VII: Theory
content
The world of philosophy
Philosophein = theorein
Systems of philosophy
-isms
Monism, dualism, pluralism, indifferentism
1950-2000: 24 different philosophical approaches
The world of science
The beginning of modern science
Description, understanding, value judgment, positivism
A third kind of science between natural sciences and humanities
New Age science
The nature of “reality” and “theory”, of “model” and “hypothesis”
Four levels of theories
The world of philosophy
Philosophein = theorein
Already for Herodotus (around 450 BC) and Thucydides (around 400 BC) „philosophein“ meant striving for knowledge („philosopheon gen pollen theories heineken epeleluthas”). Socrate and Plato modified: striving for cognition („ktesis epistemes“). Aristotle, the most important pupil of Plato, formulated: "All men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and principles" (ten onomazomeneu sophian peri ta prota aitia kai tas archas upolambanousi pantes; Metaph., I, I; 981b27).
Origin of philosophy is astonishment („thaumazein“). Findings constitute theories, doctrines, teachings.
Systems of philosophy
Since just the year 1600 the concept of „system“ was used not only for metaphysics but also for the various single disciplines as logic, ethics, politics, rhetorics.
Around 1750 the scientific findings of Isaac Newton sometimes have been called “the Newtonian system of philosophy” – “philosophy” meaning in the 18th century natural science.
The Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth, published in 1678: "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" in opposition to the other "systems of the world".
From about 1750 to 1930 more and more philosophers liked to publish their ideas under the title „system of philosophy“ – e. g. Francis Hutcheson (1755), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1799-1804), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1803ff), Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1804ff) and Jakob Friedrich Fries (1804) as well as Auguste Comte (1830-42), Herbert Spencer (1862-96), Wilhelm Wundt (1889), Hermann Cohen (1902-12), Heinrich Rickert (1921).
There is a vast number of all the philosophical doctrines spread in the last 2600 years. In the 1920 some attempts werde made to see the history of philosophy as history of philosophical systems (Karl Groos, 1924; Hermann Noack, 1928; André Cresson, 1929). In 1950 Vergilius Ture Anselm Ferm edited a „History of Philosophical Systems“.
A rare history of philosophy in both languages, German and English, has been written by Johannes Hirschberger (2 vols, German 1949-52; English 1958-59). Rather dated are Wilhelm Windelband’s history of philosophy (German, 1892; English 1893) despite many revisions and reprints, and Will Durant’s „lives and opinions of the greater philosophers” (German and English 1926).
bibliography
Publications with the title „System“
-isms
There are many attempts to label philosophical approaches to God and man, nature and culture, fate and freedom with „-isms“
Some basic trends are in the Middle Ages nominalism and realism. Since 1750 we have different kinds and stages of
philosophy of life (Rousseau, Hamann, Herder, Jacobi) paralleled by vitalism
positivism (Turgot)
phenomonology (Lambert, Kant)
pragmatism (Goethe, Bentham), and later
philosophy of existence (Kierkegaard).
More complicated is „idealism“. Easy remembered kinds are:
ontological (Plato)
theological (Augustinus, Thomas Aquinas)
psychological (Descartes, Locke, Hume)
transcendental (Kant; later Neo-Kantianism) and
absolute or German idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; later Hegelianism)
magical (“the primitives”, the Romantic).
Popular are also some dichotomies as:
realism - irrationalism
idealism - materialism
rationalism - empirism
pantheism – naturalism
natural philosophy – metaphysics of mind, etc.
see in German:
Grundlegende philosophische Strömungen (1000-1950)
Monism, dualism, pluralism, indifferentism
Quite another way to categorise philosophical trends uses the focus of the approach. Then we have
monistic
dualistic
pluralistic, and
indifferent
approaches, which can be further differenciated
as showed in:
Die 12 grundlegenden Betrachtungsweisen der Philosophie
1950-2000: 24 different philosophical approaches
This very schematic look back in the history of philosophy does by no means indicate that there were not innumerable ramifications and nuances. We can assume, that in the last centuries in the garden of philosophical thinkers and scholars a vast amount of different flowers prospered as in the latest past.
For some philosophical trends around 1900 - including philosophy of science, ontology and philosophizing physicists - see
Modellgeschichte ist Kulturgeschichte: chap.: Die Frage nach der Realität
In the years since World War II we see flourish as many as 24 different approaches, spread between the above mentiond trends, complemented by
„mental imagery“, „mental representation“ and „mental models“
„critical theory“ and „critical rationalism“
„eliminative materialism“ and „cognitive naturalism“
functionalism and constructivism
contextualism and connectionism
„scientific realism“ and „structural realism“ as well as
the „semantic view“ and the „structuralist view“ of theories.
see for a short overview:
Mind and World: More than 24 theories 1950-2000
see also in German:
Knappe Übersicht zur Philosophie
Geschichte des Systemdenkens und des Systembegriffs
The beginning of modern science
A different approach to interpret the world and to explain natural and human phenomena is science. It started at the end of Renaissance with engineers as Niccolò Tartaglia (1537), Girolamo Cardano (1550), Bernardino Telesio (1565), Simon Stevin (1586), etc. They disengaged step by step from Aristotle. The ideas of Plato, however, remained popular for a century; we find them still in the works of Galilei and Kepler.
Copernicus: “by long and intense study"
Platon in his "Timeus" gives a hint of a heliocentric world order and symbolizes its harmony by stereometrical figures and relations (Leonardo Olschki, 1918, I, 222). In 1494 the mathematician Luca Pacioli connected this geometrical mystics with the numerology going back to the Pythagorees. This can be explained by his adherence to the Franciscan order, which particularly was interested in spreading this mystics (I, 171).
Also Copernicus had read "Timeus". But how he developed his own system is widely unknown. Of course he was discontent with the different and doubtful attempts of the mathematicians to interpret the planetary motions. He looked out for an easier and more exact prediction of the planet’s positions. Since he had a good knowledge of theories on heliocentrics and the movement of the globe from the study of Greek and Latin authors, he may relied on Aristotle’s physical principles - which he wrongly saw as pythagorean - which demanded circular and uniform movements in the sky.
At the beginning of his book (1543) he gives a clear account of his program as well as of his philosophy:
“Having thus assumed the motions which I ascribe to the earth later on in the volume, by long and intense study I finally found that if the motions of the other planets are correlated with the orbiting of the earth, and are computed for the revolution of each planet, not only do their phenomena follow there from but also the order and size of all the planets and spheres, and heaven itself is so linked together that in no portion of it can anything be shifted without disrupting the remaining parts and the universe as a whole.”
Copernicus’ “Theorick or model”
It was already mentioned: Since the forming of the concept of “model” some ideas of scientists were declared as models.
Already In 1576 Thomas Digges wrote:
“But in this our age one rare witte … hath by long studie, painfull practise, and rare invention delivered a new Theorick or model of the world, shewing that the earth resteth not in the Center of the whole world, but only in the Center of thys our mortal world or Globe of Elements.”
More than three centuries later Niels Bohr presented his “atom-model” as a hypothesis to be used “as a basis for a theory of the constitution of atoms and molecules” (1913, 25; “hypothesis" also 3, 24). But Bohr denominated the preceding “atom-model” of Ernest Rutherford likewise as a “theory of the structure of atoms” (1). Two years earlier Rutherford himself had used the denomination “atomic system”, developed a “theory” and spoke of the preceding “theory of Sir J. J. Thomson”.
Since then some scholars have disputed wheter a theory is a model or not - till Daniela Bailer-Jones, 2005; Margaret Morrison 2005.
Differentiations of theories as well of models are necessary.
From “fact” to “explanatory power”
In 1840 William Whewell connected theory with „fact“. They are reciprocal notions: A „Fact is a familiar Theory“, and other way round: „A true Theory is a Fact“.
In 2002 Robert Franck edited 12 articles by (mostly) French authors on “The Explanatory Power of Models”. Here „model“ is used largely for “theory” (Franck, 2002).
Galilei: not analogies but natural laws
Still Giordano Bruno used analogies, wordplays and aphorisms (Leonardo Olschki, III, 50-67) and so “sacrified the concept to the picture". It was Galileo Galilei who substituted analogies with law: Thereby
"he cut all connections linking the natural philosophers of the Renaissance with the ones of Antiquity and the Middle Ages … This break with the old views and methods meant also to exclude the concept of finality and value from the natural philosophical thinking" (Leonardo Olschki, III, 22).
Human reason has insight into the divine creation plan with the help of mathematics which describes appropriately the movements of physical bodies by abstraction and thus is able to decipher the language of the nature. It is now the natural law which shows his economic function. Galilei states in his "Discorsi" (1638):
"Knowledge of a single fact by its causes, opens for us the understanding of other phenomena, without having recourse to experience" (Leonardo Olschki, III, 432).
bibliography:
model: special topics - Wissenschaft
Description, understanding, value judgment, positivism
For possible classifications of all sciences see:
Description vs. explanation
Auguste Comte (1830) and other Positivists as well as natural scientists (Robert Mayer; Ludwig Kirchhoff, 1876) tried to replace the explanation of phenomena by cause and effect by a complete description of the functional dependence of phenomena. Soon the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt pointed out that such a description is already including an explanation.
Despite that till today the dichotomy descriptive-explicative is still used mostly in the social sciences, sometimes added
· on the pragmatic side by prescriptive and normative,
· on the explorative side by heuristic and illusionary (Fig. 55).
Understandig vs. explaining
In contrast to the attempts of the 19th century natural science the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen 1858 promoted the process of understanding (“Verstehen”) for objects of the social and historical sciences. And he connected it with intuition. The German philosopher Wilhelm Windelband introduced in 1894 the dichotomy of “idiographic” and “nomothetic”. Especially the science of history is idiographic because she can only describe unique processes and singular facts (German: “Ereignisse”), whereas natural science aims to catch the “permanently identically recurring” events in “natural laws”.
At the same time Wilhelm Dilthey (1894/1900) proposed the dichotomy of understanding (“Verstehen”) and explaining “(“Erklären”) to distinguish the differing approaches of humanities and natural sciences Understanding deals with essence and sense, whereas explaining deals with origins and causes as well as with conditions and purposes The philosopher Heinrich Rickert (1892/1899) described meticulous the diverging methods of natural and cultural sciences.
In 1928 Hans Reichenbach could show that these different methods are situated on different levels, namely on:
· the context of discovery
· the context of justification.
Later thinkers have added the context of application.
From conflict on value judgment to conflict of positivism
In the years 1898 to 1913 the first „Werturteilsstreit“ (conflict on value judgments) occupied German sociologists. One of the spokesman was Max Weber.
Inspired by the reader „Logik der Sozialwissenschaften“ (1965) edited by Ernst Topitsch the conflict flamed up again in the context of the so-called “Positivismusstreit” (conflict of positivism) between exponents of the Frankfort School (Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas) and exponents of critical rationalism (Karl Raimund Popper, Hans Albert).
An other facet of this debate was initiated by Norwood Russell Hansons’s work „Patterns of Discovery“ (1958) which unveiled that observation is theory loaden. Related ideas we find with Thomas S. Kuhn’s „Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962) and Jürgen Habermas’ „Erkenntnis und Interesse“ (1968). This dispute was advanced by Frederick Roy Suppe (1974) and Ernan McMullin (1976). The contrary position was held by the so-called „scientific realism“.
see:
Mind and World: More than 24 theories 1950-2000
A third kind of science between natural sciences and humanities
In the 1960s Herbert Alexander Simon discovered that there is a third kind of science between natural sciences and humanities, namely “sciences of design”. He published this in his not very coherent booklet “The Sciences of the Artificial” (1969):
”Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent – not with how things are but with how things might be – in short, with design” (1996, xii).
“Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design” (1996, 111).
In following these hints Wolfgang König (2006) speaks of Umsetzungs- oder Handlungswissenschaften (sciences of implementation or action).
We remember that since the studies of Louis Bourdeau on the theory of science (“Théorie des sciences”) in 1882 and of Maurice Blondel on a science of practice (“ …une science de la pratique”) en 1893 we have already “praxeology”.
Likeweise we have since 1899, when the philosopher Paul Natorp published his “Sozialpädagogik”, four kinds of “technique”:
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physicochemical (classical technics)
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biological (e. g. horticulture, animal rearing, hygiene, gymnastics, medicine)
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psychological (e. g. psychiatry, education, regimen) and
-
social (founding the social order).
Later we had psychotechnics, sociotechnics, technocracy, social engineering, etc.
bibliography
model: special topics - Design/ technisches Zeichnen/ Gebrauchsgegenstände
Praxeologie – praxéologie - praxeology - praxiology
see also some categorizations of sciences:
Einteilung, Gebiete, Disziplinen, Gruppierungen, Graph, System
New Age science
Another attempt to science and theory can be subsumed under “New Age”. Seminal works are by the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychiatrist C. G. Jung “Naturerklärung und Psyche” (1952), by R. H. G. Siu “The Tao of Science” - a 180page “Essay on Western Knowledge and Eastern Wisdom” (1957) - and by Konrad Lorenz "Gestaltwahrnehmung als Quelle wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis" (1959).
From the side of psychology Lawrence LeShan approached the problem in an essay on “Physicists and Mystics. Similarities in World View” (1969) and a book on the paranormal: “The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist” (1974). In 1974 the French Raymond Ruyer described “the Gnostics of Princeton” arranging in very particular manner the insights “won beyond cognition” in the years 1950-1970 by Victor F. Weisskopf, David Bohm, Fred Hoyle, Eugene Paul Wigner, Eric Berne and others. In 1986 Hans-Peter Dürr edited a collection of excerpts of 20th century physicists on the miraculous.
bibliography
The nature of “reality” and “theory”, of “model” and “hypothesis”
At least since the idealists Immanuel Kant’s thing-in-itself (“Ding an sich”, 1770/1783) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s world of imagination which is produced by the “absolute ego” (1794) the dispute is on the nature of “reality”. Interwoven is the dispute on the nature of:
· “theory”, “theorem” and “axiom”;
· “thesis” and “hypothesis” (see chap. VI: Draft, design, hypothesis – hypotheses and prototypes; theories and hypotheses);
· “law” and “principle”, rule and formula, framework and equations;
· fact, figures and data; – and
· “model”.
On the one side research of physiologists on the senses ca. 1830-1900 (Weber, Lotze, Fechner, von Helmholtz, Wundt, Sechenow, G. E. Müller, DuBois-Reymond) contributed to clarify particular questions, on the other side physicists as Wheewell, Mach and Hertz.
“Positivism” starts with the six volumes of Auguste Comte (1830-42) but for a long time gained no momentum.
An “objectivistic” view of psychology was promoted by the American James Rush, the Scotch Alexander Bain and the English Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton.
A “materialistic” approach to science – as opposed to subjectivism, idealism and spiritualism - was promoted by the Germans Jakob Moleschott, Carl Vogt, Ludwig Büchner, Friedrich Albert Lange and Eugen Dühring (see also chapter 05: reflexion - years 1840-1895).
In 1897 physicist Ludwig Boltzmann held a lecture “Über die Frage nach der objectiven Existenz der Vorgänge in der unbelebten Natur“ (Engl. 1974). In 1902-08 the French mathematician Henri Poncaré published his trilogy on the fundaments or science. As barely another scientist he differentiated strong between theory and hypothesis. The latter are “preliminary assumptions”. Already Poincaré saw science advancing by falsification not by verification.
The abundance of approaches to mind and reality around 1900 is balanced out by the abundance since World War II.
see again:
Mind and World: More than 24 theories 1950-2000
Four levels of theories
Since the important study of Robert King Merton on “Social Theory and Social Structure” (1949) at least sociology distinguishes sharp between levels of theories according complexity:
1. empirical generalizations (observed empirical regularities without justification)
2. ad-hoc theories (only explanation, no prediction possible)
3. theories of the middle range (transformation of regularities in laws)
4. theories of higher complexity (grand or all-inclusive theories).
In addition to this we can argue that all dispute on models and hypotheses, laws and theories are subject to a 5th level, the level of metatheory, dealing with questions of taxonomy and methodology, epistemology and ontology, world views and communication.
“But we actually do not know anything”
In an interview in 2008 Reinhard Genzel of the German Max-Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics said:
„Indeed we know the composition of the universe, but we actually do not know anything. All that we have are auxiliary constructions, explaining models, which perhaps don’t apply at all.“
(„Wir kennen zwar die Zusammensetzung des Universums, aber eigentlich wissen wir nichts. Alles was wir haben, sind Hilfskonstruktionen, Erklärmodelle, die vielleicht gar nicht zutreffen.“)
Bibliography
Invention and some history of technics and technology, research & development and engineering (1509-2004)
Studies of mechanistic thinking
see also in German:
Zur Diskussion: Wissenschaft und Forschung
Dr. phil. Roland Müller, Switzerland / Copyright © by Mueller Science 2001-2016 / All rights reserved
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