WITCHES, SCIENTISTS, PHILOSOPHERS: ESSAYS AND LECTURES THE WESTERN ONTARIO SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE A SERIES OF BOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, AND RELATED FIELDS Managing Editor WILLIAM DEMOPOULOS Department 0/ Philosophy, University o/Western Ontario, Canada Managing Editor 1980-1997 ROBERT E. BUTTS Late, Department 0/P hilosophy, University o/Western Ontario, Canada Editorial Board JOHN L. BELL, University o/Western Ontario JEFFREY BUB, University 0/M aryland ROBERT CLIFTON, University 0/ Pittsburgh ROBERT DiSALLE, University o/Western Ontario MICHAEL FRIEDMAN, Indiana University WILLIAM HARPER, University o/Western Ontario CLIFFORD A. HOOKER, University o/Newcastle KEITH HUMPHREY, University o/Western Ontario AUSONIO MARRAS, University o/Western Ontario JURGEN MITTELSTRASS, Universitiit Konstanz JOHN M. NICHOLAS, University o/Western Ontario ITAMAR PITOWSKY, Hebrew University GRAHAM SOLOMON, Wilfrid Laurier University VOLUME 65 ROBERT E. BUTTS WITCHES, SCIENTISTS, PHILOSOPHERS: ESSAYS AND LECTURES Edited by GRAHAM SOLOMON Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-5577-4 ISBN 978-94-015-9504-9 (eBook) DOT 10.1007/978-94-015-9504-9 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 2000 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner Table of Contents Preface Vll PART I: WITCHES AND WITCH-HUNTERS 1. Two Stories About Evil: Christianity and the Creation of Witches 3 2. The Tamblyn Lectures: DE PRAESTIGIIS DAEMONUM: Early Modem Witchcraft: Some Philosophical Reflections 2.1 'Who They be that are called Witches': The Ontology of Witches 11 2.2 The Witch as Other, the Witch as Body: The Phenomenology of Witchcraft 19 2.3 Causes and Signs: The Epistemology of Witchcraft 27 PART II: PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE FROM LEIBNIZ TO KANT 3. Leibniz' Monads: A Heritage of Gnosticism and a Source of Rational Science 37 4. Rationalism in Modem Science: d'Alembert and the "esprit simpliste" 51 5. Hume's Scepticism 63 6. Husserl's Critique ofHume's Notion of Distinctions of Reason 71 7. The Role of Arational Factors in Interpretive History: The Case of Kant and ESP 79 8. Kant's Theory of Musical Sound: An Early Exercise in Cognitive Science 107 v vi 9. Kant's Dialectic and the Logic of Illusion 127 PART III: TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 10. The H ypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Theories: A Sympathetic Disclaimer 139 11. Methodology and the Functional Identity of Science and Philosophy 159 12. Sciences and Pseudosciences: An Attempt at a New Form of Demarcation 173 13. The Reception of German Scientific Philosophy in North America: 1930-1962 193 PREFACE Robert Butts (1928 -1997) was a well known and respected historian and philosopher of science. He played an important role in establishing History and Philosophy of Science as a major field of study in Canada and the United States. He established and gave direction to the internationally respected research profile in HPS studies at the University of Western Ontario. He was a two term editor of Philosophy ofS cience, a leading journal in the field, and also was a long serving Managing Editor of the Western Ontario Series in the Philosophy ofS cience. He made significant contributions to scholarship on Kant and Leibniz, and was among the first to rehabilitate the work and reputation of Whew ell and other 19th century philosophers of science. After his retirement he continued to teach, offering an undergraduate course called "The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Witchcraft", in which he applied many of the important lessons he'd learned in his HPS work. The course was proposed and developed in 1978 by Thomas Lennon and became very popular, attracting some 400 students per year when Butts taught it. General interest in the topic and Butts's reputation as a scholar and lecturer led to an invitation to deliver a series of three lectures as part of the prestigious Tamblyn Lectures series at the University of Western Ontario. He gave the lectures over three evenings in March 1996. Butts died in 1997, before he could make a decision about revising and publishing the Tamblyn Lectures. Members of the audience and various colleagues and students hoped the lectures would be published in some form or other. There is a good deal of popular interest in the history of the witchcraft persecutions, and the insights and perspective of a historian and philosopher of science deepen and clarify the issues. This collection of Butts 's lectures and essays brings together the Tamblyn Lectures and a related lecture on witchcraft, and eleven papers on historically significant philosophers and on issues in the history and philosophy of science. Butts saw himself as a pragmatic realist, combining what he took to be the best aspects oflogical empiricism with a historically informed neo-Kantian pragmatism deeply appreciative of the methods of science. His work on witchcraft is thoroughly informed by his expert grasp of basic issues in the philosophy of science and his respect for the place of science in culture. The papers on Leibniz, Hume, HusserI, and Kant, and on issues in history and philosophy of science, while more specialized than the lectures on witchcraft, are accessible and understandable (and of much interest on their own), and supply useful context for the witchcraft lectures. We see in these papers on philosophy and science that, for Butts, scientific rationality is the major defence we have against the various conditions which vii viii encourage witch hunts and all the pain and terror that go with them. We see behind all the articles a fine philosopher at work, trying to locate the distinction between the rational and the irrational, trying to describe a kind of rationality useful, perhaps essential, in the struggle to avoid barbarism and preserve humane values. Chapters 1 and 2 are lectures on witchcraft; Chapter 9 is a lecture on Kant on illusion; and Chapter 13 is a lecture on the history of scientific philosophy from the founding of the journal Erkenntnis to the publication of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chapter 1 is the unrevised text of an invited lecture given to the Annual Conference of the Seminar for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, at the University of Western Ontario in 1992, and is a useful introduction to the Tamblyn Lectures, concisely expressing some of the philosophical interest he found in the topic of witchcraft. Chapter 2 is the Tamblyn Lectures. Some bibliographical footnotes have been added; otherwise the text is as it was delivered. Chapter 9 is a draft of a paper he had nearly completed and was circulating among friends and colleagues. Earlier versions of it had been given as invited lectures at the Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in 1994, and at the University of Rochester in 1996. Chapter 13 is the fourth and last draft he was able to complete of a paper which was posthumously published in Experience, Reality, and Scientific Explanation: Essays in Honor ofM errilee and Wesley Salmon, edited by Maria Carla Galavotti and Alessandro Pagnini (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 1-14. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers. I thank Valentine Rodger for permission to publish these uncompleted drafts by her husband and for permission to collect and publish the following previously published articles. I thank William Demopoulos for advice and Nathan Colborne for assistance. The remaining acknowledgements are as follows: "Leibniz' Monads: A Heritage of Gnosticism and a Source of Rational Science", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1980): 47-62, published by The University of Calgary Press, reproduced here by the kind permission of The University of Calgary Press. "Rationalism in Modem Science: d' Alembert and the' esprit simpliste "', Bucknell Review 8 (1959): 127-139, published by Bucknell University Press, reproduced here by the kind permission of Bucknell University Press. "Hume's Scepticism", Journal oft he History ofI deas 20 (1959): 413-419, Journal of the History ofldeas, Inc. Reprinted by the kind permission of the Johns Hopkins University Press. "Husserl's Critique ofHume's Notion of Distinctions of Reason", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20 (1959): 213-221, published by the International Phenomenological Society, reproduced here by the kind permission of the Editor of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. ix "The Role ofA rationa1 Factors in Interpretive History: The Case of Kant and ESP", in J. R. Brown (ed.), Scientific Rationality: the Sociological Turn (Dordrecht: Reidel), pp. 209-247, reproduced here by the kind permission ofK1uwer Academic Publishers. "Kant's Theory of Musical Sound: An early Exercise in Cognitive Science", Dialogue 32 (1993): 3-24, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Canadian Philosophical Association, reproduced here by the kind permission of the Editor of Dialogue. "The Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Theories: A Sympathetic Disclaimer", in William R. Shea (ed.), Basic Issues In The Philosophy OfS cience (New York: Science History Publications, 1976), pp. 36-57. In Public Domain. "Methodology and the Functional Identity of Science and Philosophy", in J. Hintikka, D. Gruender, and E. Agazzi (eds), Probabilistic Thinking, Thermodynamics, And The Interaction Of The History And Philosophy OfS cience (Pisa Conference Proceedings), Vol. II (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), pp. 253-270, reproduced here by the kind permission ofK1uwer Academic Publishers. "Sciences and Psuedosciences: An Attempt at a New Form of Demarcation", by Robert E. Butts, from Philosophical Problems oft he Internal and External Worlds, John Earman, AlIenI. Janis, GeraldJ. Massey, and Nicholas Rescher, Eds., © 1993 by University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Graham Solomon Waterloo PART I WITCHES AND WITCH-HUNTERS