SPECIALSCIENCESANDTHEUNITYOFSCIENCE LOGIC, EPISTEMOLOGY, ANDTHE UNITY OFSCIENCE VOLUME24 Editors OlgaPombo,UniversidadedeLisboa,Portugal JuanManuelTorres,UniversidadNacionaldeCuyo,Argentina JohnSymons,UniversityofTexasatElPaso,USA ShahidRahman,Universite´deLille,France ManagingEditor: AliAbasnezhad,UniversityofLilleIII,France EditorialBoard JeanPaulvanBendegem,FreeUniversityofBrussels,Belgium JohanvanBenthem,UniversityofAmsterdam,theNetherlands JacquesDubucs,UniversityofParisI-Sorbonne,France AnneFagot-Largeault,Colle`gedeFrance,France BasvanFraassen,PrincetonUniversity,U.S.A. DovGabbay,King’sCollegeLondon,U.K. JaakkoHintikka,BostonUniversity,U.S.A. KarelLambert,UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine,U.S.A. GrahamPriest,UniversityofMelbourne,Australia GabrielSandu,UniversityofHelsinki,Finland HeinrichWansing,TechnicalUniversityDresden,Germany TimothyWilliamson,OxfordUniversity,U.K. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science aims to reconsider the question of the unityofscienceinlightofrecent developments inlogic.Atpresent, nosinglelogical, semanticalormethodologicalframeworkdominatesthephilosophyofscience.However, theeditorsofthisseriesbelievethatformaltechniqueslike,forexample,independence friendlylogic,dialogicallogics,multimodallogics,gametheoreticsemanticsandlinear logics,havethepotentialtocastnewlightonbasicissuesinthediscussionoftheunity ofscience. This series provides a venue where philosophers and logicians can apply specific technicalinsightstofundamentalphilosophical problems.Whiletheseriesisopentoa widevarietyofperspectives,includingthestudyandanalysisofargumentationandthe criticaldiscussionoftherelationshipbetweenlogicandthephilosophy ofscience,the aimistoprovideanintegratedpictureofthescientificenterpriseinallitsdiversity. Forfurthervolumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6936 Special Sciences and the Unity of Science Editedby Olga Pombo UniversidadedeLisboa,Portugal Juan Manuel Torres UniversidadNacionaldeCuyo,Argentina John Symons UniversityofTexasatElPaso,USA Shahid Rahman Universite´ deLille,France 123 Editors OlgaPombo JuanManuelTorres FaculdadedeCieˆncias FacultaddeFilosof´ıayLetras UniversidadedeLisboa UniversidadNacionaldeCuyo CampoGrande Campus‘ParqueGral.SanMartin’ Lisboa,Portugal Mendoza,Argentina JohnSymons ShahidRahman DepartmentofPhilosophy UFRPhilosophie/UMR-STL:8163 UniversityofTexasatElPaso Universite´deLille WorrellHall306 Villeneuved’Asque,France ElPaso,Texas,USA ISBN978-94-007-2029-9 e-ISBN978-94-007-2030-5 DOI10.1007/978-94-007-2030-5 SpringerDordrechtHeidelbergLondonNewYork LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2012930991 ©SpringerScience+BusinessMediaB.V.2012 Nopartofthisworkmaybereproduced,storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmittedinanyformorby anymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,microfilming,recordingorotherwise,withoutwritten permissionfromthePublisher,withtheexceptionofanymaterialsuppliedspecificallyforthepurpose ofbeingenteredandexecutedonacomputersystem,forexclusiveusebythepurchaserofthework. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) Contents 1 Introduction................................................................. 1 OlgaPombo, JuanManuelTorres, JohnSymons, andShahidRahman 2 PragmaticContinuities in Empirical Science: Some ExamplesfromtheHistoryofAstronomy............................... 5 Mar´ıadelaConcepcio´nCaaman˜oAlegre 3 ThePrincipleofEurhythmy:AKeytotheUnityofPhysics .......... 19 J.R.Croca 4 UnifyingScienceThroughComputation:Reflectionson ComputabilityandPhysics................................................ 53 EdwinJ.Beggs,Jose´ Fe´lixCosta,andJohnV.Tucker 5 LookingatWaterThroughParadigms................................... 81 A.PereraandF.Sokolic´ 6 IntroducingUniversalSymbiogenesis.................................... 89 NathalieGontier 7 TheSymbioticPhenomenonintheEvolutiveContext ................. 113 FranciscoCarrapic¸o 8 PlantNeurobiology:LessonsfortheUnityofScience.................. 121 PacoCalvoGarzo´n 9 ComputerScience MeetsEvolutionaryBiology:Pure PossibleProcessesandtheIssueofGradualism......................... 137 PhilippeHuneman 10 EvolutionaryPsychologyand the Unity of Sciences: TowardsanEvolutionaryEpistemology ................................. 163 Lu´ısMonizPereira v vi Contents 11 UnityofScienceandPluralism:CognitiveNeurosciences ofRacialPrejudiceasaCaseStudy ...................................... 177 LucFaucher 12 SciencesasOpenSystems–TheCaseofEconomics ................... 205 V´ıtorNeves1 13 PluralityofScienceandRationalIntegrationofKnowledge.......... 219 CatherineLaurent 14 A Physicalist Reconstruction of a Theory: TheCaseoftheFreudianTheoryofHysteria........................... 233 Ce´sarLorenzano 15 TheCulturalSciencesandTheirBasisinLife.OnErnst Cassirer’sTheoryoftheCulturalSciences.............................. 259 ChristianMo¨ckel 16 AppearanceorExistenceoftheEntityRealism‘Sense’orMind ..... 269 A.Yazdani 17 Fiction,Counterfactuals:TheChallengeforLogic..................... 277 BrianHill Chapter 1 Introduction OlgaPombo,JuanManuelTorres,JohnSymons,andShahidRahman As it was expressed in the Introduction to our first volume, in order to clarify the discussions surrounding unity of science, a sharp distinction between science unityandscienceunificationshouldbedrawn.Whereastheformerdemandstasks for the identification of common factors among the diverse disciplines – mainly objects and methods – the latter involves the determination of those formal and materialconditionsthatmaketheconnectionsbetweentheoriesreallypossible.Itis ofparamountimportancetotakeintoaccountthatbothconditionsshouldallowfor aneffectiveconnectionbetweentheories. A quasi trivial consequence of the distinction between unity and unification is that any work of unification contributes to the thesis of unity; though factors of unitywillnotbeabletoofferargumentsinfavourofunification.Somecontributions presented in this volume – specific case studies – propose sound arguments in favouroftheunificationthesis,whereasotherspointoutdifferentfactorsforunity. In addition, other articles provide analogies, approaches and models which are O.Pombo((cid:2)) FaculdadedeCieˆncias,CenterforPhilosophyofScience,UniversidadedeLisboa,Campo Grande,1749-016Lisboa,Portugal e-mail:[email protected] J.M.Torres FacultaddeFilosof´ıayLetras,UniversidadNacionaldeCuyo,Campus‘ParqueGral.San Martin’,5500Mendoza,Argentina e-mail:[email protected] J.Symons DepartmentofPhilosophy,UniversityofTexasatElPaso,WorrellHall306, ElPaso,TX79968,USA e-mail:[email protected] S.Rahman UFRPhilosophie/UMR-STL:8163,Universite´deLille,B.P.60149, 59653Villeneuve-d’Asq,France e-mail:[email protected] O.Pomboetal.(eds.),SpecialSciencesandtheUnityofScience,Logic,Epistemology, 1 andtheUnityofScience24,DOI10.1007/978-94-007-2030-5 1, ©SpringerScienceCBusinessMediaB.V.2012 2 O.Pomboetal. valuableforrethinkingtheunityofscience.Suchworksarebasedinnewtheories anddisciplinessomeofwhichwereunknownatthetimeofNeurathandCarnaps’ programmes. Inthespiritofthehypothesisofscienceunification,threepapers–byJ.R.Croca, E.Beggsetal.andA.Perea–presentinnovativeviews.Crocadoessobyproposing the principle of eurhythme as suitable to give unification to the basic laws of Classic, QuantumandGravityPhysics.Ontheirside,Beggsandco-workerspoint out the relationships between computability and physical systems and present a proposal even stronger than the mere association by asserting that computers exist in nature. Finally, Perera and Sokolic´’s contribution is done by analyzing the nature of liquids and associated liquids. These authors show how the view they suggest can overcomethe double vision of matter that Physics has up today, i.e., continuous and discontinuous. Contributions by N. Gontier and F. Carrapic¸o describe the importance of symbiosis as a fundamental mechanism of organic evolution and, therefore, as an axis of any evolutionary theory. Paraphrasing the famous dictum by T. Dobzhanski ‘nothing makes sense in Biology outside the evolutionaryperspective’,GontierandCarrapic¸o’sconclusionsseemtoencourage the idea that in evolutionary theory nothing makes sense outside the symbiotic perspective.Gontier goeseven furtherby proposingsymbiogenesisas a sourceof metaphors for sciences and an alternative for a universal selectionist account of evolution. The tension between unity and specialization is focused on by L. Faucher. BasedonS.Mitchell’stypologyofinter-theoreticrelationships,theauthordefends pluralismasamiddlewaybetweenglobalinter-theoreticunificationandlocalforms of unification.He offersan analysis of the connectionsbetween neuroscienceand the cognitive psychology of racial prejudice as an example of local unification, enriching,atthesametime,theoriginalproposalbyMitchell. Isevolutionarybiologyapartofcomputerscience?Thisprovocativequestionis addressedbyP.Hunemann,whotriestoclarifytherelationshipsbetweencomputer science and evolutionary biology, connections powered by the development of artificial life studies. Computer studies would providepure possible processes for Biologyto explorethe dynamicsof reallife, despite the fact thatactualprocesses deviatefromtheseidealizedmodels.Inthiswayevolutionarycomputationalmodels can act as useful null hypothesisfor biologicalchange. In this chapter, the reader willfindnotonlyelementsinfavouroftheunityofsciencebutalsoastrongthesis forunification:theevolutionarytheorywouldbe,accordingtotheauthor,apartof computerscience. From an innovative perspective, in fact a model taken from thermodynamics, V. Neves encourages the construction of science as a theoretical open system for breaking not only the dualist view of science in terms of unity/disunity but alsotrendsofintegration/disintegration.Byanalyzinganattemptofuniversalizing Economicsasthecentreofsocialsciences,theauthordemonstratestheconvenience of building theories as a system capable of communication between themselves. Along the same line, K. Laurent argues the possibility of a priori establishing rationalprinciplesofaunifiedscience.Todoso,sheusesthewellknownLakatosian 1 Introduction 3 notion of scientific research programme, something that allows exploration of the internal problems of disciplines, which are continuously generate by the contradictoryhypotheseswefindinsidescience.Sheexemplifiedtheconvenienceof adoptingtheLakatosiannotionbyexamining,intherealmofEconomics,thecaseof neoclassicviewvisavistheheterodoxone.Atthesametime,heradoptedapproach allowstoclarifythecharacteristicconceptsofpluridisciplinarity,interdisciplinarity andtransdisciplinarity. Certainly,thenotionsoftheoryandsciencearenotequivalent.However,science in its supreme stage is framed by theories and an intricate web connecting them. So it is not a surprise that the concept of theory, together with the analysis of the relationships among theories, constitutes a topic of great importance for the challenge of unification. In this sense, the structuralist view of theories – an epistemologicalproposalformulatebyW.Stegmu¨ller,J.Sneedandothers–should be pointed out as one philosophical school most compromised with the creation of a new notion of theory especially apt for that role. Such a notion is useful for tasksofintegrationofknowledgethatcomesfromdifferentdisciplines.Thearticle by Lorenzano,focused on Freud’s theory of hysteria, developsa detailed account of the structuralist view and shows why its notionof theory is appropriatefor the integrationrole,particularlybythe introductionof Sneed’shighlyinnovativeidea ofpartialmodelsinscience. Intheabovementionedarticlesandothers,thereaderswillfindmanyarguments and indisputable examples in favour of the unity of science. It is true that there are scenarios and many examples of the disunity as well. But as argued in the Introduction of the first volume, one has to take into account that science is a dynamic process in which the assimilation of new phenomena, perspective and hypotheses and their subsequent organization in the scientific corpus takes place justslowly.Therefore,apermanentlandscapeofapparentdisunityisanunavoidable consequenceof the scientific gradualintegration process. Some thinkers prefer to label this recurrent circumstance ‘crisis’, but they seem to ignore its temporary nature. Only a retrospective view on the practical results of scientific enterprise andonthescienceitself,grantusaplaintestimonyofthetendencytounitywhich characterizesallhumanknowledge.