Third Edition
This edition first published 2018
© 2018 Richard DeWitt
Edition History: 1e: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, (1e, 2003); John Wiley & Sons Ltd, (2e, 2010)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Richard DeWitt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
Registered Offices
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial Office
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty
While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title
Names: DeWitt, Richard, author.
Title: Worldviews : an introduction to the history and philosophy of science / Richard DeWitt.
Other titles: World views
Description: Third edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017049915 (print) | LCCN 2017059375 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119118985 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119118992 (epub) | ISBN 9781119118893 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Science–History. | Science–Philosophy.
Classification: LCC Q125 (ebook) | LCC Q125 .D38 2018 (print) | DDC 509–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049915
Cover images: (Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci) © Vaara / iStockphoto; (Night Sky) © Misha Kaminsky / iStockphoto
Cover design by Wiley
For Susie
Countless people made contributions to the various editions of this work. Some contributions were large, some small, but all of them were important. For the various editions I have received invaluable feedback from numerous anonymous reviewers, sometimes catching outright mistakes and sometimes providing good suggestions for clarifying discussions. Although I do not know who these reviewers are, I would like to thank them for their important contributions. From the time this book project began, when the manuscript existed only as a rough draft, and continuing through drafts of the current edition, my philosophy of science students have provided excellent feedback on which ideas worked and which did not, which explanations were clear and which not so clear, and more. There are too many of them to name, but I would like to thank them as a whole for their help. I likewise cannot begin to name, but I do appreciate, all of the colleagues who over the years have discussed these issues with me, read portions of manuscripts, and helped me clarify and oftentimes correct my thinking on various issues. I would like to note that in spring 2016 I had the honor of leading a small group of exceptional students in a seminar in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Together we thought through a variety of issues in current science, history of science, and philosophy of science, and this group forced me to expand upon, clarify, and sometimes rethink a variety of views related to the history and philosophy of science. For this I'd like to acknowledge the contributions of Dan Boley, Chris Cardillo, Alex Clinton, Chris Fazekas, Aidan Grealish, Tom Greenwood, Tess McMahon, Elliot Neski, Justin Paton, Kali Schlegel, Andrew Schmidt, and John Simon. I would like again to note the contributions of Charles Ess of the University of Oslo, and Marc Lange of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, both of whom read drafts of the entire first edition, most of which is included in both the second edition and this edition. Each provided lengthy, detailed, and helpful comments and suggestions (not to mention saving me from several embarrassing mistakes). In addition, I'd like to thank Todd Disotell and Shara Bailey of the Center for the Study of Human Origins, New York University, for an invigorating 2009 seminar on evolution, and the Faculty Resource Network for their financial support for that seminar. Regarding the material on evolution, I would like to acknowledge Richard Gawne, whose observations were largely responsible for me rethinking the way that material was presented in the previous edition. I wish also to recognize Helen Lang, who unfortunately passed away not long ago. Conversations with her were exceptionally valuable in helping me clarify certain aspects of Aristotle's physics and general philosophy of nature. Thanks also to Giles Flitney for his excellent work as copy-editor for this latest edition. Finally, I would again like to thank my original editor on this project, Jeff Dean, whose feedback was invaluable in the original organization and presentation of this manuscript.
RD
This book is intended primarily for those coming to the history and philosophy of science for the first time. If this description fits you, welcome to a fascinating territory to explore. This field involves some of the deepest, most difficult, and most fundamental questions there are. But at the same time, the “lens of science,” so to speak, focuses these questions more sharply than they are often otherwise focused. I hope you enjoy this field as much as I do, and I especially hope your appetite is whetted to the point where you will want to return to explore these subjects in more depth.
This sort of introductory work provides special challenges. On the one hand, I want to be accurate with the history, the philosophy, and the interconnections between the two. On the other hand, I want to avoid the level of detail and minutiae that might swamp one approaching this subject for the first time. Those of us who do history and philosophy of science full-time – most of us are academics – tend to get caught up in the details of our disciplines, and I think we often lose sight of what such detail must look like to one new to the subject. When faced with these minutiae, newcomers often come away with the sense “Why would anyone care about that?”
The question is an understandable one. The details and minutiae are important, but their importance can only be understood in the context of a broader picture. So I hope, in this text, to paint one such broader picture. But although this text provides a rather broad-brushstroke picture, to the best of my knowledge what I say is accurate, though it admittedly leaves out a good deal of detail.
The connections between history, science, and philosophy are endlessly complex and fascinating. As mentioned, I hope to whet your appetite, to make you want to explore these issues in more detail, and perhaps even come to appreciate and enjoy the minutiae. Nothing would please me more than if, at the end of this book, you visit your bookstore, or fire up your web browser, and order works that will enable you to explore these topics further.
Since this new edition contains a fair amount of new material, some brief notes on these additions are in order. Various scientific traditions (Aristotelian, Newtonian, current sciences) have always been a central theme in the book, and given this, questions surrounding the possible incommensurability of such scientific traditions (roughly, the question of whether one tradition can be properly understood from the point of view of a different tradition) have always been sort of lurking in the background of previous editions. For this edition, and following the suggestions of several reviewers of earlier editions, I've added a chapter explicitly discussing issues surrounding incommensurability. This chapter comes relatively late in the book (Chapter 25), which allows the discussion to use, as examples, scientific traditions discussed earlier in the book.
In addition, I've added a chapter on the measurement problem in quantum theory. The measurement problem is widely viewed as a major (perhaps the major) issue with the standard approach to quantum theory (at least, quantum theory taken realistically). Most, perhaps all, of the discussions of the measurement problem I am familiar with are not geared toward someone who might be encountering these topics for the first time. For this chapter, I took pains to try to describe the measurement problem, especially why it is a problem, in a way that will work for someone who has not encountered such issues before.
Regarding evolutionary theory: since the publication of the second edition, I've become less than happy with the way I presented the basics of evolutionary theory in that edition. It's not that what was said was mistaken; rather, I think it was overly simplistic. For this edition, I took the previous material, tossed it in the bin, and started from scratch. So while the title of the chapter is the same, the material on the basics of evolutionary theory is entirely new, and substantially more extensive than what was in the second edition. I think it works much better. (The historical material toward the end of that chapter, on Darwin's and Wallace's routes to discovering natural selection, has been cleaned up and condensed, but is basically the same.)
I might note that I do not anticipate there being another edition beyond this one. The main reasons are (i) practical considerations mean that books of this sort can only be so long, and with this edition we are at the point where it would be difficult to add new material without exceeding these practical limits, and (ii) I do not believe in putting out new and only slightly modified editions mainly aimed at killing off sales of previous editions. As such, for this edition I've taken a good amount of time to carefully review every chapter. For some chapters only minor changes were made, for example, rewriting sentences for greater clarity. For other chapters I made much more substantial changes.
Finally, for the chapters in the final section concerning recent developments, I have added references to some interesting experiments that have been conducted since the publication of the second edition. Mainly these involve relativity (for example, the recent detection of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's general relativity), and recent experiments in quantum theory (for example, involving further tests of Bell's theorem).
Much of the material in the book can be usefully accompanied by primary sources. A wide variety of additional primary sources could be used, and below is a list, I think of manageable length, of primary sources I would recommend. All of the sources below have the advantage of being available online, and from sources in the public domain such that copyright issues do not arise.
In the barest of outlines, my approach in this book is (i) to introduce some fundamental issues in the history and philosophy of science; (ii) to explore the transition from the Aristotelian worldview to the Newtonian worldview; and (iii) to explore challenges to our own western worldview brought on by recent developments, most notably relativity theory, quantum theory, and evolutionary theory.
To accomplish these goals, the book is divided into three parts. Part I provides an introduction to some fundamental issues in the history and philosophy of science. Such issues include the notion of worldviews, scientific method and reasoning, truth, evidence, the contrast between empirical facts and philosophical/conceptual facts, falsifiability, and instrumentalism and realism. The relevance of and interconnections between these topics are illustrated throughout Parts II and III.
In Part II, we explore the change from the Aristotelian worldview to the Newtonian worldview, noting the role played by some of the philosophical/conceptual issues involved in this change. Of particular interest is the role played by certain philosophical/conceptual “facts” that are central to the Aristotelian worldview. Discussion of these beliefs serves to illustrate many of the issues from Part I, and also sets the stage for the discussion, in Part III, of some of our own philosophical/conceptual “facts” that we must abandon in light of recent discoveries.
Part III provides an introduction to recent discoveries and developments, most notably relativity theory, quantum theory, and evolutionary theory. As we explore these, we will see that these new discoveries and developments require substantial changes in some of the key beliefs that almost everyone in the western world was raised with. And having emphasized, in Part II, the role played by philosophical/conceptual beliefs in the Aristotelian worldview, we now see that some of the beliefs we have long taken as obvious empirical facts turn out, in light of recent developments, to be mistaken philosophical/conceptual “facts.”
At this point in time it is clear that changes in our overall view of the world will be required as recognition of these mistaken philosophical/conceptual beliefs becomes more widespread. It is difficult to say at this point just what shape these changes will take, but it is becoming increasingly likely that our grandchildren will inherit a view of the world substantially different from our own. I hope you enjoy exploring and thinking about not only the changes that have taken place in the past, but also the changes we find ourselves in the midst of.
At the end of the book, in the Chapter Notes and Suggested Reading, I provide further information on some of the topics discussed, as well as suggestions for where to find additional information on these topics. As mentioned, nothing would please me more than if, at the end of this work, you find yourself interested in further investigating these issues.
As a final note on the structure of the book, although this book is intended to be read as a whole, and its three main parts are connected in the ways described above, it is possible to read Parts I, II, and III more or less independently of each other. For example, those more interested in the scientific revolution of the 1600s and the development of Newtonian science and the Newtonian worldview, and less interested in related issues in the philosophy of science, could largely start with Chapter 9, at the beginning of Part II. I would, however, encourage such readers to take at least a quick pass through Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 8. Likewise, readers interested primarily in more recent developments in science, especially relativity theory, quantum theory, and evolutionary theory, could jump immediately to Chapter 23, at the beginning of Part III. I would encourage such readers to take at least a quick look at Chapters 3 and 8.
Once again, I hope you enjoy your exploration.
In Part I, we explore some preliminary and basic issues involved in the history and philosophy of science. In particular, we will discuss the notion of worldviews, truth, evidence, empirical facts versus philosophical/conceptual facts, common types of reasoning, falsifiability, and instrumentalism and realism. These topics provide the necessary background for our exploration, in Part II, of the transition from the Aristotelian worldview to the Newtonian worldview, and also for our exploration, in Part III, of recent developments that challenge our own view of the world.