The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science - The Department ...

Experiment and Observation
legitimately be interpreted as indicating. The Skeptical Chymist is filled with examples
of what can be involved in deciding whether a proposed interpretation is
legitimate. Themistius’ illustration assumes that burning decomposes wood into
its component elements. Carneades objects that for all they know, heating produces
new stuffs, or that the ash and other residues came from the air, the container
in which the sample was heated, or impurities in the sample (Boyle, 1661,
p. 27ff ). As we’ll see, a number of twentieth century controversies in the philosophy
of science amount to versions of the question whether reasoning from experimental
or observational outcomes can reveal more about what goes on in nature
than Themistius’ question begging illustrations.
Neglecting Experiment; Distorting Observation
The logical positivists 5 are the giants whose shoulders we stand on. They made
invaluable contributions to philosophy of science, and are largely responsible for
its establishment as an academic discipline. Their work was important to the linguistic
turn which founded analytic philosophy, but they are largely responsible
for a neglect of experiment and observation which blinded twentieth century
philosophers of science to facts about the production and interpretation of empirical
data which bear importantly on their epistemological and metaphysical concerns.
The logical positivists taught their followers to treat scientific theories as if
they were deductively closed collections of propositions, including observation
reports expressed in a vocabulary which includes terms which signify observables,
theoretical propositions expressed in a vocabulary whose terms do not signify
observables, and correspondence rules of mixed vocabulary which can be used to
derive predictions and explanations of observables from theoretical propositions,
and to test theoretical propositions against observation reports (Nagel, 1961, pp.
90–117). This conception models scientific prediction, explanation, and theory
testing in terms of inferential relations among sentence-like structures. But so conceived,
what does science have to do with the natural world of non-sentential,
extra-linguistic things, features, events, processes, etc., scientists investigate?
Hempel (1935, pp. 50–1) responded to related questions by claiming that no
theorist who
supports a cleavage between statements and reality is able to give a precise account
of how a comparison between statements and facts may possibly be accomplished.
In keeping with this, and with their appreciation of the power of newly developed
logical tools for the study of the systems of sentences they used to model
scientific theories, analytic philosophers of science downplayed the cleavage
and devoted themselves to investigating the syntax and semantics of observation
and theoretical languages. In sharp contrast to nineteenth century figures – like
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