QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

observations. Since theory was merely a symbolic device for systematising observations, the
essence of the task it performs is not to present and explain reality. In the interests of scientific
realism, ”models” are considered as steps towards theories which are representative of reality
and ”model building” is the first phase in a search for a truthful theory. The antagonism between
these positions is as old as systematic science. In his time, Plato set astronomers the task of
discovering a group of geometric assumptions which would reduce the motions of heavenly
bodies to circular movements. For 2000 years, this Instrumentalist principle for rescuing
phenomena became an ideal for the formation of astronomical theories. In general terms, the
birth of modern-era natural science signified the triumphal march of Realism. 353
Instrumentalism has also appeared in the modern era in different forms in the philosophy of,
among others, George Berkeley, John Stuart Mill, Ernst Mach, Pierre Duhem and Henri
Poincaré. 354 Duhem refused to accept that scientific theories are able to explain anything, since it
was his view that explanation inextricably connected science with the metaphysics. Also,
Descriptivists such as Hume and Mach restricted the task of science to the portrayal of observed
phenomena, science was only for providing descriptive answers to questions of ”How?”, never
answers to questions such as ”Why?” which sought explanations. In science, descriptions of
phenomena were to be attempted in the most economical way possible. Pierre Duhem’s scientific
ideals were closely akin to Conventionalism, which Henri Poincaré formulated in the first decade
of the 1900s. According to this doctrine, scientific theories were, in the last resort, agreements
whose truth or falcity it was not meaningful to discuss. Observations were always compatible
with competing theories, so choices between different theories were based on a search for
appropriateness. For example, Copernicus’ heliocentric system was not better than the Ptolemaic
earth-centred system because it was either true or closer to reality, only because it was
mathematically less complicated. 356
The Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838-1915) accepted neither atomic theory
or Mechanistic materialism. His response was Phenomenalism, according to which senseperceptions
were the ”elements” of reality. Physical objects were nothing more than ”collections
of sense-experiences”. As a Positivist, Mach believed that ”scientific theory must not go beyond
the theory of gravitation. See further J.S. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism. Trubner, London 1865, 57-58.
353 Niiniluoto 11980, 228-229.
354 Niiniluoto 1980, 230-231. In recent times, philosophers such as John Dewey, Moritz Schlick, Gilbert Ryle and
Stephen Toulmin have made representations in favour of Instrumentalism, and some scientists, especially in the
fields of physics and economics, have also adopted the doctrine.
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