Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry Page 4
Still, the charge of artificiality in scientific explanations seems to be supported when we remember that the explanation sketch above ignores much that comes to pass in the change from must to wine: the development of the wine’s bouquet and color, the maturing of the wine, the countless nuances and features lovers of wine recognize and cherish. Scientific explanation, however, is endlessly resourceful. Any challenge that is clearly advanced can be taken up scientifically. The great majority of past challenges has been met. It is a desperate move to try to secure a transscientific solidity for the everyday world by resting one’s case on clearly stated but scientifically unsolved problems. Our common understanding of the world is always—and already—scientific. More precisely, everyone takes a protoscientific view of the world. The objects around us, large and small, are seen within the range of scientific explanation. Regardless of one’s present competence or concern, most everyone admits that scientific scrutiny of any event or phenomenon is possible in principle; nothing falls beyond the scope of the sciences. The validity and also the ambiguities of this view will become clearer when we attend to the structure of scientific explanation, its validity in this chapter and its scope in the next.
To say that the world is real and intelligible is to say that it is lawful. Aristotle was the first to show in a resourceful way that we always and already move within a lawfully articulated world.8 In particular, those who assert an endlessly shifting and unreliable reality can do so only to the extent that they tacitly take their position in a stable world. Much later and under very different circumstances, Kant argued similarly that there must be necessarily binding rules of structure and coherence if our individual experiences are to have objective validity.9 From this it follows, as both Aristotle and Kant argue, that to render something intelligible is to place it explicitly in the matrix of laws and principles.10
One may find by simple inspection that must has turned to wine. But that process becomes intelligible only when it is seen as an instance of the law according to which, in the presence of yeast cells, the sugar of a solution is converted into alcohol. We can put this more formally, calling the phenomenon to be explained the explanandum and the principles and specifications that provide the explanatory insight the explanans.11
explanandum { Therefore must turns to wine.12
Or more generally:
And formally:
This kind of explanation is called deductive-nomological since it can take the form of a syllogism where, from premises among which there is at least one empirical law (Greek nómos), a conclusion is deduced. The logical form a scientific explanation exhibits mirrors the cogent force of the latter, if the laws and conditions are accepted as true and the rules of logical inference are followed, then the truth of the proposition that refers to the event to be explained cannot be refused. Aristotle used the Greek word apodéixis as a technical term for this kind of compelling demonstration, and, when it is a matter of highlighting the cogency rather than the structure of scientific explanations, I will refer to them as apodeictic explanations.
To understand a particular event in seeing it within the framework of regularities is the common and pervasive way in which humans orient themselves in their world. To sow seeds is to act in view of the law of germination, growth, and fruition. To slaughter an animal is to proceed on one’s general knowledge of the sustaining force of meat. Scientific explanation is not a novel assault on the world but the radical precisioning of a procedure that is as old as humanity. The procedures become precise through the sharpening of the laws to which phenomena are reduced. That must turns to wine is itself a rough sort of law. When we say that yeast, along with other factors, causes the fermentation, we say something more precise. But precision in one place requires precision everywhere else. The action of yeast produces alcohol. Yet the mere production of alcohol is not yet the production of wine. The development of colors and tastes is also involved; so are acids, tannins, and esters. Further, yeast cells require for their growth not only a sugar solution but also nitrogen, vitamins, minerals, and a certain range of temperature.
When we so analyze fermentation, we have already taken the standpoint of modern science. From that point of view, fermentation appears as a manifold and complex chemical process, and the terms “must” and “wine” designate stages that are selected for convenience, not for reasons that derive from the laws of chemistry. Indeed, “fermentation” itself has a selective function. It tells us, if we are observers, what to pay attention to and what to ignore when we follow the fate of the grape from the vine to the cask. What the word tells us if we are practitioners is a question that will later lead us to central problems in the philosophy of technology.
The seemingly opaque phenomena and processes of the everyday world become perspicuous in the matrix of scientific laws. Opacity gives way to perspicuity as the molar objects are analyzed into their microscopic components and events are subsumed under laws. The move from the molar to the microscopic is at the same time a move from diversity to sameness.13 The laws of chemistry hold for baking bread as well as for fermentation, and for metallurgy as well as for organic processes. It is conceivable that the change from sugar to alcohol is a lawful but not further analyzable process. Any theory of explanation must end with such ultimate laws. But modern science has shown that the final structures of our world lie several stages removed from their tangible appearances.14 Sugar is a compound, analyzable into molecules, these into elements, the latter into atoms, and those into particles and subparticles. And at one or another of these stages the lines of analysis that depart from bread or bronze converge and become one.
In part, the laws of modern science allow us to restate and explicate what we knew prescientifically. Winegrowers have always known that sunshine and well-drained soils are crucial for productive vines. Science elucidates these phenomena in terms of photosynthesis and minerals. In part, modern science corrects our prescientific views. Naively, we are inclined to overestimate the substance that is drawn from the soil since we are unaware of the carbon dioxide in the air as a raw material. Finally, modern science discloses entirely new phenomena. No one could know without science that air contains nitrogen which is in part captured by rain and so becomes a nutrient for the vine. Through such disclosures the network of relations that constitute the context of our world becomes richer and tighter. We come to see the cycle of the production of oxygen in photosynthesis and its consumption in respiration. We can follow the path of calcium from the soil to shrubs, to the antlers of a deer, to the rodents that consume the antlers. We see cycles in the course of water and in the weather; we see courses of development in geological formations.
Thus modern science gives us a more coherent and detailed view of the world. It lets us see more precisely what a phenomenon consists of, and it connects that phenomenon more definitely and more manifoldly to other phenomena. Science reveals detail because its theories ultimately treat of microparticles. Science is in one regard a microtheory. In constituting one microtheory for all the varied phenomena it discloses the many bonds of commonness among phenomena. This is the explanatory power of science: it explains everything more precisely and more generally than any prior mode of explanation. From this we should conclude that science can also provide a precise and general explanation of technology just as it has furnished one for fermentation. We know as a matter of fact that this has not been done. Is it to be expected? Is it a matter of principle or of practical circumstances that a scientific explanation of technology has not been forthcoming? What is the scope of scientific explanation?
6
The Scope of Scientific Explanation
A deductive-nomological explanation makes explicit how an event fits into the lawfulness of reality. It outlines the place of an event in the nomological network. Explanation in this sense brings into relief clearly and in some cases surprisingly an understanding of the world that is implicitly present all the time. To repeat: intelligibility is of one piece with
lawfulness. To say that reality is lawful is simply to highlight the solidity and steadiness of the world. We could not be at home in the world if it changed in strictly capricious ways. Unforeseen events stand out against a world that is understood in its lawfulness, and, if an event that has exploded our nomological network and taxed our understanding is at all of concern to us, we will not rest until its relation to the laws of nature is understood.1
Subsumption under laws, be it explicit or implicit, is surely necessary for an explanation and understanding of events. Scientific explanation is the clear and ideal case of such explanation, and Hempel and his followers contend that any kind of explaining is valid only to the extent that it approximates this ideal. Of course in many situations an approximation is all that is needed or possible. But is subsumption under scientific laws also sufficient to explain an event? Two objections have been advanced against a positive answer. The first denies the claim of necessity and sufficiency, the second the thesis of sufficiency only. In taking up these challenges we provide a clearing for the paradigmatic explanation of technology.
It has been said on behalf of historians that they usually explain the events of history without recourse to laws.2 But it seems that, where defenders of the autonomy of historical explanation agree that a certain event is given and that we want to know why it happened, they cannot sketch a satisfactory answer without an appeal to laws of some sort. Thus the way in which this controversy is formulated always leaves the impression that historical explanation is at bottom but a species or variant of scientific explanation, and in this context the idiosyncracy of historical and the limits of scientific explanation never come into view.
The objections that have been raised against the sufficiency of the deductive-nomological model of explanation are more fruitful. Hempel himself has noted that a scientific explanation provides an answer to an (explanation seeking) why-question but not to a request for an explanation of a thing or concrete event. There is no scientific reply to the demand: Explain the northern lights to me. But there are answers to such questions as: Why do the northern lights pulsate? Why do they show red and green colors? A why-question selects an aspect from a concrete thing or event that is sufficiently precise to be subsumable under laws.3 But even when the explanandum has the required sentential form, it can be subsumed under very different laws because indefinitely many causal lines intersect at the place where an event is located in the nomological network, and so the event instantiates and is subsumable under many laws. There is usually a common understanding regarding the aspect of the explanandum which is of concern and should be explained. When a particular subsumption does not accord with one’s understanding, one may doubt the sufficiency of the deductive-nomological model of explanation.4 Hempel makes the point that a subsumptive explanation shows that an event was to be expected and that in this sense it “enables us to understand why the phenomenon occurred.”5 But it is clear that when an explanation disregards that aspect of the event that is of concern to me, it fails to satisfy my need to understand. Hence a satisfactory account of explanation must raise and answer the question of the relevance of the factors to which an explanandum is related.6 One can try to highlight the explanatory concern by resolving the ambiguity of an explanandum through emphasis in, additions to, or redescriptions of the explanandum.7 Say I see a hawk sitting on a fence post that I know to be four feet high.8 The hawk seems to be looking at a squirrel on the ground, three feet from the base of the post. After the hawk and the squirrel have disappeared, a friend of mine, who also has been observing the scene, measures the distance from the top of the fence post to the spot where the squirrel sat and asks: Why was the hawk sitting five feet away from the squirrel? The question is ambiguous in at least two ways. If my friend is concerned with the geometrical relations of the situation, I will answer by subsuming the initially given distances under the Pythagorean theorem and deduce the distance from hawk to squirrel. On the other hand, if my friend is concerned to know why the hawk did not take after the squirrel, I will resort to laws of animal behavior which explain under what conditions a predator is inhibited from pursuing its prey.
Can we say that once an explanatory concern is stated unambiguously its subsumption under the relevant laws by way of special conditions is sufficient to explain the event in question?9 One could simply agree to define the matter in this way. But if one also agrees that explanation begets understanding and that understanding always admits of explication by explanation, then the narrow definition of explanation just contemplated leaves much of our understanding inexplicable. There are a number of gaps in our understanding of what it means to explain something, and they open up around scientific explanation itself. To begin, we must remember that a scientific explanation normally gets underway only when the scientific laws are given. Even in the case where the laws are discovered in an attempt to solve a problem, the discovery itself, though it is part of an explanation, is not thereby explained. We have no general explanation of how scientific laws are discovered. This is not for lack of attention. Historians and philosophers of science have devoted much ingenuity and diligence to the study of how new scientific laws and theories arise. But what understanding we have of these matters is not derived from deductive-nomological explanations. More particularly, rationalist or inductivist explanations of the emergence of scientific laws which at least emulate the rigor of deductive-nomological explanations have proven quite inadequate. It is worth remarking that the philosophers of science who remind the general historians that their successful explanations are of the deductive-nomological cast do not attempt to cast their own explanations of the history of science in that mold. Another gap is found on the opposite side of scientific explanations. An explanation gets underway only when it is clear what problem is worthy and in need of explanation. But again we have no general explanation of how problems get stated.10 A closer look at the first gap will lead us to a better understanding of the second.
The problem of the rise and succession of laws and theories in the history of science has many aspects. An important thread in this history and its discussions emerges when we consider that there is apparently no rule whose application leads to progress. This appears from a study of the details and circumstances of any scientific breakthrough. The lack of a rule is equally well demonstrated by the failure of those allegedly possessing such a rule to achieve genuine and consistent progress. Scientific progress seems to be unpredictable in any strict sense, and that is to say, unexplainable.
Yet if we speak of progress in the succession of scientific discoveries, there must be a pattern in this development, and it must be one from weaker to stronger stages. These two findings are not really incompatible. Scientific advances may well be inexplicable and incomprehensible when we look at the future. The hitherto unthought is as of now unthinkable. But that is a psychological limit. Looking at the past, after a great thinker has thought through what seemed unthinkable, the advance will exhibit theoretical ties to the past that are clear to all experts.11 Progress up to the present is theoretically and hence psychologically perspicuous. Progress in the future is psychologically veiled and hence theoretically opaque.
Thomas Kuhn whose thought on these matters has become well-known and influential has never denied that scientific research makes progress. He has certainly denied that progress is steady and by accumulation. However there is an issue on which Kuhn seems divided, and it is a truly controversial and interesting one. It regards the question of how radical the discontinuities in scientific progress are.12 We seem to face a dilemma. On the one hand, if the periods ushered in by new scientific theories or paradigms are radically different from their predecessors, they are incomparable or incommensurable with them. We would then have change but not progress.13 It is the immersion in the details of history that makes us hesitate to belittle and reduce the differences among eras to degrees of crudity and ignorance. One is tempted to posit not just psychological or epistemological differences but di
fferences in the nature of reality, i.e., ontological differences.14 On the other hand, we cannot deny that in the development of science theories supersede one another in attaining ever greater explanatory power.15 As noted before, however, the power has not expanded to cover its own history and character.
The result of the history of scientific progress does not explain itself in the deductive-nomological sense in which we have taken “explanation” so far. But the history does exhibit a pattern which can be pointed out. Let us concentrate on one feature of this pattern and point it out very tentatively and briefly. The early scientific theories of the Western world had both world-articulating and world-explaining significance. To articulate something, i.e., to outline and highlight the crucial features of something is also a kind of explanation. It is the kind of explanation that can satisfy the request for an explanation of a concrete thing or event. I will call it deictic explanation to distinguish it from deductive-nomological or subsumptive explanation. Aristotle’s theories were explanatory in both senses. His physics and astronomy contained laws that permitted deductive-nomological or subsumptive explanations.16 But these laws were moored in the singular structure of the cosmos articulated and pointed out in Aristotle’s theory or vision of the world. The articulated world order of Aristotelian physics and astronomy is more or less of one piece with the world of Aristotelian metaphysics, ethics, and all his other disciplines. In this world order, everything had its place and rank. The movements or changes of things could be predicted on the basis of laws which reflected the privileged dimensions of the world and the rank of things. The Aristotelian laws were of limited explanatory power in that each held only for a small class of phenomena (e.g., for sublunar horizontal motion), in that they yielded only rough or relative predictions, and in that they were inconsistent with one another.