Abstract

The paper compares Evandro Agazzi’s “Gestalt view” with the Perspectivist conception of science developed by the author. What Agazzi means by Gestalt or “point of view”, as well as what the author means by “perspec­tive”, is not something of the subjective sort.

Keywords Perspectivism • Agazzi • Realism/antirealism • Idealisations • Incommensurability

Evandro Agazzi’s long-awaited Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts, as well as his earlier work, support an aspect of a complete new approach in the philosophy of science, an aspect which he terms “the Gestalt view.” Particularly noteworthy in this regard is Agazzi’s presentation of the Gestalt view as leading to his ideas of the empirical-scientific ‘clipping out’ of objects, idealisation, and the analogy of scientific theories to maps.

C. Dilworth (*)

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: craig.dilworth@gmail.com © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

M. Alai et al. (eds.), Science Between Truth and Ethical Responsibility, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16369-7_2

According to the first idea, of ‘clipping out’ objects, we can see scientific objects as ‘clipped out’ by their disciplines through the performance of particular empirical operations, each discipline containing just those objects clipped out by its operations.

simply consider some ‘thing’ and ask what science is competent to deal with it. For instance, if we take a watch and ask what the area of its face is, we are considering it as an object of topology; if we ask what its mass is, or what the laws are that regulate the motion of its balance wheel, or what its influence would be on the magnetic field inside the room where it is located, we are considering it as an object of physics; if we ask what the composition of the alloy is out of which its case is made, or what the degree of purity is of the rubies that are inside it, we are considering it as an object of chemistry.... (p. 83).

On the contemporary, formalist, view in the philosophy of science, an object is what it is, and different scientific disciplines are thought to provide various sorts of information concerning it. The difference between Agazzi’s approach with his ‘clipping out’ of objects and the contemporary view might be thought to be insig­nificant, but if looked at more closely his ‘clipping out’ idea reveals an aspect of a conception of science fundamentally different from the contemporary view (the Perspectivist conception). On Agazzi’s view, the operations performed in the ‘clip­ping out’ of objects are performed according to concepts derived from the catego­ries of the discipline, the discipline itself constituting a Gestalt.

I have myself worked extensively with the Perspectivist conception of science, which is in many respects similar to Agazzi’s Gestalt view. In fact, Agazzi’s and my common holding of this insight with regard to the nature of knowledge lay the ground for a friendship between us that has lasted from 1977 to the present.

What Agazzi means by Gestalt or point of view, and what I mean by perspec­tive, is not something of the subjective sort, as when one sees a certain gestalt. It is rather a particular way of conceiving of reality—a way that can be shared. For Agazzi and me Gestalts and perspectives are structured by various principles and the categories they relate.

On the contemporary view, on the other hand, scientists begin with the assump­tion-free basis of experience, and inductively build conceptual systems (theories) from there. As distinct from this, Agazzi and I say that science begins with certain a priori preconceptions as to the nature of reality, and that these preconceptions— or principles—themselves constitute the scientific perspective.

Agazzi’s Gestalt view, however, differs in certain respects from the Perspectivist conception. On the Gestalt view, but not the Pespectivist conception, since theories concretely express their Gestalt in declarative sentences, the theo­ries themselves must be true or false. When a theory is ‘falsified,’ what is falsified is actually some particular sentence (statement) of the theory, a sentence that turns out to be false according to the referential operational criteria of the theory’s dis­cipline. According to Agazzi, this entails a re-adjustment of the gestalt going from partial retouches to a genuine gestalt switch (Cf. Agazzi, pp. 367ff).

But, given this, one wonders how idealisation is to fit into the Gestalt view, all idealisations, if taken to be statements, being false. As is in keeping with the Perspectivist conception, the value of idealisation in modern science lies rather in its ability conceptually to capture the physical essence of a particular situation, such an essence paradigmatically taking the form of a cause.

Also according to Agazzi, his legitimation of truth on the Gestalt view entails realism, since a sentence is always true or false ‘of’ something, and in the case of science this something is the sentence’s operationally accessible referents. As a consequence, if a theory is supposed true, it must also be supposed that its intended referents exist.

But as regards truth, while it is true that Pegasus has two wings, this does not entail Pegasus’ real existence. Similarly, true or false statements may be made regarding an intended scientific object, without their being meant to imply the object’s existence.

Perspectivism, on the other hand, is neutral as regards the empiricism/realism issue. On the Perspectivist view, while true or false statements may be made with regard to a theory and its application, this does not imply that the theory itself is a entity that may be considered to be true or false. In its application to modern science, however, Perspectivism has shown the endeavour to be thoroughly realist in nature.

For the last hundred years, the philosophy of science has been almost wholly confined to the (formal) logic of science, i.e. to thinking of science in terms of the Deductive Model. On this view, the paradigm of a scientific thought is an Aristotelian statement, which is either true or false. On the Perspectivist view, on the other hand, the paradigm of a scientific thought would not be a true-or-false statement, but a more or less applicable concept.

On the Perspectivist view, the primary aim of science is not to know, but to understand. Though the notions of truth and knowledge do belong to science, they belong to its empirical aspect. We acquire knowledge of the empirical facts, i.e. of laws determined by measurement. But our higher aim is to understand these laws. And this we do using theories to link the laws to the principles of the discipline. The Perspectivist view has many advantages not only over philosophies of science based on the Deductive Model, but over those based on set theory as well.^[7]

As shown in Scientific Progress, the logical empiricists’ and Popper’s attempts to depict science in terms of the Deductive Model fail, the empiricists being una­ble to account for theory conflict, and Popper having no conception of progress. Further, neither the empiricists nor Popper can capture the notion of incommensu­rability introduced by Kuhn and Feyerabend. One cannot provide a purely formal account (depiction) of incommensurability. The Perspectivist conception, on the other hand, solves the incommensurability problem by showing incommensurabil­ity in the case of scientific theories to be a relation between conceptual perspec­tives (applied concepts) sharing the same intended domain.

On the Perspectivist view, the principles underlying science determine its ontol­ogy, and in so doing also its epistemology, the latter including its methodology. We can also say that the principles of science determine the perspective we call sci­ence, which includes science’s conceptual paradigm.^[9]

Each individual scientific discipline, such as physics, chemistry or biology, refines the basic principles of science in its own way. These refined principles determine the particular aspect of the scientific ontology (reality) the discipline investigates. In this way, the refined principles set limits on the discipline itself. So, for example, considering reality from the point of view of the categories of matter, motion and force determines the objects of mechanics rather than those of biology, while both disciplines accept the deeper metaphysical principle that no physical entity comes from nothing. In agreement with Agazzi, each discipline also contains more specific concepts, at least some of which have to be opera­tionalised for the discipline to make contact with physical reality (ontology). And one and the same part of reality can become the object of a new and different dis­cipline every time a new perspective (epistemology) is taken on it. Thus different disciplines study different aspects of reality, and are incommensurable in this way. Further, each scientific discipline’s refined principles serve to distinguish it from other disciplines, and provide it with its own conceptual paradigm.

Each scientific discipline constitutes a specific perspective on precisely the objects picked out by its operations, which are its intended object.

It is important to note that for Agazzi the same operations (using e.g. measur­ing instruments) by means of which the objects of a given science are ‘clipped out’ of reality are those by means of which it is possible to reach empirical-scien­tific agreement, due to the intersubjectivity of the operations. This provides com­monality of reference and intention, within each discipline. On this basis, on the Perspectivist conception, various theories are advanced in each discipline concern­ing how best to conceive of the discipline’s subject-matter so as to understand how particular empirical phenomena can be or are manifestations of the refined prin­ciples. This is how scientific theories explain the phenomena. And not only disci­plines but also theories may be incommensurable.

It is important to note the two senses of incommensurability used here. Incommensurable disciplines have different subject-matters; incommensurable theories can have the same subject-matter. As regards the latter, the situation is more that of a gestalt switch, where each conception constitutes an alternative depiction of a common reality.^[10]

Thus, on the Perspectivist view, different theories within a discipline can the same objects but say different things about them. And if the theories do differ in how they characterise a common reality, there are a number of ways their superior­ity in this regard might be determined.

This is essentially the view I present in Scientific Progress, and develop in The Metaphysics of Science. Both books presuppose my latest book, Simplicity.