The History and Phenomenology
of Science is Possible(1)
Lester Embree
We observe throughout, and the observation still
holds today, that science and philosophy are two separate things; that one may
be an excellent scientist without having the least idea of what one is really
doing. It is even almost always thus. —Alexandre Koyré (11: 35)
It is difficult to
deny that “science” is to our society and era what religion seems to have been
in the middle ages. A philosopher cannot responsibly ignore so central a
feature of his culture. After I had my training in phenomenology at the
Graduate Faculty of the
1.
Images of Science
(1) The least emphasized but possibly most
ultimately interesting old image of
science relates to the standpoint of the
practicing scientists themselves. It is about what heroes of science
accomplished and relates to the actual facts of past science about as well as a
tourist brochure relates to a national culture. As a false image it obfuscates
how science is the activity of groups
rather than the results of solitary individuals, how science is usually close-minded rather than open-minded,
how normally facts are fitted to theories
rather than vice versa, and how natural science is theoretical research and thus different from
technology. This old image plainly has value for science in the wider practical
world and is naively accepted on the margin of the consciousness of scientists
as they thematize the theoretical issues at hand, write chiefly for one
another, and do not seek to understand their own endeavors in a scientifically
historical manner. This mythical image is projected in popularizations, where
exciting episodes and heroic deeds are emphasized, but it is also perpetuated
if not perpetrated in science textbooks. Kuhn does not advocate altering the
nature and role of such textbooks where the education of scientists is
concerned, although the impact they have on philosophers, historians of
science, and the lay public who basically know science through them seems
another question.
(2) On a second level, Kuhn emphatically
contrasts old and new images of
science in the history of science. Historically there has been some variety in the old historiography of science. Since
antiquity, some scientists have withdrawn from research and engaged in
chronicling for its pedagogic and professional-promotional advantages. Plainly
this is related to the image of science just referred to. Such in-house
historiography tends to focus on single sciences as well as single scientists.
Other varieties of the old science historiography have been done by
philosophers, especially since Bacon, have tried to view science as a whole,
and were optimistically concerned with the alleged progress of reason. Both
sorts of old image involve faith in the continuous and piecemeal cumulativity
of scientific advance. And in the light of the current scientific “truth,” past
discoveries are celebrated and errors deplored. (Presumably, if—or “as”—that
“truth” changed, history would have to be rewritten.)
Against all that, the new history of science was begun in the United States after World
War II by Alexandre Koyré (it seems to me that in relation to Koyré’s
“Copernicus” Kuhn is playing a fascinating “Kepler”). The new historiographic
image of science came from Continental Philosophy (although Kuhn fails to
mention his maître Koyré’s maître Husserl) as well as from work in
the history of philosophy. In ugly but I hope useful terms partly of my own
devising, Kuhn contends that the old science
historiography is what I call “presentistic” (since it involves approaching the
past in the light of present science) and that the new science
historiography is “pastistic” (because it would have us comprehend old science
in the formerly contemporary but now past terms and contexts in which it
arose). The “presentism” of the bad old way is objectionable, for example, in
projecting today’s philosophy/ science opposition into ancient thought where it
did not exist, in separating religion from science in times when they were much
involved with one another, for doing similarly for science and technologies
such as astrology, calendrics, etc., as well as simply misreading much of what
happened. Something of how the new and good “pastistic” history of science is
done will be suggested later in this essay.
(3) A Ph.D. in theoretical physics, Kuhn
trained himself in the history of science, where he has focused his efforts, at
least in his published work, on the broader methodological and theoretical
questions in his new field; despite the appreciation his thought has been
receiving for some twenty years in the philosophy of science, he nowhere claims
to be a philosopher.(3) Nevertheless, if one looks
for them, one can find many objections to the
old image of science that was accepted
in the old philosophy
of science. This is of coarse Positivism cum Logical Empiricism and to some
extent also Popper’s Falsificationism. Tested against the historical record
(“pastistically” considered, of course), the image of science in the old
philosophy of science, which stems from textbooks and the old history of
science, is discontinued or falsified. (It is ironical, of course, that
positivism be afflicted with mythological notions of science!) In opposition
specifically to Logical Empiricism, Kuhn wants a large place for the context of
discovery and, more generally, attention to the dynamics of the scientific
process as much as to the logic of results, concern with the semantics as well
as the syntactics of scientific utterances, and recognition that there are
definite limits to what can be reconstructed logically in terms of rules and
criteria. On the problem of scientific development, which he contributed much toward
making currently focal, Logical Empiricism seems to model all of science as
continuously cumulative on “normal science” and Falsificationism to model it
all on revolutionary episodes, while for Kuhn there is a model which covers
both phases of science (this will be discussed briefly in the section after
next). In the more recent philosophy of science, he has been pleased to see the
past of science taken more seriously, but complains that it is still too much
done, in my terms, “presentistically.” Although he certainly has yearnings and
interest, Kuhn does not have a new
philosophy of science springing from his head. The present essay is to suggest
that his historical work can be of use for a new (but “old”) phenomenological philosophy of science.
2. The
Human Science of
Science
Kuhn’s approach to science can be
distinguished from his specific analyses and should the latter be mistaken, the
former might still be valid. For this approach, science is thematized as a collective human activity. This focus
does not render the objects and results of the activity irrelevant, but it does
represent a shift in relation to earlier views. One does not engage,
unreflectively in propositional analysis and logical reconstruction so much
anymore. Literature, painting, music, philosophy, law, technology, etc., have
long been regarded as activities and Kuhn claims originality only for applying
that approach to science; this seems how he makes Koyré’s revolutionary
“pastistic” model work. If natural science is a collective activity, it can be
approached in a variety of ways, all of which I would consider “human
scientific.”
(1) If psychology
is about individual outlook and behavior, some of what Kuhn does is psychology.
He studied the Gestaltists and Piaget very
early in the development of his position. He distinguishes between individual
idiosyncrasy and traits that are typical of individuals of a class; thus the
specialist dedication of Copernicus is typical, while “
(2) Kuhn’s involvement with sociology came late and, though he is
familiar with current sociology of science, on which he is having an impact,
his own interests are narrower and his views seem his own. He has some interest
in the function of institutions, but his focus is on how groups do science;
thus, if science is a collective endeavor, simultaneous discoveries—a problem
for the old science historiography, where the individual is fundamental—are not
surprising but rather to be expected among those with the same training,
outlook, and problems. Again, there is less need to posit psychological
conflicts within individuals when a group can contain varying proportions of
dogmatic and open individuals and small changes on the part of many can
transform the consensus dramatically. The groups that do science are regularly called
“communities” by Kuhn, which may connote the intensity of communication within
them, but not their size, which he estimates as between twenty-five and one hundred, something which was probably obvious
before the 20th century and what might be called “mass science”; plainly there
are limits to how many others one can know and whose work one can keep abreast
of. Science groups are then narrow specialties,
the members of which share much in the way of education, professionalization,
etc. This is the unit for Kuhn’s analyses and fascinating for me. Copernicus
worked in a small group devoted to technical mathematical astronomy (who else
could read De Revolutionibus?) and
Galileo is to be understood in relation to his teachers, contemporaries, and
immediate successors. Hence, specialties are structured in social
successiveness as well as simultaneity. Despite what
might be called the primacy of the group, there are roles which-individuals can
be seen to .play within group life, e.g., newcomer, student, precipitator,
consolidator, hold-out, etc. But what do the specialities as wholes composed of
interrelated individuals do? Nothing less
than produce and validate knowledge in their respective domains (cf. 9).
(3) Linguistics
and hermeneutics naturally come in for Kuhn because of the prominence of
communication in the doing of science and of texts in the historical study of
it. He was early influenced by B. J. Whorf and later drew on linguistic studies
of verbal interaction in the laboratory and of the translation process. Members
of specialities have their own dialects, which must be mastered. While Kuhn ran
a huge oral history project on Quantum Physics, he favors work through texts
for access to the stretches of time over which scientific change would seem
most apparent. He discusses change in literary genre, particularly the rise of
the article form, he praised and practiced the technique of explication de texte emphasized by
Koyré, and he has recently become especially concerned with the problem of
choosing among different readings of a text.
[T]he search for
the best, or best-accessible, reading has been central to my historical
research (and has also been systematically eliminated from the narratives that
report its results). Lessons learned while reading Aristotle have also informed
my readings of men like Boyle and
What I as a
physicist had to discover for myself, most historians learn by example in the
course of professional training. Consciously or not, they are practitioners of
the hermeneutic method. (13: xii)
This
hermeneutical method is essential
to Kuhn’s “pastistic” approach to the past of science and it is more
like the traditional hermeneutics that Thomas Seebohm, for example, currently
advocates (it could, I suppose, be called the “old” hermeneutics) than the new
and violent hermeneutics of Heidegger and his school.
(4) The specifically historical component of Kuhn’s approach is naturally the largest
and most pervasive, thus perhaps the most accessible and familiar, and hence
probably the most cursorily treatable here. But it should be mentioned that for
Kuhn history in general and history of science specifically are cognitive
endeavors, endeavors which are empirical in their own way and which aim at
objective and verifiable results. As a “Continental,” I have no difficulty
recognizing such to be Wissenschaft,
but of course Geistes- rather than Natur-. And not only can the historian
develop factually descriptive narratives, but it seems that he can also develop
explanations. In other words, while they are not of the covering-law type,
there can be dynamic models of historical events which are structural in that the same types of events not only have the same
sequences on different unique occasions (the “structure of scientific
revolutions” is at least such a typical sequence, but may be more than that),
but also, it seems, dependency relations can be posited among events of the
repeated types. The following passage would seem to express such a low-level
explanation (note that he is speaking about collective work).
A contemplative immersion in the words of pioneers and
their contemporaries may reveal a subgroup of factors which seem more
significant than the others, because of their frequent recurrence, their
specificity to the period, and their decisive effect upon individual research.
The depth of my acquaintance with the literature permits, as yet, no definitive
judgments. Nevertheless, I am already quite sure about two such factors, and I
suspect the relevance of a third. Let me call them the “availability of
conversion processes,” the “concern with engines,” and “the philosophy of
nature.” (13: 72)
Since the quotation summarizes the answer
to the question, “Why, in the years 1830-50, did so many of the experiments and
concepts required for a full statement of energy conservation lie so close to
the surface of scientific consciousness?” the account is explanatory, even
though at a low but not quite particularistic level. Kuhn also has interesting
views on unifying interna1istic and externalistic historical approaches, but
these can be discussed on another occasion.
In sum, Kuhn thematizes science as a
collective human activity done by relatively small
groups of specialists and the manner in which he thematized it is human
scientific in a multidisciplinary
way. This is certainly more interesting than a mixture of Humean psychology and
Russellian logic. And indeed, the way in which scientific objects are
considered in relation to human activities can even be considered in a general
way phenomenological.
3.
Paradigms and Revolutions
Kuhn is best known, most discussed, and
most self-interpretive with respect to his claims about how natural-scientific
specialties arise and develop through immature, normal, and revolutionary
phases. Since this is well known, let me confine myself to but two comments on
this occasion. (1) While he has been attacked for vagueness if not equivocation
in his usage of the word “paradigm,” I find no problem reading that word
(“pastistically”) with narrow and broad significations and hence find that his
self-explication of these significations as “exemplar” and “disciplinary
matrix” is no more than a verbal advance. What might be called the “Kuhnian
strategy” consists in first identifying the scientific specialty and second
seeking its disciplinary matrix. This disciplinary matrix is “all the objects
of group commitment” (13: 297), and includes on Kuhn’s analysis (a) the
symbolic generalizations and perhaps all of the special terms), (b) the models,
and (c) the exemplars, i.e., the concrete problem solutions (which is what
“paradigm” in the narrow signification signifies). Given how much attention he
pays them, however, and even though he does not include them in his list, it seems
to me that we should add (d) values
to this taxonomy and I would further suggest adding (e) the equipment specific to a specialty at
least in how it is employed. With these inclusions, the disciplinary matrix is
rather like the correlate of a Diltheyan Weltanschauung,
with its affective and conative as well as cognitive components.
(2) For any who have not heard of it, let
me point out that for Kuhn natural science at least typically develops through
an immature stage given to much strife among schools to maturity when a
disciplinary matrix is settled upon and becomes the unproblematic background
for research. Within mature science there is then “normal” scientific research
in which the group has a confident consensus about what it will find and
proceeds to run (and re-run) experiments to confirm what it is already
committed to. Under certain conditions, however, difficult puzzles become less
and less ignorable and demand attention as anomalies, the speciality goes into
crisis and the taken-for-granted background becomes problematic, there can be
desperate resort to almost anything (even philosophy)
until eventually a new disciplinary matrix is established as an unproblematic
background for group commitment and normal rather than extraordinary research
can be done once more.
Such episodes of scientific revolution
usually occur, however, without the scientists being aware of them; it seems
that they could occur in the lives of individual scientists, but they typically
involve entire specialties (and can have aftermaths elsewhere, as the
Copernican Revolution had); and they are fairly frequent events in the history
of science. This model of change seems plausible in the light of the events
Kuhn refers to, which come from modern and contemporary natural science, but it
should—I believe—be taken as hypothetical and tested in quite concrete empirical
sociohistorical research. Much of the “paradigm talk” I am acquainted with in
social science as well as philosophy of science seems not only blind
empirically but also in the service of competing schools of thought. It is of
course an intellectual vice to talk so much without looking, but perhaps these
behaviors are a confirmation of Kuhn’s view, just as any tendency of
specialists in the philosophy of science to remember the full range of
philosophical problems would be now that there is revolutionary conflict
between old and new approaches.
But the value for philosophy of science of
Kuhn’s multidisciplinary approach, which emphasizes the human activities
correlative to scientific objects, should not be tied to the fate of his daring
hypothesis about revolutions. And, while Kuhn has doubts about the application
of his revolutions model to the social sciences, because they do not yet seem
to have become mature (but I wonder whether anyone has looked closely enough),
his general approach remains applicable there and, even more broadly, to all
the human sciences; his own remarks in the perspectives of intellectual
autobiography and the past of science historiography itself already seem to fit
the model.(4)
4. The Idea of a Reflective Account of the
Constitution of Science
In constitutive phenomenology, objects are
accounted for through reference to the “consciousness,” in a broad signification, to which they appear and in which they are
construed. Perhaps the words “intentive life” connote better something which
has affective and conative elements, is largely and basically unreflective, and
is, as the slogan has it, “always consciousness of . . .” (which we can
re-express as “all intentive processes are intentive to . . .”). It should
already be plain that Kuhn’s collective human activity in scientific
specialties is an intentive life and is intentive to a disciplinary matrix.
Plainly, one can consider such activity with respect to how it is intentive to
. . . and how such a matrix is what it is for
the scientific specialty. To consider
such a dual matter in such a manner is, in a broad signification, to “reflect” on it; thus “pastistic”
science historiography would be specifically reflective. If Kuhn had identified
the disciplinary matrix with the research activity, he would have been guilty
of some sort of a psychologism, but, even though he does not see the problem of
relating them (much less how to solve the problem with Intentionalität), he does keep them distinct. Given how there is an
interrelated multiplicity of subjects in a specialty, we can go even further
beyond his letter to pose the problem of the intersubjective constitution of
public (“objective”) objects. If Kuhn also consciously distinguished
description and explanation and recognized the logical priority of the former,
then he would be even more phenomenological, and he does seem unwilling to
abandon the theoretical/ observational term distinction and I have heard him
argue for the priority of taxonomy, which I at least readily comprehend as
eidetic description. To the degree that his general approach can thus be
comprehended as reflective and
descriptive and regardless of whether it is factually or eidetically
descriptive (or both), it can indeed be considered in the broad signification
phenomenological. There is no sign that Kuhn ever took seriously the
possibility of a transcendental grounding of science or the world it is about,
but then one should not expect a human scientist to question the natural
attitude (it is difficult enough to get philosophers to do so!). I see no
difficulties of principle, however, with transposing mundane findings to the
transcendental plane. Science specialties (including those in the history of
science) would then be transcendental intersubjectivities, whether they knew it
or not.
If Kuhn’s work might thus be considered at
least compatible with constitutive phenomenology, it might be well to consider
some specific ways in which a phenomenology of science might not only benefit
from the history of science but also help it in return. Where the way in which
specialties might be considered collectively intentive to disciplinary matrices
is concerned, phenomenological reflection on the affective and conative
elements in intentive life as well as in the lived
situation of the scientists could help compensate for the intellectualist
emphasis in most analyses of science.(5) Of
course, Husserl’s many reflections on the foundation of scientific knowing in life-worldly
experience is relevant (10). Beyond Husserl, let me suggest that Gurwitsch’s
reflections on the theme/thematic-field/margin structure, including the notion
of “orders of existence,” (7) and Schutz’s work on the finite provinces of
meaning in scientific contemplation should be of use in the elucidation of
disciplinary matrices and how they are, in the phenomenological signification,
“constituted” (17). Also, a phenomenological sociology of science can be
extracted from Schutz’s thought without too much effort.
For Kuhn, when a scientific revolution
occurs, the “world,” if it might be called that, of the scientific specialty
appears differently, even on a perceptual level, to the researchers (and this
as well as theory can affect the practical world in which we live profoundly).
I wonder whether any philosophy other than constitutive phenomenology is so
prepared to be shown that one and the same nature appeared differently to
different groups in different eras, e.g., the Ptolemaic and Copernican views of
the solar (or “terrestrial”) system? But this is a descriptive matter, where
the visions of the specialties are concerned. One can well imagine that the
human scientists who investigate science would want to explain how the collective living of disciplinary matrices changes
and does not change. Such knowledge could have technological value for science
policy since the conditions for fostering and for impeding scientific
productivity would be sought. There is a model in Gurwitsch for a
natural-scientific psychological explanation of individual change which could
be reinterpreted human-scientifically for a sociohistory of science and might
help in this connection.(6)
The general problems that now chiefly
obtrude for me in relation to the tasks of a phenomenological philosophy of
science involve the specific knowledge that can come from a descriptive
sociohistory of science. Otherwise, general problems of rationality, evidence,
etc., can only be attacked in dubious a priori ways. For example, I would like
to know what the essential difference is between theoretical science and
technology. I would also like to know whether there is a difference between the
natural and human sciences; despite having seen much positivistic “social science,” which often seems social technology, I
believe that there is a difference, but could hardly persuade many easily yet.
Through Kuhn I believe I see a way to some solutions. The unit of empirical
sociohistorical analysis is the scientific specialty. Units of this sort can be
identified through human-scientific approaches such as Kuhn uses, and then how
their disciplinary matrices are constituted can be reflectively investigated. I
see no reason why this approach would not be just as effective for a
technological specialty as for a scientific one and for scientific specialties
of the human and formal (e.g., symbolic logic) as much as of the natural sorts.
On the basis of empirical findings, free phantasy variation should be able to
establish eidetic answers to questions like those mentioned. Given the work of
Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty in exploiting Gestalt-Psychological results for
philosophical purposes (cf. 2 and 3), I do not believe that a phenomenological
appreciation of empirical scientific work dealing with intentive life needs to
be argued for, at least not in general.
5. Conclusion
Thomas Kuhn is an
historian of science who has contrasted old and new scientific,
science-historiographic, and science-philosophical images of at least natural
science and advocated that science be studied in a multidisciplinary and
developmental fashion as a collective human activity somehow related to
disciplinary matrices composed of perceived, imagined, believed, valued, and used
as well as thought objects. As a constitutive phenomenologist with a felt
obligation to reflect on science, I am suggesting that his approach and
possibly some of his results are assimilable in principle to my position—in
other words, that a constitutive phenomenology of science can benefit from Kuhn’s
“pastistic” history of science. Any reflection on science is better if it
begins with what science actually has been.
REFERENCES
(1) BROWN, HAROLD I. Perception, Theory, and Commitment: The New
Philosophy of Science.
(2) EMBREE, LESTER.
“Gestalt Law in Phenomenological Perspective.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 10 (1978).
(3) EMBREE, LESTER.
“Merleau-Ponty’s Examination of Gestalt Psychology.” Research in Phenomenology 10 (1980).
(4) EMBREE, LESTER.
“Methodology Is Where Human Scientists and Philosophers Can Meet.” Human Studies 3 (1980).
(5)
EMBREE, LESTER. “Phenomenological
Speculations on Lived Marriageability.” In Philosophy and Archaic
Experience, edited by John Sallis. Festschrift for E. G. Ballard.
(6) EMBREE, LESTER.
“Some Results of
(7) GURWITSCH, ARON. The Field of Consciousness.
(8) GURWITSCH, ARON. Phenomenology and the Theory of Science.
Edited by Lester Embree.
(9) GUTTING,
(10) HUSSERL, EDMUND. The Crisis of the European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr.
(11) KOYRE, ALEXANDRE. Discovering Plato. Translated by Leonora Cohen Rosenfield.
Notes
1. Originally published in Phenomenology and
the Understanding of Human Destiny, ed.
Stephen Skousgaard, Copyright 1981 The Center for Advanced Research in
Phenomenology and The University Press of America.
2.
I did manage, however, to edit Aron Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science (8).
3.
This seems a case of “Methodology [being] where Human Scientists and
Philosophers can meet”; see my article of that title (4).
4.
Thomas S. Kuhn, Preface to The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions (14) and to The
Essential Tension (13). Cf. the interesting analysis of Kuhn’s career in
Robert K. Merton, “The Sociology of Science: An Episodic Memoir” (16:71ff.).
Regarding the history of science historiography, see Thomas S. Kuhn, “Alexandre
Koyré and the History of Science” (12) as well as chapters 1, 5, and 6 of his The Essential Tension.
5.
For a beginning point for such reflections, see my “Some Results of
6.
Cf. my “Phenomenological Speculations on Lived Marriageability” (5) for a
reinterpretation of this model human-scientifically for a case in social
psychology.