SUPERSTITION, PSEUDO-SCIENCE, AND METAPHYSICS USE INSTANCES IN DIFFERENT WAYS

Bacon justified his lumping together metaphysics with superstition and pseudo-science by saying that the method of them all is that marshalling verifying or confirming examples or instances and persistently ignoring counter-examples or refuting instances.

The role of an instance may be solely presentational: we understand an abstract idea better when we are told how to apply it to concrete cases. So long as the purpose of an instance is elucidatory, an author is at liberty to choose his instances so as to avoid a discussion concerning their truth of falsity, and the more obvious the instance the better. One should either take a presentational instance for granted or use another in its stead. The moment an instance is sufficiently significant to be not easily dispensable, it has additional roles.

The most important role of instances is their role as refuting instances. This is the crux of Popper’s solution of the problem of induction: learning from experience is learning from a refuting instance. The refuting instance then becomes a problematic instance, namely, an instance which ought to be explained by a new theory. The last important role of instances is that of showing how high is the explanatory power of a proposed theory. Perhaps one may consider the instances explicable by a theory as prob­lematic for those who wish to propose an equally good alternative to it. This would explain why usually previously refuting and/or problematic instances are presented as explained instances of a theory though that theory explains many other instances as well. So much for instances in science.

A common, though by now highly suspect, role is played by instances which Bacon has called ‘clandestine.’ A clandestine instance hints at a possible truth.

The most obvious characteristic of the superstitious is their serious ap­proach to clandestine instances; the root of this lies in their want of a critical attitude. Not all errors are superstitions, only those concerning which we cannot conceive that we may be critical towards them.

In this sense of ‘superstitious,’ medieval empirical research was largely superstitious. The taking up of clandestine instances, hints which Mother Nature has mercifully thrown in our way, was quite routine procedure then. In modern times, mainly under Galileo’s and Boyle’s impact, this has been outlawed.

This immediately raises the question of the difference between a prob­lematic instance, which requires explanation, and a clandestine instance, which should be ignored. The chief difference between them, I think, is that of attitude both toward theory and toward fact. When we have a problematic instance we first try to explain it and leave the question of the truth or falsity of our explanation to be discussed in a critical fashion afterward; whereas following a clandestine instance we hope to find the truth even though we may not fully understand it or fully formulate it to begin with - even though, that is to say, we are not capable of subjecting it to rational discussion straight away. And the same applies to facts. The fact constituting a clandestine instance, being a wondrous hint, should be taken seriously at once; whereas a problematic one should be capable of critical examination, and hence it must be repeatable.

Yet a critical attitude is but a necessary condition. While it is true that unrepeatable facts are useless, too many repeatable ones are left unstudied. Footprints in the sand are as repeatable as one could wish, yet science says precious little about them. In my view the ignored phenomena are those which our metaphysical frameworks are too poor to interpret (in the sense discussed below). They are too problematic. The same applies to theories, like elasticity theory, which are too difficult to incorporate within the existing metaphysical frameworks, and hence are not scientifically interesting.

Next comes the confirming or verifying instance. Whenever someone marshals instance after instance, challenging you to examine their truth, it is on the tacit assumption that if his instances are true his theory is also true. If you admit his instances and yet reject his theory he will marshal more instances. If you prove impervious to all his instances he will pro­claim you unreasonable.

Confirming instances play the same role today as clandestine instances played in the Middle Ages. They play the role of clandestine instances for the uncritical audience and explained instances for the less uncritical audience. They are usually unsatisfactorily explained instances, yet the poor explanations are overlooked by audiences who are impressed because they are striking clandestine instances. For my own part I prefer to view all confirming instances as explained ones. For presenting an unsatis­factory explanation is still an attempt to explain, an attempt at a rational procedure; marshalling clandestine instances is plainly irrational.

To take an example. If someone throws a child into the river, Adler would interpret this act as one of self-assertion. And he would say the same if someone else rescues the child from the river. Thus, says Popper, opposite modes of behavior toward others are both somehow covered by Adler’s doctrine. Hence it is no explanation. Adler’s doctrine plus one of a given set of additional hypotheses, selected to suit each of the different cases, will indeed explain each action.

An example to this effect which has greatly impressed me is Freud’s story of a married woman who unthinkingly signed her maiden name. Freud interpreted this as an unconscious expression of suppressed dis­content with her husband and, indeed, he triumphantly added, a few months after her pen slipped in that ominous fashion the poor lady was divorced. This is pseudo-science at its peak; it is a glaring case of a clandestine instance thinly masked as explained instance. Since some married women divorce their husbands without having accidentally used their maiden names, and since other married women use their maiden names by mistake without ever asking for a divorce, clearly in this special case Freud erroneously claimed that the error and the divorce were ex­plained by his theory of slips of the pen. Yet it does appear as if this theory spectacularly explains the unexpected relation between a slip of a pen and a divorce.

The mark of pseudo-science is the use of confirming instances. The practitioner of pseudo-science, unlike the superstitious, is not surprised by criticism. On the contrary, he is often painfully aware of the existence of critics; he is only too ready to meet his critics and argue with them. He will claim in the argument that every relevant case is an instance of his theory, that his critics’ challenge can easily be met, that the critics do not see the immense explanatory power of his view simply through being so hostile toward it. When his explanations are scrutinized, however, it will be seen that the critic’s facts are explicable not by the theory itself, but by the theory plus some additional hypothesis. Usually the additional hypothesis is so trite and plausible that one hardly notices its having been added, and those who make a fuss about it are prone to be successfully dismissed as mere pedants.

Popper has accepted the claim of the pseudo-scientist that he can inter­pret all phenomena. He has stressed (in his “Personal Report”) that since pseudo-science can interpret any conceivable (relevant) phenomenon it is not refutable by any conceivable phenomena, and hence it is untestable or unscientific. This is very neat, and quite important, yet perhaps it ought to be more explicitly stressed that though pseudo-scientific doctrines have high interpretative power, they have low explanatory power. This charac­teristic pseudo-science shares with metaphysics.

When Thales said that all was water, he provides a few instances for his doctrine, instances which led Aristotle to hint, and Bacon to assert, that he had based his metaphysical doctrine on facts by using the inductive method (to wit, that his metaphysical doctrine was to some degree scien­tific). Thales used the freezing and the evaporation of water as examples of his doctrines. He also claimed that solid deposits left in kettles by boiled water, and solid deposits in river-mouths, were instances of water turning into solids.

It is difficult for me to say what would be Thales’s answer to such questions as why can we not turn a whole bulk of water into a piece of chalk. Quite possibly Thales, being the first metaphysician, was partly superstitious and partly (in some sense) a pseudo-scientist, and also (as Aristotle states) partly a mythologist; I do not know. Yet I suspect he was really none of these. I imagine he was asked such questions and in reply simply confessed his ignorance. Descartes’s answer, and Newton’s and Faraday’s (whose doctrines I shall soon discuss), however, are clear and straightforward: we are not unaware of the lacunae in our doctrines, they would say, and we shall try and find some scientific theories to deal with your question in due course.

There is a similarity and a difference between pseudo-science and metaphysics. Freud’s theory of the slips of the pen, like Descartes’s and Newton’s and Faraday’s (if not also Thales’s) metaphysics, sketch possible explanations. Metaphysics may be viewed as a research program, and the false claims of pseudo-science as the result of confusing a program with the finished product.

One corollary of this is that metaphysics can degenerate into pseudo­science. This corollary seems to me to be true, and exemplified by Aris­totle’s metaphysics, which becomes appallingly ad hoc when applied to phenomena, as in his De Caelo. I find the following corollary more in­teresting: it may be possible to elevate a pseudo-scientific theory to the rank of metaphysics. The first step in this direction is to strip it of its pretentiousness by making its logic clear. Expurgated, Freud’s theory may be viewed as an interesting metaphysics of psychology. I therefore consider Popper’s verdict on Freud and Adler much too harsh.

As instances of a metaphysical doctrine are not clandestine or even confirming, what kind of instances are they? Thales’s instances, I think, served two purposes: one presentational, and one to show that his doc­trine, be it true or false, is not as fantastic as it sounds. Newton’s meta­physics, which asserts that the universe consists of atoms with their asso­ciated conservative central forces, was instantiated by his theory of gravity. This instance served a more significant role than a merely presentational one. It illustrated the potentiality of his metaphysics and thus constitutes a challenge to construct instances of that metaphysics which are satis­factory explanations of all known physical phenomena. I shall call such instances ‘conforming instances.’

Since Newton’s metaphysics does not specify what central force causes gravitation, Newton’s theory of gravity does not follow from Newton’s metaphysics; it is not an explained instance. Otherwise Newton’s meta­physics would be refuted by the refutation of his theory of gravity, which it was not. Newton’s metaphysics does not follow from his theory of gravity: the one asserts that all phenomena are governed by central forces, whereas the other is confined to fewer phenomena. Generally, a meta­physical doctrine neither entails nor follows from any of its conforming instances. Nor does it follow from the set of all its conforming instances unless it may be assumed that the set is exhaustive. Since such assumptions are testable, the metaphysical doctrines in question would follow from scientific theories, and thus they could legitimately claim scientific status.

This is the ideal case. To my knowledge it has never been achieved. The doctrine that arrived closest to this ideal was Newton’s metaphysics as it appeared around 1800. Yet the ideal had an immense driving force. The debate about metaphysical doctrines often concerns their status, and this often leads to the development of scientific instances conforming to them, or to the discussion of whether such developments are possible. Thus the desire to render a metaphysics scientific leads to viewing it as a scientific research program whose satisfactoriness is open to critical discussion. To illustrate this I shall discuss in the next section the possible unsatisfactoriness of such research programs, and in the following section their possible satisfactoriness.

VII.