MANIFEST TRUTH AS THE UNIFIER OF SCIENCE
The standard criticism of justificationism can be found very early in Sextus Empiricus’ Elements of Pyrrhonism: all demonstration uses criteria which are either arbitrary or in need of further demonstration etc.
ad infinitum. There are two reasons for not taking this criticism seriously; one traditional, one modern; one from science, one from commonsense. Both modern science and traditional commonsense tell us that obviously we do justify all the time, and hence that there must be a mistake in the argument to the contrary. Hence, though we should try to locate and exhibit the fault in this argument, the argument need not be taken seriously even in the meantime.The appeal to commonsense justification is not quite up to standard; at least it is not as strong as the appeal to scientific justification. It is not up to standard for two reasons. First, one may take it as a part of commonsense that, if any truth is obvious then the fault in a criticism of it is obvious, and that, if a fault is obvious it can be detected after a relatively brief and straightforward inspection. Now, if truth is manifest, then criticisms of it, including the criticism from infinite regress, contain serious faults. And if it is obvious that there is a fault in the argument from infinite regress, then the period allotted for finding it should be brief. Yet the fact is that since the days of Hume attempts to locate the fault have failed dismally. If, however, the fault is not obvious, our whole tradition of justification may be resting on an error and hence on an arbitrary or accidental development. Hence, we must view the fault as obvious, and hence Whitehead was right in viewing our inability to locate and exhibit it - our inability to solve the problem of rational justification, which, for empiricists, is the problem of induction - as no less than ‘the scandal of philosophy’.
The second reason for the weakness of the commonsense argument against Sextus’ criticism of justificationism is a bit less obvious, not because of intrinsic difficulty but because it has in the past been (mis)- directed against non-justificationism. It has been claimed again and again that since in ordinary circumstances we justify our opinions and act on them, then the very fact that a non-justificationist acts proves him a justificationist. But this is only one reading of the situation, and a reading which leads one - in vain, as we shall soon see - to a search for justifications in ordinary life. An alternative reading is this. Justificationists maintain that we must justify our opinions in order to act, and hence conclude that they, as actors, do justify; but the very existence of non- justificationist actors proves that unjustified action is possible. In particular, they cannot justify their action in proclaiming themselves non- justificationists (since, say the justificationists, non-justificationism cannot be justified). Hence, the existence of non-justificationists in our midst refutes justificationism. It is only commonsense that even in cases when we all agree to justify our opinions - say in courts of law - we only agree to justify them relative to accepted fundamental propositions - say, the constitution - which we do not allow to challenge and which we shall not justify. The argument from infinite regress is commonsensically so powerful, that even if you reduce its infinity to, say, ten steps, it is still valid; in any ordinary circumstance there comes a point beyond which we bluntly refuse to justify our views and call anyone who persists in challenging us to do so a pest and a skeptic and a highfalutin philosopher. It looks as if the persistent challenger is a non-justificationist, but a moment’s thought will reveal him as a justificationist.
The one extraordinary circumstance where the regress is allowed to be explored beyond what is commonly accepted as reasonable is in intellectual discourse, especially scientific debate.
So let us consider, then, the argument from science against Sextus. Do we justify in modern science?Take Descartes’ justification of science, that is his theory of the natural light; as a criterion of truth it is subject to the criticism from infinite regress which is applicable to all criteria. Take the natural light to be a fact, however, i.e. that Truth imposes Herself on us, and you see that we arrive at a stalemate: the skeptic can doubt the veracity of even the most imposing ideas, whereas, Descartes will say, after having performed my duty (Protestant ethic) and having been forced by Nature to believe this or that, if even then I am not right, then God is a liar. It is not an accident that the skeptic Boyle attacked just this point of Descartes’ epistemology: he said Descartes still blames God for his own errors; meaning, Descartes was in fact not forced to believe in Cartesian physics.16
The same holds for all the philosophers of the Age of Reason: to be able to take minimal sufficient account of Sextus they had to claim that in fact Truth has imposed Herself on us (to call this imposition revelation is in line with the religious doctrine of revelation proper: God’s word imposes itself on us). Hence the enormous importance of Newton, so stressed by E. A. Burtt in his by now classical Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (which is, not accidentally, 20th-century); if Truth has revealed herself we should be able to point at her, and Newton’s Theory is a (the only, really) paradigm of Truth Manifest.
All this may explain a puzzling fact. There is a difficulty, in the traditional literature, of distinguishing between methodology and epistemology. Methodology and epistemology are theories concerning the road to knowledge and theories concerning existing knowledge respectively. They seem to be as easily distinguishable from each other as a road-map to Rome is distinguishable from a street-map of Rome. Of course, in each of these two cases the distinction need not be hard and fast, but they are unproblematic.
Now, one would expect the distinction between epistemology and methodology to be equally unproblematic; yet this is not the case. Whereas Descartes wrote on method, not on knowledge, he counts as an epistemologist of the first order of significance, but hardly at all as a methodologist, to take but one example. Why is the distinction between methodology and epistemology so hard to make? Perhaps it is because it looks as if propf belongs to epistemology, since it supports our claim for knowledge, whereas this is not so: as long as we need proof we are groping. And so proof belongs to methodology, whereas epistemology can say nothing except that truth shows itself. So did Helmholtz understand matters when he observed that investigation is empirical yet knowledge is a priori. Helmholtz compares this to the difference between climbing uphill while struggling through the bush and not seeing any road to the peak, and the standing on the hill-top and being able to see with ease all the shortcuts. Perhaps the best metaphor is Wittgenstein’s ladder which one has no need for after having arrived at the rooftop. This is why throughout the modern age the empiricists criticized apriorists on methodological - moral, I should say - grounds, expressing contempt at their lazy armchair method. In epistemology, empiricists and apriqrists do not differ.17To illustrate all this consider the following passages from Victor Weisskopf’s essay on Niels Bohr in the New York Review of Books of April 20, 1967. Perhaps casual passages are not the best illustrations of serious and important and deep-seated convictions, but since I have already invoked the name of Freud, the arch reader of deep meanings into casual passages, allow me to go on for awhile. Let me add, however, that I am quoting what is evidently the central paragraph of the essay, that the essay appears in a not so unimportant a periodical, and that Weisskopf usually does not take lightly his duty as an advocate of science.
Well, then; let me quote.During this great period of physics [the formation of the new quantum mechanics] Bohr and his small group of scientists touched the nerve of the universe. Man’s eyes were opened to the inner workings of Nature which before had been obscure. Once the fundamental tenets of atomic mechanics were established, it was possible to understand and calculate almost every phenomenon in the world of atoms, including atomic radiation, the chemical bond, the structure of crystals, the metallic state. Before that time, the environment was composed of unknown forces: electric, adhesive, chemical, and elastic. All these were reduced to one - the electromagnetic force....
So much for the quotation, which I find qqite fascinating. The clajm that quantum theory is not a revolution but only a further insight into the electromagnetic force of a century ago is in line with the philosophy Weisskopf accepts from Rutherford and expounds early in the essay: in science there are only insights, no revolutions. The claim that the new quantum theory can explain so much and unify so much is highly questionable. No doubt it has grounding in fact and rings a familiar bell to the physicist. No doubt it also gives a misleading impression to the layman. More important, it enables Weisskopf to topch the nerve of his own faith in science: Rohr and his followers, let me repeat, touched the nerve of the universe and saw the working of nature. Once all this “was established, it was possible to understand and calculate”. Not, quantum theory enabled us to understand and calculate and was thereby established, but once it was established, we could understand and calculate. Not, our calculations justify our theory, but, our justified theory enables us t.o calculate. Perhaps I am making too much of a piece of eulogistic writing. Let it be so,; let us see what nerves do eulogies touch, what chords resonate more freely in deep sympathy. •
To stress this point, I would refer to a less euphoric part of Weisskopf’s essay.
‘‘Nuclear structure presents impressive evidence for the general validity of quantum mechanics’% he says in a later part. After quantum mechanics “was established” and “Man’s eyes were opened to the inner workings... ” etc, one more success merely “presents impressive evidence”! Evidently this additional success resolves doubts which only it raises. Indeed, Weisskopf explains: “The weight of Bohr’s personality was so great that [under his influence] for a decade the typical differences between nuclear and atomic states were at the center of interest, whereas the similarities between these states were [erroneously] pushed aside.” What Weisskopf finds hard to admit is that the present state of nuclear physics is still not half as satisfactory as that of atonpc physics - in spite of the latest advances which he is alluding to. Hence, clearly, “impressivel evidence” is only Nature’s hint that our eyes are turning towards ^ght “center of interest”. Thus,'there is a difference betweep turning our'eyes toward the right “center of interest” (methodology) and seeing the “inner Workings of Nature” (epistemology). Though in methodology a sworn empiricist who has to turn his eyes in the right direction, in epistemology Weisskopf endorses the views of Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Descartes that Truth reveals herself. Again, the barriers between apriorist and empiricist epistemology break down: empiricists cannot escape a touch of apriorism; only the difference in methodology remains, the empiricist methodology being inductive - hard labour and humble efforts and purity of heart - or, as Robert Merton calls it (approvingly) “Protestant”.Whether all this is true or false, it is meant to explain why the skeptical criticism from infinite regress which is so obvious and clinching has failed to dent the optimistic attitude of the classical scientists which assured them that they could find the unity of nature. For my part I prefer to combat the classical view* not by the criticism from infinite regress or by any variant of it - as Popper frequently does - out by the argument from diversity which seems to me equally as appealing from any vantage viewpoint as the argument from unity. Let me show, then, that the classical view of rationality imposes on reasonable people an unreasonable degree of unanimity.
V.