causal and symbolic understanding in historical epistemology

8/12/2019 Causal and Symbolic Understanding in Historical Epistemology

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Causal and Symbolic Understanding in Historical

Epistemology

Michael Heidelberger

Received: 27 September 2011 / Accepted: 27 September 2011 / Published online: 19 October 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The term historical epistemology can be read in two different ways:(1) as referring to a program of historicizing epistemology, in the sense of a

critique of traditional epistemologys tendency to gloss over historical context, or

(2) as a manifesto of epistemologizing history, i.e. as a critique of radical his-

toricist and relativist approaches. In this paper I will defend a position in this second

sense. I show that one can account for the historical development and diversity of

science without disavowing the relevance of a (normatively understood) episte-mology and without denying the existence of human cognitive universals acrosshistorical and cultural differences. In support of my thesis, I draw on cognitive

scientific research on causal and symbolic cognition, arguing that causal under-

standing constitutes a basic part of science, which, in the course of its development,

becomes more and more superimposed by a culturally and historically variablesymbolic superstructure.

The term historical epistemology can be read in two different ways: It can mean aprogram of historicizing epistemology, in the sense of a critique of traditional

epistemologys tendency to gloss over historical context and to illegitimately

generalize over radically different knowledge situations. It can, however, also beread as a manifesto of epistemologizing history, i.e. as a critique of radical

historicist and relativist approaches, by arguing for a healthy dose of normativeuniversality. In the following, I would like to defend a position in this second sense

and try to show that one can account for the historical development and diversity of

science without disavowing the relevance of a (normatively understood) episte-

mology and without denying the existence of human cognitive universals across

M. Heidelberger (&)Universitat Tubingen, Bursagasse 1, 72070 Tubingen, Germanye-mail: [email protected]

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Erkenn (2011) 75:467482

DOI 10.1007/s10670-011-9343-6


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historical and cultural differences.1 This position puts two types of human

understanding to the fore of the scientific enterprise: on the one hand the special

kinds ofcausal understanding in which humans differ from non-human animals,and on the other hand the special kinds ofsymbolic understanding in which we

humans excel. The central idea is that causal understanding constitutes a basic partof science, which, in the course of its development, becomes more and more

superimposed by a culturally and historically variable symbolic superstructure. Thephilosophical conception of science proposed here differs from others in taking

results of current cognitive science on causal and symbolic understanding into

account and by suggesting new ways of differentiating.

My claim is thus the following: Historical change and cultural diversity can beaccounted for without denying the existence of human cognitive universals, if one

takes cognitive science on causal and symbolic cognition seriously. This thesis is

therefore not just philosophically and historically relevant, but also for cognitivescience. I am aware that for some readers my claim may sound nave and like

turning the wheel of the history of philosophy of science back to an obsolete

positivist viewpoint. All I can do for the moment is to ask for some patience. I am

confident that I shall be able to convince the skeptic that my position does not fallback into a period before Thomas Kuhn and others started to criticize the logical

empiricist conception.My paper is divided into five parts: In the first section I shall review some current

views of cognitive science on the development and formation of causal

understanding in humans. Todays cognitive science has brought Piagets influentialtheory of qualitative shifts in the cognitive development of children under pressure.

Instead of supposing the succession of stages that bring about different schemas andworldviews, cognitive development seems to be a successive filling out of a basic

frame of early understanding. This also applies to causal understanding in particular.In the second part, I shall try to assimilate historical and cultural diversity to this

view: causal understanding in different cultures and different historical periods

variesnot in the understanding of causality as such butin the empirical

assumptions involved and in the way how domain-specific causal theories are

applied. In the third section I will argue that scientific theories form a symbolicstructure that is built on basic causal knowledge of the domain in question: Theories

are symbolic systems into which special causal knowledge is embedded. The

1 Such a view was also shared by my former teacher Lorenz Kruger (19321994) to whom this article isdedicated. Kruger played a decisive role in setting up the institution by which this conference is hosted.The topic of this conference is a getting back to the central conception he had in mind for the Max-

Planck-Institute of the History of Science. Since 1996, the MPI offers an annual Lorenz KrugerPostdoctoral Research Fellowship in his honor. Starting almost from the moment Kruger recruited me

for the preparation of a year-long research project on the history of probability and statistics at the Centerfor Interdisciplinary Research of the University of Bielefeld (long before the foundation of the MPI wasin sight), we were discussing, I am tempted to say: almost around-the-clock, problems of historical

epistemology, although the term as such emerged only later in our discussions. The question that vexed usat the time was: How can the history of an epistemic concept like probability be written withouthistoricizing too much, but also without putting history into a Procrustean bed of a priori philosophy. Thestruggle to come to grips with this situation finally gave way to Kru gers original vision of the MPI.

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cognizing subject shifts from one cognitive phase to another. It seems that in recent

years there is a definite move away from the first side of each of these dichotomies

to the second one.One can illustrate this change with the current criticism of Jean Piaget. Piaget

assumed several successive stages in the development of causal cognition in younghumans (Piaget 1930). Each stage is characterized by self-contained logical

principles that profoundly determine the way how the world is represented by thechild and how causality is conceived. The principles used are domain-general; they

do not change in an essential way if one moves, say, from the social domain to the

domain of inanimate objects during one and the same developmental phase. These

domain-general principles profoundly change, according to Piaget, or are replacedby new ones, if an individual abandons one stage of development and enters a

higher one. In the first sensorimotor phase, which can last up to about the age of

24 months, according to Piaget, the child does not dispose of any causal insightbecause he still lacks some basic schemata, e.g. the idea of object permanency. His

world still carries magic features with it. Only at about 1824 months, the infant

enters the pre-operational stage mainly as a result of acquiring language, i.e. of

the ability to symbolically represent reality. He holds fast to an animistic view of theworld and of the way objects interact with each other, but not yet to a genuine

notion of causality. With about 6 years, Piaget maintains, the child shifts to aconcrete operational stage where some logic and true causality is present, but

during which the subjective appearance of objects is still so overwhelming that it

cannot be overridden by more abstract information like for example conservationprinciples. Only at the stage of adolescence, from about 12 years on, the human

enters a formal operational phase where he can fully abstract from his egocentricposition and develop an intentional as well as a mechanistic view of the world that

finally leaves behind earlier animistic views for good and all.The transition from one stage to the next is seen by Piaget as driven by the childs

active interference with the world. The child always tries to assimilate new

experiences as much as possible to his present worldview, but at some point, when

the assimilation gets too artificial and complex, a process of accommodation sets in

with the child giving up some of his dominant views in favor of new ones. Theresult is a qualitative change of worldview in which the old principles are

abandoned and the subject shifts to a higher cognitive stage. The child is thus seen

by Piaget as someone who starts in complete ignorance of the causal principles ofthe world and is forced to go through a series of irrational misconceptions before

can gradually figure out the true workings of causality in a process of assimilation

and accommodation.Todays cognitive science is rather critical of these views and sees child

development in a different light. There is evidence that children are already born

with some idea of causality or at least that they acquire causal notions at a much

earlier stage than Piaget allowed. Children as young as 2 years old can make

causal predictions, provide causal explanations, and understand counterfactualcausal claims (Gopnik et al. 2004, p. 4). These early notions do not, however,

apply to all domains alike. Causal understanding of children varies according todomains of intuitive physics, biology and psychology and their reasoning seems to

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be guided and constrained by causal assumptions and concepts that depend on the

domain. Contrary to Piaget, children do not go through incommensurable stages of

misconceived causal understanding but they gradually enrich their early concep-tions of causality in order to deal with more and more cases.

2 Cultural and Historical Influence on Causal Cognition

What are the consequences of this new understanding for the cultural and historical

dimension of causal cognition? If causal cognition grows and develops by

enrichment, it seems highly probable that cultures and historical epochs start from acommon understanding of everyday causality. If they differ they do this in the

assumptions about the workings of causal powers that have resulted in different

traditions of causal thought. This branching out of original causal understanding,as one could say, into different traditions does not mean, however, that different

conceptsof causality are employed. It is consistent with the idea that what varies are

the causal assumptions, but not the concepts themselves. One must always

distinguish between the concept of a causal connection and the empirical theory thatsays under which conditions this connection holds. Thus Boyer writes: A clear

distinction must be made between the concept of cause or causal connection on theone hand, and the assumptions describing the causal propensities of various objects

or entities on the other (Boyer1995, p. 618).

Take for example the magical belief of certain indigenous cultures that stealing alock of hair from somebody and reciting some special incantations over it in special

circumstances will make the person ill. This kind of causal understanding iscertainly at odds with the causal outlook of Western culture. Yet it does not imply a

different concept of causation, but only a strange empirical assumption about thecausal power of hair and of incantations. So the difference in causal assumptions of

different cultures can be an important source of diversity without that incommen-

surable new concepts of causality have to be introduced.

If we take this to heart, we can avoid two mistakes in philosophizing about the

cultural and historical diversity of causal claims prevalent in anthropology,psychology and history (cp. Boyer1995, p. 616f.): The first mistake is the belief that

causal conceptions are wholly culture-specific and that they depend on different

world-views or conceptual schemes of a culture across the physical, biologicaland psychological domains. This would be analogous to Piagets view that the

childs conception of causality (or the lack thereof) depends on his conception of the

world, or the schema of interpretation, that is allowed by the cognitive stage hegoes through. Only an act of choice, due to the logical structure characteristic of

the particular stage of intellectual development can account for the presence of one

particular conception among the collection of possible conceptions (Piaget1930,

p. 256).

The second mistake that can now be avoided is to assume that the competenceand manner of causal reasoning is domain-general, i.e., that, once acquired, it

depends only on the developmental stage of an individual, i.e. on the logico-mathematical structure of its thought (and, maybe, on the culture and historical

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phase to which it belongs). Instead it seems that knowledge, and especially causal

knowledge is acquired domain by domain and that the way how knowledge is

divided into domains is partly determined on an innate basis. Individual competencevaries considerably between domains and there is little transfer or generalization of

knowledge across the domain boundaries. There are also domain-specificconstraints that accelerate or slow down the acquisition of certain knowledge

(Hatano and Inagaki 2000, esp. pp. 267269). As already pointed out, manyresearchers assume core domains of human thought that include a nave physics,

psychology and biology. They also assume that to each of these core domains

belongs a characteristic set of causal conceptions: mechanical causality in physics,

intentional causality in psychology and teleological or functional causality inbiology.

So in the end we can argue for the following change of perspective: Human

beings do use different causal concepts (or principles of causation, as Boyerexpresses it). The difference in these concepts is, however, not the result of some

intrinsic cultural and/or historical diversity that makes them incommensurable with

each other. What varies historically and culturally are the causal empirical

assumptions. And these assumptions can be tested across different cultures andhistorical periods.

3 Causal and Symbolic Dimension of Scientific Theory

The foregoing discussion of causal knowledge is not yet enough for a full-blown

historical epistemology. The main point must be criteria of evaluating realmaturescientific theories and not just everyday causal judgments. In order to sketch

an epistemology that can fulfill this requirement, we have to look for specialfeatures in which scientific theories differ from mere everyday causal knowledge. It

is to be expected that the answers we get to this question vary with the specific

causal domain of a theory.

I think there are two important features of scientific theories that have not been

touched upon in this article yet, but that have to be taken into account in order tobridge the gap between common folk science and a real scientific theory. First of all,

we have to take into consideration that many, if not most, contemporary scientific

theories, at least of physics, seem to have lost their causal content. They seem tohave become instead elaborate symbolic systems in which one looks in vain for

causal claims. Bertrand Russell famously held causality in physics to be a relic of a

bygone age (Russell1917, p. 180). But also Thomas Kuhn thought that the causalcharacter of physics has dwindled down in the course of time to the causa formalis

in the Aristotelian sense. The explanation of a particular phenomenon is given by an

appropriate differential equation from which without grave distortion no active

agent, no isolated cause temporally prior to the effect can be retrieved. This has

given rise to a change of the conception of cause. Cause in physics has againbecome cause in the broader sense, that is explanation (Kuhn 1977, pp. 26, 28).

Mature physical theories seem to have moved far away from simple causalknowledge that humans, children or adults, employ in their everyday life.


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Nevertheless I still see an important connection between a-causal theories and

causal claims, although this connection is not at all obvious at first sight and can be

identified sometimes only by complicated considerations. To my mind, the mostimportant place where abstract theory meets concrete causality is the scientific

instrument. The special dependency of scientific theories on scientific instruments isthe second feature of scientific theories that must be taken into account if one wants

to develop a historical epistemology rich enough to deal with a mature scientificoutlook.

In explicating the idea of the symbolic character of mature scientific theories I

want to start with discussing a proposal by the philosopher of science (and physicist)

Pierre Duhem made more than a 100 years ago. He set up the following principleas essential for experimental physics: An experiment in physics is the precise

observation of phenomena accompanied by an interpretation of these phenomena;

this interpretation substitutes for the concrete data really gathered by observationabstract and symbolic representations which correspond to them by virtue of the

theories admitted by the observer. The result of an experiment in physics is an

abstract and symbolic judgment (Duhem 1991 [1906], p. 147). Duhem gives

several examples of what he has in mind. It is worth dealing in some detail with hisfirst example, the measuring of the resistance of a coil in a physics laboratory:

Go into this laboratory; draw near this table crowded with so much apparatus:an electric battery, copper wire wrapped in silk, vessels filled with mercury, coils, a

small iron bar carrying a mirror. An observer plunges the metallic stem of a rod,

mounted with rubber, into small holes; the iron oscillates and, by means of themirror tied to it, sends a beam of light over to a celluloid ruler, and the observer

follows the movement of the light beam on it. There, no doubt, you have anexperiment; by means of the vibration of this spot of light, this physicist minutely

observes the oscillations of the piece of iron. Ask him now what he is doing. Is hegoing to answer: I am studying the oscillations of the piece of iron carrying this

mirror? No, he will tell you that he is measuring the electrical resistance of a coil. If

you are astonished and ask him what meaning these words have, and what relation

they have to the phenomena he has perceived and which you have at the same time

perceived, he will reply that your question would require some very longexplanations, and he will recommend that you take a course in electricity (145).

Duhem draws again the conclusion that this experimentlike any experiment in

physicsinvolves two parts: (1) the observation of certain facts in commonexperience which requires nothing but alert attention and a practiced eyein

short, as he later put it, only common sense brought to greater attentiveness

(180); (2) the interpretation of the observed facts, or, as he commented, theformulation of a judgment interrelating certain abstract and symbolic ideas which

theories alone correlate with the facts really observed (147). You are unable to

attach meaning to this judgment if you do not know the physical theories admitted

by the author [of an experimental report in physics]. (148).

In the light of the foregoing, Duhems remarks have to be corrected, however, intwo respects: First, what Duhem calls observation of concrete data in common

experience is really the observation ofcausal processes. He almost admits this butdoes not make anything out of it: The result of common experience [when facts are

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observed], he wrote, is the perception of a relation between diverse concrete

facts. Such a fact having been artificially produced some other fact has resulted from

it. In sciences that are still close to their origins, like physiology or certainbranches of chemistry where mathematical theory has not yet introduced its

symbolic representations, the experimenter can reason directly on the facts:For instance, a frog has been decapitated, and the left leg has been pricked with a

needle, the right leg has been set into motion and has tried to move away from theneedle: there you have the result of an experiment in physiology. It is a recital of

concrete and obvious facts, and in order to understand it, not a word of physiology

need be known (147). Again, to set the poor frogs leg into motion by pricking the

other leg with a needle after he has been decapitated is, of course, the vividdescription of a causal process.

Second: Mature theories exert their capacity to correlate and interrelate

symbolic ideas with concrete facts, i.e. their ability to interpret facts,according to Duhem, always and only in virtue of the causal power of scientific

instruments. This becomes especially clear in the second example which Duhem

uses to illustrate his argument. The experiment in question deals with the

compressibility of gases investigated by Regnault: He takes a certain quantity ofgas, encloses it in a glass tube, keeps the temperature constant, and measures the

pressure the gas supports and the volume it occupies. (145). After describing theexact course of the experiment, Duhem asks what volume, pressure and

temperature mean: Now, what is the value of the volume occupied by the gas,

what is the value of the pressure it supports, what is the degree of temperature towhich it is brought? Are they three concrete objects? No, they are three abstract

symbols which only physical theory connects to the facts really observed (146).How is this connection achieved? I quote the beginning of Duhems solution to the

problem: In order to form the first of these abstractions, the value of the volume ofthe enclosed gas, and to make it correspond with the observed fact, namely, the

mercury becoming level with a certain line-mark, it was necessary to calibrate the

tube, that is to say, to appeal not only to the abstract ideas of arithmetic and geometry

and the abstract principles on which they rest, but also to the abstract idea of mass

and the hypotheses of general mechanics as well as of celestial mechanics whichjustify the use of the balance for the comparison of masses [] and so on and so

forth. In other words: It is auxiliary theories (as I call them) that provide the

interpretation of concrete facts by transferring symbolic meaning to scientificinstruments. Only as a result of this transfer is the required interpretation of observed

facts achieved. This way of reading Duhem partially explicates my earlier claim that

instruments serve as windows to the causal dimension of mature scientific theories.What kind of moral can we draw from these considerations? The usual

consequence suggested is that one should abandon the theory-observation dichot-

omy decreed by logical empiricists and accept the theory-ladenness of observational

terms. This move denies the existence of theory-neutral data of observation and

negates an objective court of appeal between competing theories. Yet in the light ofthe foregoing the consequence can also be to transfer the basic empiricist role of

observation to causal claims at the level of common experience. This means that ascientific theory is only adequate if it can be connected with the special way we


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human beings causally deal with the world in our common experience. Such a

connection can be achieved by scientific instruments where the causal and the

symbolic dimension of a theory meet. Causal judgements, however culturallyvariable [i.e., in my terminology: symbolically interpreted], are constrained by a

series of universal intuitive principles (Boyer 1995, p. 615) that are universallyvalid across cultural and historical variation. At first sight, this might seem to

concede too much to logical empiricism. One should, however, remember thatcausality has no place in (logical) empiricism and is very much alien to it. In a way,

logical empiricists do not accept a surplus meaning for inferential causality over

associationist one.

My view is thus a kind of compromise between a logical empiricist outlook and apost-positivist conception like that of Thomas Kuhn: In accordance with empiricism

and with current cognitive science, but against Thomas Kuhn, I claim that a

scientific theory is adequate only if it can be connected with some theory-neutralexperience, that is, our common causal intuitions. And in accordance with Thomas

Kuhn, but against logical empiricists, I maintain that causal meaning has a symbolic

dimension. In both cases instruments play the mediating role.

My conception is in line with others who see an analogy between cognitivedevelopment and scientific theory formation and change (Gopnik1997). They claim

accordingly that scientists and children both employ the same particularlypowerful and flexible set of cognitive devices (Gopnik 1997, p. 486). Besides

children and scientists one should also include prehistoric humans in this list. There

are three factors, however, that, from a traditional philosophy of science point ofview, seem to make a stand against this analogy.

The first factor concerns the role of causal terms. The formation of maturecontemporary theories, as seen by traditional philosophers of science, rarely

requires the consideration of causes, and if it does, they are appropriated by theorybeyond recognition: Causes certainly are connected with effects [] because our

theories connect them, not because the world is held together by cosmic glue. []

The notions behind the cause x and the effect y are intelligible only against a

pattern of theory, namely one which puts guarantees on inferences from x to y

(Hanson1958, p. 64). For cognitive science, however, concepts of cause and effectwould not have been so important in the cognitive development of humans, if they

had not stood alone, independently of theories. Thus in order to show that theory

formation and cognitive development are on a par, one has to revalue causality inmature scientific theories.

The second factor interfering with cognitive development as seen by todays

cognitive science, but dear to philosophers of science, is the doctrine of meaningchange of a theorys terms. According to this doctrine, the meanings of terms in

theories are determined (partially or wholly) by the principles of the theory in which

they occur. Hence changes in theory result in changes in meaning. It is this holistic

character of meaning that led Thomas Kuhn to his incommensurability thesis. Yet

cognitive science sees (at least) causal terms occurring in basic theories asindependent from theoretical content. Although human dealings with the world are

highly symbolic, change of theory does not change the meanings of basic causalterms which we use to express our causal beliefs.

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without functionally equivalent instruments. The air-pump creates a vacuum that

would otherwise not exist. The aim of a constructive instrument is to produce an

effect in its pure form, without any complications or additions that could spoil itsappearance or that are otherwise alien to it. The goal is very often to shield an effect

from disturbances. The Leyden jar is a perfect example of this. It was designed inorder to fill up electricity which is otherwise too elusive. Another purpose of this

type of instrument is to tame a phenomenon, so that it can be manipulated,modeled or controlled in a certain desired way.

A symbolic instrument is designed to represent symbolically the place a natural

phenomenon occupies in relation to phenomena of the same kind and thus to

understand the ordering of the phenomena: by size or by intensity etc. Examples ofinstruments that fulfill such a function are clocks, balances, electrometers,

galvanometers, thermometers etc. One could them also call information-trans-

forming instruments, because they transform the input information about the worldinto a more useful output format while preserving the order of the phenomena vis-a-

vis the attributes in question. A thermometer, for example, transforms the different

states of heat that are accessible to our normal heat-sense into different, visually

accessible states of the instrument (different heights of the mercury column). Theordering of the heat states is or should be preserved in the order of the heights of the

column. When we ask for the causal significance of a representing instrument wecan say that it is designed to avoid as much as possible an effect on the measured

object or effectit should, on the contrary, be able to register causal influences that

the represented object or phenomenon exerts on it. The ideal representinginstrument is non-invasive and thus neither productive nor constructive.

Now, Ohm used two kinds of instruments in his investigation of electric circuits:a thermoelectric source of electric current, made of bismuth and copper, that has

recently become available, and an undamped magnetic torsion balance that wasmodeled after Coulombs torsion balance. Coulomb had used it for measuring

electrostatic force, but Ohm employed it as a precision instrument for measuring the

exciting force of the current or the strength of the magnetic effect on the

conductorthat is, the intensity of the current; i.e., he used it as a galvanometer.

The thermoelectric apparatus played a double role, both as a productive and aconstructive device: a productive role because it should produce voltaic

electricity and not a chemical one. (It should be borne in mind that at the time,

it was not clear yet that there is just one kind of electricity. Different electricitieswere classified according to their sources.) The first constructive role it was

designed to play was to produce electrical action in its pure or idealized form, as

Ohm thought, without any chemical contamination, so to speak. It was alsosupposed to produce a stable source of electricity. All other contemporary sources

of dynamic electricity were instable, vacillating highly in their electric action.

The second instrument Ohm used, the galvanometer turned torsion balance, is

clearly a symbolic instrument. Ohms use of the balance is modeled after the so-

called fundamental experience of Hans Christian rsted who proved the effect ofa current carrying wire on the behavior of a magnetic needle. When Ohm took the

behavior of the torsion balance hanging over a current carrying wire as the criterionof the presence of current intensity, he also made constructive use of his

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instrumentthis time by stipulation: all other effects of the wire are either

themselves caused by the current intensity or do not, by fiat, count as a sign of

intensity.The constructive and productive usage Ohm made of his instruments takes place

on a causal level that is theory-neutral (relative to Ohms own theory) and guided bythe causal possibilities available with the instruments in question. The symbolic or

representative level is superimposed on the manipulative one. Ohm attains for hisexperiments a symbolic significance by three means: First, by introducing a

symbolic generalization, as Kuhn called it, that functions as a unifying formula.

Second, his approach enabled Ohm to create and define a new theoretical concept,

the concept of electric resistance or conductivity. And third, he was able togive a theory of the instruments involvedthat is, to substitute for the concrete

objects composing these instruments an abstract and schematic representation, as

Duhem (1991[1906], p. 153) had formulated it. This representation was given interms of the concept of the galvanic circuit that was his invention. As already noted,

Ohm finally arrived through his measurements at the formula that is known as

Ohms law and which can be written as: I = V/R. The road to this formula was very

winding and tortuous, and Ohm had to make many attempts, both in a practical aswell as in a theoretical respect, to obtain his result. It is highly significant that his

first theoretical conception of electric activity in a closed circuit was guided by theCoulomb paradigm of static electricity and that he was able to describe this already

with some version of his law. This implied a concept of resistance similar to the

mechanical resistance in friction phenomena. Later Ohm modeled electricconduction in analogy to heat conduction as Joseph Fourier had developed it in

his theory of heat. In this sense, resistance becomes a truly theoretical or theory-laden term that is not yet present at the causal level of Ohms experiments; it is

reached and formulated only at the symbolic level. He could avoid directmeasurements of resistance by comparing the circuit in question with a standard

circuit. (For more details see Heidelberger2003.)

Ohm could also apply his new mathematical formula to the galvanometer and the

electrometer as parts of a circuit and thereby predict their behavior in many new

cases. Ultimately it was the practical usability of Ohms law for all kinds ofmeasurements in the circuit and especially for technical applications, such as in

electrical telegraphy, which in the end led to its acceptance. It was soon recognized

that Ohms law was completely neutral with regard to the exact theory of the originof the electromotive force of electricity; it holds irrespective of whether that force

is regarded as being derived from the contact of dissimilar metals [as its founder

himself believed] or as referable to chemical agency, as the Royal Society wrotewhen it dedicated the Copley medal to Ohm in 1841.

The excursion into Ohms theory was supposed to show that a typical theory has

two levels, a primary causal one, which is theory-free in relation to the new theory,

and a secondary one on a supervening symbolic level when theory takes possession

of the direct causal experience with scientific instruments and when the adjustmentof a causal picture to a theoretical and symbolic context is called for. There are

many cases where first level experimentation is and can be pursued without takinginto account the secondary level.


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5 Similar Approaches

In this chapter I discuss attempts by Jed Z. Buchwald and Xiang Chen to show thatKuhns difficulties with incommensurability and relativism can be overcome by

considering the important role that scientific instruments have to play in thedevelopment of science (Buchwald 1992; Chen 1997). Buchwald sees scientific

practice as the separation of the objects investigated by scientists into scientific

kinds. These kinds typically form a taxonomic tree. There is no partial overlapbetween kinds, that is, nothing which is embraced by a given class within aparticular group of scientific kinds can be both an a-thingand ab-thing, whereaand

b are group kinds, unless all a-things are b-things or vice versa (Buchwald1992,

p. 41). Two trees are commensurable, if one tree can directly be translated into the

other or if it can be grafted on the other without disturbing the existing structure.

Otherwise they are incommensurable. This kind of incommensurability, however, istamed because it does not have the puzzling aspects of Kuhns original

incommensurability anymore and can now fruitfully be accepted even by thosehistorians of science who have criticized Kuhns approach. Buchwald assigns

experiment the central place in the construction of taxonomies: First, experimental

work divides the elements of the tree from one another: sitting at the nodes or

branch-points of the tree, experimental devices assign something to this or to that

category. Second, experimental work may generate new kinds that can either beassimilated by, or that may disrupt, the existing structure (Buchwald1992, p. 44).

Buchwalds scheme can be translated into my approach if we limit it to productiveinstruments. In this case, as we have seen, phenomena are produced that do normallynot appear in the realm of direct human experience. Buchwald did not have the aim to

propose a theory of scientific instruments, so he cannot be criticized for limiting

himself to just one type. There is, however, more to Kuhns incommensurability than

different taxonomic trees produced by one type of instrument. The symboliccharacter of scientific theories is lost in this approach. Buchwald neglects in addition

that scientific instruments can have paradigmatic significance for Kuhn.

Chen starts from Buchwalds considerations and stresses the point that science

does not only create successive classifications of phenomena, as Buchwald has it,but also instruments, procedures, and skills that supply the tools for our

interactions with the real world. Even if theories cannot be compared with eachother in relation to their taxonomies and are thus incommensurable, we can

evaluate them objectively in terms of their connections with instruments. From this

he draws the conclusion that the instrumental aspect of science allows for

incommensurability without relativism (Chen 1997, p. 270f.). Chens thesis is

very sketchy at this point. I can very much agree with him, but again: the symbolicdimension that is present in each instrument is not discussed at all.

6 Conclusion

In this paper, I tried to show that a historical epistemology is possible that searches

for universal criteria of scientific development. There is a growing consensus in

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