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A Reappraisal of the Conceptual Scheme of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Peter Caws
Peter Caws*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Extract

1. Argument. Questions that have arisen about the “existence” of elementary particles and other entities of physics have often been dismissed as unprofitable, with the tacit assumption that the categories suitable for the discussion of everyday knowledge are not suitable for the discussion of physical knowledge, which requires mathematical treatment. But for the layman who stumbles at the discontinuity between his world and that of mathematical physics, and for the physicist who wishes his knowledge of the world to have some kind of unity, a scheme which will embrace both kinds of knowledge is essential. Such a scheme is developed from a consideration of the dependence on mind, and conceptual modes of thought, common to science and all other intellectual approaches to the world, which is seen clearly in the growth of science from more primitive concepts. It begins with the concept as the most elementary category of the organization of experience, and moves to the construct, a distinctly scientific category arising out of the concept, and the isolate, corresponding to elements of reality not directly perceived. An escape from certain paradoxes generated by the incomplete nature of perceptual experience is thus provided.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1957 , pp. 221 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © 1957, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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Footnotes

†

Part of a dissertation for the Ph.D. degree in philosophy presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University, aided by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

References

1 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, N. Y., Macmillan, 1929, etc., passim.

2 Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function, Chicago, Open Court, 1923, etc., passim.

3 Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality, N. Y., McGraw Hill, 1950, etc., passim,

4 Herbert Dingle, Through Science to Philosophy, Oxford, 1937, appendix.

5 Werkmeister, A Philosophy of Science, N. Y., Harper, 1940, p. 516.

6 Cassirer, op. cit., p. 9.

7 Ibid., p. 26.

8 C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, La Salle, Open Court, 1947, ch. VI, passim.

9 Gaston Bachelard, L'Activité Rationaliste de la Physique Contemporaine, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1951, p. 6.

10 Bishop Wilkins, Mathematical Magick, 1648.

11 From a minstrel poem c. 1630.

12 Hobbes, Elementary Philosophy, 1656.

13 Keill, Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth, 1699.

14 Newton, Sir Isaac, tr. Motte, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, London, Motte, 1729, book I, def. II.

15 F. S. C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and Humanities, N. Y., Macmillan, 1947, p. 62.

16 Coleridge, The Friend, 1865.

47 Margenau, op. cit., p. 70: “Clearly, the tree is the construct; the unitary experience of the tree is summed up in that way.”

18 Ibid., p. 81.

19 cf. Henri Poincaré, Science and Method, pp. 138–141.

20 cf. Hyman Levy, The Universe of Science, N. Y., The Century Co., 1933, passim.

21 H. W. B. Joseph, Lectures on the Philosophy of Leibniz, Oxford, 1949, p. 34.

22 cf. Victor Lenzen, Physical Theory, N. Y., Wiley, 1931, p. 277: “The search for substance becomes the search for constants and invariants.”

23 F. S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West, N. Y., Macmillan, 1946, p. 443.

24 R. B. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation, Cambridge, 1953, p. 93.

25 cf. Leon Chwistek, tr. Brodie and Coleman, The Limits of Science, London, Kegan Paul, 1948, p. xliv.

26 Rudolf Carnap, The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts, in Vol. I of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Minneapolis, U. of Minnesota Press, 1956.