory had disobeyed the injunction: "Let no man join together what God has put asunder." Six years later, Wheeler (1968) published a book in German entitled Einsteins Vision whose subtitle is 'What is the Current Status of Ein stein's Vision to Conceive of Everything as Geometry?'. Wheeler tells us that Einstein was animated by the hope of implementing Clifford's con ception of the universe as one of pure geometry (1962a, p. 361): The vision of Clifford and Einstein can be summarized in a single phrase, 'a geometro dynamical universe': a world whose properties are described by geometry, and a geometry whose curvature changes with time - a dynamical geometry. For nineteen years, Wheeler and his co-workers developed some of the detailed physics of Clifford's 1870 ontology of curved empty space-time as an outgrowth of general relativity under the name of 'geometro dynamics' ('GMD'). But in a lecture given at a conference held within a few weeks after the present Symposium,l Wheeler disavowed his erst while long quest for a reduction of all physics to space-time geometry. In a brief notice of that Conference (Nature 240 (1972)),2 the pertinent part of this lecture was summarized as follows: "He [Wheeler] also developed the theme that the structure of space-time could only be understood in terms of the structure of elementary particles rather than the converse statement which he has advocated for many years." Some of the accomplishments, prospects and problems of GMD are canvassed in the papers by Misner and Stachel below. Another GMD Symposium was held at the December 1972 Boston Meeting of the American Philosophical Association. The contributions by the principal speakers at the latter Symposium are available in Ear man (1972), Graves (1972) and Stein (1972). The remarks which I made as session chairman of the two Geometro dynamics Symposia held at the October 1972 PSA Congress and at the December 1972 APA Meeting have been expanded into a monograph length chapter 'General Relativity, Geometrodynamics and Ontology' (Griinbaum, 1973b, Ch. 22). Some excerpts from this chapter, which has been significantly influenced by John Stachel, appear in Griinbaum (1973a) while other extracts are published in Griinbaum (1973c). University of Pittsburgh