Abstract
This essay explores a familiar concept from the philosophy of science—underdetermination—in an unfamiliar context: explanation. Underdetermination is usually deployed in the realism debate, or in discussions of theory confirmation. Here, instead, I am concerned with how underdetermination, interpreted as the necessity of background assumptions, can help us understand a specific historical case involving a dispute about explanatory success. In particular, I look at the work of William Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood, and his rejection of materialist modes of explanation in the course of his De generatione animalium (1651). I articulate the nature of three background assumptions at work here, which affect Harvey’s conception of: (1) how to explain; (2) what to explain; and (3) the larger explanatory stakes.
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Notes
- 1.
The following articles are a small selection of those that have been most important in my own understanding of the debate: Bogen, James and James Woodward (1988), “Saving the Phenomena,” The Philosophical Review, 97(3): 303–351; Doppelt, Gerald (2007), “The Value Ladeness of Scientific Knowledge,” In: Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions. Eds. Harold Kincaid, John Dupré, and Alison Wylie. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Kincaid, Harold (2007), “Contextualist Morals and Science,” In: Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions; Magnus, P.D. (2005a), “Hormone Research as an exemplar of underdetermination,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 36: 559–567; Magnus, P.D. (2005b). “Reckoning the shape of everything: Underdetermination and cosmotopology,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56(3): 541–557; Okasha, Samir (2000), “Underdetermination and the Strong Programme.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 14(3): 283–297); Okasha, Samir (1997), “Laudan and Leplin on Empirical Equivalence,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 48: 251–256; Roush, Sherrilyn (2007), “Constructive Empiricism and the Role of Social Values in Science,” In: Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions; and Ruphy, Stéphanie (2006), “Empiricism all the way down”: a defense of the value-neutrality of science in response to Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism,” Perspectives on Science, 14 (2): 189–214.
- 2.
In fact, Peter would (and did) use a lot more expletives when attacking my antiquarianism; he was never one to bandy about with words, and I have always deeply appreciated (and benefited from) his plainspoken honesty.
- 3.
This is not to say that Peter or I are Lakatosians. Peter’s allegiance is, in fact, hard to pin down, if he even has one, if only because he has read—and learned from—just about everyone writing on whatever issue is under discussion, from wine to Wittgenstein. I recall the intimidatingly high stacks of complete books Peter had stacked up around his house with both fondness and envy at his ability to absorb books as if through osmosis.
- 4.
One exception is Ruphy 2006.
- 5.
Kincaid 2007, 222.
- 6.
- 7.
Longino 1990, 58.
- 8.
Feyerabend, P.K. (1965), “On the ‘Meaning’ of Scientific Terms,” The Journal of Philosophy, 62.10: 266–274.
- 9.
This goes back to Aristotle’s idea of an incomplete syllogism, but more recently Alan Gross has used this notion of enthymematic reasoning in his analyses of public science and science policy; see: Gross, A. G. (1994a), “Is a rhetoric of science policy possible?” Social Epistemology 8: 273–80, and Gross, A. G. (1994b), “The roles of rhetoric in the public understanding of science,” Public Understanding of Science 3: 3–23.
- 10.
Whitehead, A.N. (1953), Science and the Modern World, New York: The Free Press, 17. I discuss Kuhn in the conclusion. Peter Dear’s notion of intelligibility is very close to the picture I lay out here; see: Dear, Peter (2008), The intelligibility of nature: How science makes sense of the world, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- 11.
The following example is inspired by one in Longino 1990.
- 12.
Don’t worry, I missed them; I’m an excellent driver.
- 13.
Longino 1990, 43.
- 14.
This is not to claim, however, that all background assumptions are equal or are needed to the same extent; nor that assumptions are themselves immune to confirmation or are always non-empirical; nor is it to claim that background assumptions do not include data themselves, or rather, interpreted data.
- 15.
Of course, theories are meant to explain all possible relevant data and observations, but this of course includes whatever data or observations were used in the construction or confirmation of that theory.
- 16.
For some rumination on the latter, however, see: McIntyre, L. C. (2003). “Taking underdetermination seriously.” SATS: Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 4(1), 59–72.
- 17.
This may not sound believable, but as an undergraduate at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, I learned that streaking could be a favored hobby for many, and in every season. I eventually stopped asking why some naked individual was jogging (occasionally even walking) across campus.
- 18.
Harvey, William 1628, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, Frankfurt.
- 19.
Harvey, William 1651, Exercitationes de generatione animalium, London.
- 20.
See especially: Lennox, James 2006, “The Comparative Study of Animal Development: William Harvey’s Aristotelianism,” In: The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, Ed. J.E.H. Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Although Roger French discusses it in his work on Harvey, he has no chapter on it, unlike De motu cordis and even one on Harvey’s lecture notes, the Prelectiones anatomie universalis. Neither the work on generation itself nor the topic of ‘generation’ appears in the index; see French’s 1994 William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and Harvey, William 1616 [1964], Prelectiones anatomie universalis, Ed. Gweneth Whitteridge, London: Royal College of Physicians.
- 21.
Lennox 2006.
- 22.
At least in the traditional sense of ‘mechanical philosopher’. For a much better way of thinking through issues of mechanism in the context of early modern medicine in general and Harvey in particular, see: Distelzweig, Peter (2016), “‘Mechanics’ and Mechanism in William Harvey’s Anatomy: Varieties and Limits,” In: Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, Eds. Peter Distelzweig, Benjamin Goldberg, and Evan Ragland, Dordrecht: Springer.
- 23.
C.f. Harvey 1651, Ex.45 and 72.
- 24.
Harvey 1651, Ex. 11, 28–29.
- 25.
Also note that I do not explicitly argue for underdetermination in this case, instead I assume that underdetermination is a fact about scientific reasoning.
- 26.
Indeed, recent historiography has demonstrated the extent to which the debate about living things and their proper mode of study and explanation reveals fault lines even within the camp of materialist, mechanical philosophers. For instance, see: Easton, Patricia and Melissa Gholamnejad (2016), “Louis de la Forge and the Development of Cartesian Medical Philosophy,” In: Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, Eds. Peter Distelzweig, Benjamin Goldberg, and Evan Ragland, Dordrecht: Springer.
- 27.
Though, it must be said, a decidedly Renaissance and eclectic version of Aristotelianism.
- 28.
While ‘reduction’ is not an actor’s category, I employ it because it connects with some of the literature on Aristotle’s ideas about explanation, noted below. I use it to mean something like ‘explanations appealing to matter/elements alone.’
- 29.
Wolfe, Charles T. (2014), “Materialism,” In: The Routledge Companion to 18th Century Philosophy, Ed. Aaron Garrett, Routledge: New York.
- 30.
Harvey, in the Preface to the De generatione, calls Aristotle his ‘General’ and Fabricius his ‘guide.’
- 31.
Goldberg, Benjamin (2013), “A Dark Business, full of shadows: analogy and theology in William Harvey,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44: 419–432.
- 32.
Individuation is, as ever, a tough problem. I would be equally happy to say this is one complex background assumption, one that is based in ideas about teleology, but it is easier to tease out important philosophical threads if we separate it into these three distinct parts.
- 33.
- 34.
My account here follows Allan Gotthelf’s classic paper (1987), “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” In: Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, Eds. Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See especially: 212–214.
- 35.
Gotthelf 1987, 213.
- 36.
- 37.
Harvey 1651, Ex.45, 123.
- 38.
Glanvill, Joseph 1676, Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion, London. In his 1665, Scepsis Scientifica; or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science: in an Essay on the Vanity of Dogmatizing and Confident Opinion, London (of which the Essays are an abbreviated form), Glanvill makes a similar comment, and writes that such processes as those which show uniformity and conformity must be, “... regulated by the immediate efficiency of some knowing agent: which whether it be seminal Forms, according to the Platonic Principles, or whatever else we please to suppose; the manner of its working is to us unknown” (39–40).
- 39.
Des Chene, Dennis 2003, “Life after Descartes: Régis on Generation,” Perspectives on Science 11(4): 410–420.
- 40.
- 41.
The importance of teleology is apparent from Jacques Roger (1963), Les Sciences de la vie dans le pensée françaese du XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Armand Colin. For discussion of these two modes of teleology, see: Lennox, James (1985), “Plato’s unnatural teleology,” Platonic investigations, Ed. Dominic O’Meara, Washington: Catholic University of America: 195–218.
- 42.
Harvey’s conception of anatomical science and the importance of teleology in much more detail in Goldberg (Forthcoming), “Anatomy as a Science of Teleology: The Case of William Harvey,” In: Interpretations of Life in Heaven and Earth, Ed. Hiro Hirai, Dordrecht: Springer. See also French 1994.
- 43.
E.g., Harvey 1616 [1964]), 22.
- 44.
Harvey 1616, 22. See also: Goldberg (forthcoming), “William Harvey on Anatomy and Experience,” Perspectives on Science 24:3.
- 45.
Haller, A von, 1757–1766. Elementa physiologiae corporis humani, Vol.1: Fibra, Vasa, Circuitus sanguinis, Cor. Lausane, iii. See also Andrew Cunningham (2002), “The pen and the sword: recovering the disciplinary identity of physiology and anatomy before 1800 I: Old physiology—the pen,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and the Biomedical Sciences, 33.4: 631–665. Note Harvey uses ‘anatomy’ and Haller ‘physiology’—this is an important difference, but here is not the place to discuss it. See also: Cunningham’s (2003), “The pen and the sword: recovering the disciplinary identity of physiology and anatomy before 1800: II: Old anatomy—the sword,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 34(1), 51–76.
- 46.
Another, perhaps more interesting way of putting this would be to understand background assumptions as not just picking out what needs to be explained, but as actually constructing the image we have of the phenomena tout court, following along the lines of Bogen and Woodward 1998.
- 47.
In the quoted passage, Harvey refers variously to the ‘divine Agent,’ the ‘deity of Nature,’ and the ‘divine Architect.’ Throughout the De generatione, he refers to the Creator using a variety of (presumably) interchangeable terms.
- 48.
See the last section of Goldberg (2013), where I connect his use of analogy to his theological views.
- 49.
Lennox, James (1983), “Robert Boyle’s defense of teleological inference in experimental science,” Isis 74(1), 38–52.
- 50.
Descartes’ relation to teleology is the matter of some debate; see especially (and references therein): Simmons, Alison J. (2001), “Sensible ends: Latent teleology in Descartes’ account of sensation.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001): 49–75; Chapter 8 of Detlefsen, Karen (2013), Descartes’ Meditations: a critical guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and Distelzweig, Peter (2015), “The Uses of Usus and the Function of Functio: Teleology and its Limits in Descartes’ Physiology,” Journal of the History of Philosophy. See also Manning, Gideon (2013), Descartes’ healthy machines and the human exception, Leiden: Springer.
- 51.
Harvey 1651, Ex.30, 90–91.
- 52.
Harvey 1651, Ex.50, 144.
- 53.
See Goldberg 2013.
- 54.
- 55.
E.g., Ray, John (1714), The Wisdom of God as Manifested in the Works of Creation, London, 45, 75.
- 56.
This is the famous passage where Boyle argues that the background assumption of Design, in particular the design of the valves, was key to Harvey’s project. Boyle, Robert 1688, A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, London: 157–158.
- 57.
Des Chene 2003, 413.
- 58.
Wolfe 2014.
- 59.
Des Chene, Dennis (2005), “Mechanisms of life in the seventeenth century: Borelli, Perrault, Régis.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36.2: 245–260.
- 60.
See the work of Peter Anstey and his students, e.g., Anstey, Peter R. (2005), “Experimental versus speculative natural philosophy,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 19: 215–242; and, Anstey, Peter, and Alberto Vanzo (2012), “The origins of early modern experimental philosophy,” Intellectual History Review 22.4: 499–518.
- 61.
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Goldberg, B. (2017). William Harvey’s Rejection of Materialism: Underdetermination and Explanation in Historical Context. In: Adams, M., Biener, Z., Feest, U., Sullivan, J. (eds) Eppur si muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 81. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52768-0_1
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