Hypotheses versus theories
Peter Anstey writes…
Chapter 5 of William Poole’s The World Makers (Peter Lang, 2010) opens with a very interesting epigraph from the Cambridge antiquarian Thomas Baker’s Reflections on Learning (1699):
- But we have been taught to distinguish betwixt Hypotheses and Theories, the latter of which are shrew’d things, as being built upon Observations in Nature, whereas hypotheses may be only Chymaeras: I should be glad to see that Theory, that is built upon such Observations … (p. 82)
While Poole doesn’t mention the connection, this distinction almost certainly derives from William Wotton’s precursor to Baker’s book, namely, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (London, 1694). There, Wotton claims:
- In judging of Modern Discoveries, one is nicely to distinguish between Hypothesis and Theory. (p. 235) … And therefore, that it may not be thought that I mistake every plausible Notion of a witty Philosopher for a new Discovery of Nature, I must desire that my former Distinction between Hypotheses and Theories may be remembered. I do not here reckon the several Hypotheses of Des Cartes, Gassendi, or Hobbes, as Acquisitions to real Knowledge, since they may only be Chimaera’s and amusing Notions, fit to entertain working Heads. I only alledge such Doctrines as are raised upon faithful Experiments, and nice Observations; and such Consequences as are the immediate Results of, and manifest Corollaries drawn from, these Experiments and Observations: Which is what is commonly meant by Theories. (p. 244)
This hypothesis–theory distinction seems to be of Wotton’s own making. It is an effective means of dealing with the problem of the utility of hypotheses in a climate in which the notion of hypothesis was, to say the least, on the nose. Wotton spouts the standard anti-hypothetical rhetoric – the hypotheses of Descartes and others are mere chimeras – but he is not insensitive to the fact that experiments and observations on their own are not sufficient for the advancing of true explanations.
Wotton was not an experimental philosopher. Rather, his Reflections was written as a defence of modern learning, and, in particular, the experimental philosophy, in the battle of the books. His comments and those of Baker, are therefore, indicative of the reach of the methodological stance of experimental philosophy beyond the writings of natural philosophers themselves.
The origins of the modern meaning of ‘empiricism’
Peter Anstey writes…
It is often supposed that the term ‘empiricism’ in its Kantian sense would have been entirely foreign to philosophers of the early modern period. For, throughout the seventeenth century the term ‘empiric’ had pejorative connotations. When used in medical contexts it normally referred to quacks: medical practitioners who are untutored, but who have pretentions to therapeutic medicine on the basis of experience alone. By extension, the term came to mean imposter or charlatan.
Yet when used as a name in the plural, ‘empirici’, it often referred to those ancient physicians who relied on observation over theory in their therapeutic medicine. Needless to say, those physicians in the early modern period who were associated with the experimental philosophy affirmed this emphasis on observation. It is worth inquiring, therefore, as to whether the term ‘empiric’ was ever used in a positive sense and whether physicians were proud to be labeled empirics?
One early use of the term ‘Empericism’ is in the chymical physician George Starkey’s Nature’s Explication (1657). But Starkey uses the term pejoratively in criticizing the Galenists who relied too heavily on theory. He says:
- the Chymistry of the Galenical Tribe is a ridiculous pardy [sic.], and partly dangerous Empericism, in stead of so commendable a Method and Art, as they with confidence and impudence sufficient boast it to be (p. 245)
Here Starkey is inverting the charge normally laid at the feet of the chymical physicians, namely that they were untutored quacks. Starkey implies that the Galenists were untutored in the chymical arts.
Interestingly, however, just over a decade later, the chymical physician George Thomson, when defending the chymical physicians against the charge of being empirics (made by Henry Stubbe), picks up the positive connotation of ‘empirici’ and aligns the chymical physicians, including himself, with empirics in so far as they are the true experimental physicians. In his Misochemias Elenchos or, A Check given to the insolent Garrulity of Henry Stubbe … With an Assertion of Experimental Philosophy (London, 1671), Thomson says the following:
- We shall examine the Original derivation of the word Empiricik, which arises from peirazo vel peirao experior, vel exploro, to try, assay, or prove, to review or find out any thing by diligent searching: so then empericos is but an Experimental Physician, one of a Sect very well allowed of by the Ancients: … who as Celsus delivers hath acquired the knowledge of Physick only by Use and Experiments, so he treats of it, not able to give a Natural Cause thereof. … I wish ye would be so Ingenious as your Tutor, to confess the greatest knowledge ye have obtained in the Iatrical part of late, hath been delivered to you by such Empiricks as ye abusively nominate me (p. 5).
Thomson goes on to liken the chymical physicians to ‘the poor Experimental Chymical Samaritane, carrying some Balsamical Remedy about him, poureth it in with his own fingers, taking care of the Patient to purpose. Such an one I profess my self, but yet not an Empyrick according to H[enry] St[ubbe]’ (p. 6).
Here in a book defending experimental philosophy, just as we find 100 years later in a book from 1771 by the German physician Georg Zimmermann, the term ‘empiric’ is explicitly aligned with the experimental philosophy as applied in physic, that is, therapeutic medicine. This, in turn, is suggestive of the origins of the positive association of ‘empiricism’ with an emphasis on observation. It may also reveal something of the origins of Kant’s use of the terms ‘Empirismus’ and ‘Empiristen’ to refer to those who emphasize the acquisition of knowledge by observation and experiment.
Experimental medicine in mid-17th-century England
Peter Anstey writes …
In my last post I claimed that the London physician Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) faced much opposition during his professional career, and yet his posthumous reputation was that of the experimental physician par excellence. But was Sydenham the first experimental physician, the first English Hippocrates?
This question raises, in turn, the further issue of the extent to which the experimental philosophy, which emerged in England in the late 1650s and early 1660s, influenced English medicine. The hallmarks of Sydenham’s method – at least as championed by John Locke, the Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave and the Italian Giorgio Baglivi – were his commitment to natural histories of disease, his strident opposition to hypotheses and speculation, and his strong emphasis on observation. Interestingly, each of these methodological tenets can be found in the writings of physicians, and especially the chymical physicians (who opposed the Galenists of the College of Physicians), in England from the late 1650s.
Opposition to dogmatism and speculation was focused on the Galenists who, as the polemicist Marchamont Nedham claimed:
- in a manner after their own Phantasie, framed the Art of Physick into a general Method, after the fashion of some Speculative Science; and so by this means, a copious form of Doctrin, specious enough, but fallacious and instable, was built’ (Medela medicinae, London, 1665, p. 238)
By contrast, there was a strong emphasis on observation and experiment amongst the chymical physicians. George Starkey, the American émigré, whose chymical medicine had a profound influence on Boyle, but who died of the plague in 1665, opens his Nature’s Explication (London, 1657, p. 1), which is dedicated to Boyle, with the following claim:
- What profit is there of curious speculations, which doe not lead to real experiments? to what end serves Theorie, if not appplicable unto practice.
In 1665 in his Galeno-Pale, the chymical physician George Thomson entitled his tenth chapter ‘An Expostulation why the Dogmatists will not come to the touchstone of true Experience’. Thomson explicitly identifies himself as an experimental physician in his Misochymias elenchos … with an assertion of experimental philosophy, London, 1671.
Moreover, very early in the life of the Royal Society there were calls for natural histories of disease. Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle both set this as a desideratum for medicine and saw it as part of the broader program of Baconian natural history that the Society was pursuing. And in the 1660s Bacon’s method of natural history was affirmed and practised by physicians of the likes of Timothy Clarke and Daniel Coxe. Clarke had been involved in the exciting blood transfusion experiments of the mid-1660s and Coxe was a chymical physician, who even tried, though without much success, to get Sydenham interested in chymistry.
It is pretty clear then that Sydenham was not the first English physician to adopt and employ the new method of the experimental philosophers. Indeed, from the time that it first emerged, the experimental philosophy was applied in medicine. Why is it then, that Sydenham and not Clarke, Coxe or Thomson is hailed as the English Hippocrates? Part of the answer must lie in the fact that the chymical physicians were decimated by the plague in 1665, for they stayed in London in the belief that they could cure it. Part of the answer also lies in the politics of Restoration medicine and the mixed fortunes of the College of Physicians and its vexed relations with the Royal Society. And yet there must have been other factors involved. I have documented the emergence of Sydenham’s posthumous reputation in ‘The creation of the English Hippocrates’ which appears in Medical History this month. But I am not satisfied that I have a full understanding of the Sydenham phenomenon and I look forward to hearing insights that others might have.
Thomas Sydenham, the experimental physician
Peter Anstey writes…
The London physician Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) is regarded today as one of the greatest physicians of the seventeenth century. He is even claimed to have had an influence on the philosophy of John Locke. But what exactly is the basis of Sydenham’s reputation?
A careful study of the appearance of Sydenham’s name in the medical writings of the latter decades of the seventeenth century and the correspondence of his friends and associates reveals that during his professional years he faced constant opposition and criticism. Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, said of him in a letter to Robert Boyle (24 December 1667): ‘with so mean and un-moral a Spirit I can not well associate’. Sydenham was never to become a Fellow of the Royal Society or of the College of Physicians.
However, his posthumous reputation is markedly different. After his death, Sydenham was praised for three things: his commitment to natural histories of disease; his decrying of hypotheses and speculation; and his Hippocratic emphasis on observation. Interestingly, these are the hallmarks of the experimental philosophy. Witness, for example, what Locke says of him in a letter to Thomas Molyneux of 1 November 1692:
- I hope the age has many who will follow his example, and by the way of accurate practical observation, as he has so happily begun, enlarge the history of diseases, and improve the art of physick, and not by speculative hypotheses fill the world with useless, tho’ pleasing visions.
By the early eighteenth century Sydenham’s name could hardly be mentioned without effusive praise, such as that found in George Sewell’s ode to Sir Richard Blackmore:
- Too long have we deplor’d the Physick State, …
Then vain Hypothesis, the Charm of Youth,
Oppose’d her Idol Altars to the Truth: …
Sydenham, at length, a mighty Genius, came,
Who founded Medicine on a nobler Frame,
Who studied Nature thro’, and Nature’s Laws,
Nor blindly puzzled for the peccant Cause.
Father of Physick He—Immortal Name!
Who leaves the Grecian [Hippocrates] but a second Fame:
Sing forth, ye Muses, in sublimer Strains
A new Hippocrates in Britain reigns.
These comments are of the most general nature. There is nothing about the actual content of Sydenham’s medical theories or therapeutics, which were so harshly criticized while he was alive. It is all about his methodology and it is cashed out in terms of the experimental philosophy.
Thomas Sydenham, by a remarkable change in fortunes, came to be regarded as the archetypal experimental physician largely thanks to his posthumous promoters such as John Locke. Sydenham, for better or for worse, was the experimental physician that the promoters of the experimental philosophy had to have.
A new Hume find
Peter Anstey writes…
While the ‘Experimental Philosophy: Old and New’ exhibition was under construction, the Special Collections Librarian at Otago, Dr Donald Kerr, happened to notice that the copy of George Berkeley’s An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (2nd edn, 1709) that we were about to display, had the bookplate of David Hume Esquire. It has long been known that this book was in the library of the philosopher David Hume’s nephew Baron David Hume, but until now its whereabouts have been unknown. We are very pleased to announce, therefore, that it is in the Hewitson Library of Knox College at the University of Otago, New Zealand (for full bibliographic details see the online exhibition).
The question naturally arises: did the book belong to the philosopher or the Baron? What complicates matters is that David Hume the philosopher left his library to his nephew of the same name and that the latter also used a David Hume bookplate.
Now the David Hume bookplate exists in two states, A and B. They are easily distinguished because State A has a more elongated calligraphic hood on the second stem of the letter ‘H’ than that of State B. Brian Hillyard and David Fate Norton have pointed out (The Book Collector, 40 [1991], 539–45) that all of the thirteen items that they have examined with State A are on laid paper and are in books that predate the death of David Hume the philosopher. This is not the case for books bearing the State B bookplate. They propose the plausible hypothesis that all books bearing the bookplate in State A belonged to Hume the philosopher. Happily, we can report that the bookplate that here at Otago is State A on laid paper. It is almost certain, therefore, that this copy of George Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision belonged to the philosopher David Hume.
The provenance of the book provides important additional evidence that Hume was familiar with Berkeley’s writings, something that was famously denied by the historian of philosophy Richard Popkin in 1959. Popkin claimed that ‘there is no actual evidence that Hume was seriously concerned about Berkeley’s views’. He was subsequently proven wrong and retracted his claim. However, until now there has been no concrete evidence that Hume owned a copy of a work by Berkeley, let alone one as important as the New Theory of Vision.
This volume came into the possession of the Hewitson Library in 1948. Its title page bears a stamp from the ‘Presbyterian Church of Otago & Southland Theological Library, Dunedin’. So far attempts to ascertain which other books were in this theological library and when and how it arrived in New Zealand have proven fruitless. (Though the copy of William Whiston’s A New Theory of the Earth, 1722 on display bears the same stamp.) If any reader can supply further leads on these matters we would be most grateful. Meanwhile please take time to examine the images of the bookplate and title page, which are included in our online exhibition available here.
Early modern x-phi: a genre free zone
Peter Anstey writes…
One feature of early modern experimental philosophy that has been brought home to us as we have prepared the exhibition entitled ‘Experimental Philosophy: Old and New’ (soon to appear online) is the broad range of disciplinary domains in which the experimental philosophy was applied in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of the works on display are books from what we now call the history of science, some are works in the history of medicine, some are works of literature, others are works in moral philosophy, and yet they all have the unifying thread of being related in some way to the experimental philosophy.
Two lessons can be drawn from this. First – and this is a simple point that may not be immediately obvious – there is no distinct genre of experimental philosophical writing. Senac’s Treatise on the Structure of the Heart is just as much a work of experimental philosophy as Newton’s Principia or Hume’s Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. To be sure, if one turns to the works from the 1660s to the 1690s written after the method of Baconian natural history, one can find a fairly well-defined genre. But, as we have already argued on this blog, this approach to the experimental philosophy was short-lived and by no means exhausts the works from those decades that employed the new experimental method.
Second, disciplinary boundaries in the 17th and 18th centuries were quite different from those of today. The experimental philosophy emerged in natural philosophy in the 1650s and early 1660s and was quickly applied to medicine, which was widely regarded as continuous with natural philosophy. By the 1670s it was being applied to the study of the understanding in France by Jean-Baptiste du Hamel and later by John Locke. Then from the 1720s and ’30s it began to be applied in moral philosophy and aesthetics. But the salient point here is that in the early modern period there was no clear demarcation between natural philosophy and philosophy as there is today between science and philosophy. Thus Robert Boyle was called ‘the English Philosopher’ and yet today he is remembered as a great scientist. This is one of the most important differences between early modern x-phi and the contemporary phenomenon: early modern x-phi was endorsed and applied across a broad range of disciplines, whereas contemporary x-phi is a methodological stance within philosophy itself.
What is it then that makes an early modern book a work of experimental philosophy? There are at least three qualities each of which is sufficient to qualify a book as a work of experimental philosophy:
- an explicit endorsement of the experimental philosophy and its salient doctrines (such as an emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge by observation and experiment, opposition to speculative philosophy);
- an explicit application of the general method of the experimental philosophy;
- acknowledgment by others that a book is a work of experimental philosophy.
Now, some of the books in the exhibition are precursors to the emergence of the experimental philosophy (such as Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum). Some of them are comments on the experimental philosophy by sympathetic observers (Sprat’s History of the Royal Society), and others poke fun at the new experimental approach (Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels). But this still leaves a large number of very diverse works, which qualify as works of experimental philosophy. Early modern x-phi is a genre free zone.
Anik Waldow on ‘Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and the experimental philosophy’
Anik Waldow writes …
Peter Anstey’s essay “Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and the experimental philosophy” sets out to confirm his claim that the distinction between experimental philosophy and speculative philosophy “provided the dominant terms of reference for early modern philosophy before Kant” (p.1) by examining the Preliminary Discourse of the Encyclopédie. Anstey comes to the conclusion that d’Alembert, who identified metaphysical speculation as the reason why experimental science had “hardly progressed” (p.3), was highly influenced by Locke and clearly reflected Newton’s anti-hypothetical stance.
The paper contains two major lines of argument, which are interconnected but possess slightly different focuses. The first is concerned with the correction of our understanding of particular philosophers and their commitment to the experimental tradition of Locke, Boyle and Newton. The second intends to alter the way we approach the history of philosophy. In this context Peter’s discussion of d’Alembert amounts to a defense of a new conceptual scheme that ought to replace the rationalist/empiricist distinction, thus enabling us to correct our knowledge of early modern philosophy in general. I will merely focus here on the first of these two points, leaving my worries concerning Anstey’s suggestion that Newton’s own experimental practice is able to clearly demarcate the line between experimental and speculative natural philosophy for another occasion.
Much of Anstey’s essay hinges on the claim that d’Alembert’s own rational mechanics is not hostile to experimentalism, but “an extreme application of the new Newtonian mathematical method that came to predominate the manner in which the experimental philosophy was understood in the mid-eighteenth century.” (p. 12) Rational mechanics is a discipline committed to an a priori methodology that seems to be diametrically opposed to the inductive practice of the experimenter and her strict quantitative treatment of observable phenomena. And even though one may argue that experiments are in some restricted sense relevant to rational mechanics, it is clear that this discipline is not committed to the kind of “systematic collection of experiments and observations” (Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, trans and intro. Richard N. Schwab, Chicago,1995, p.24) that d’Alembert regards as the defining feature of experimental physics. To identify d’Alembert as a defender of experimentalism therefore requires Anstey to show that there is no contradiction involved in practising rational mechanics, on the one hand, and defending Lockean experimentalism, on the other.
Anstey’s argument is convincing as long as natural philosophy is treated as a whole that is able to integrate various methodologies. In this form the argument makes a good case against the rigid dichotomies that the rationalist/empiricist distinction introduces, because it shows that we need not endorse what I call an ‘either-or conception’ of experimentalism: either we are experimenters and reject rational mechanics as a speculative discipline because of its detachment from observable phenomena; or we conceive of natural philosophy as a broadly mathematical enterprise and attack experimentalism for its lack of scientific rigour.
Having said that, however, I should like to raise the following question. How well supported is Anstey’s claim that d’Alembert believed that rational mechanics, and in particular demonstrative reasoning, was not merely compatible with experimentalism, but an integral part of it? The reason I ask this question is that we must distinguish between two positions: the first accepts demonstrative mathematics as a methodology in an area of natural philosophy that, strictly speaking, does not qualify as experimental in itself; the second endorses the claim that all natural philosophy ought to be experimental. Hence, the first position regards experimentalism as a specific branch of natural philosophy, while the second takes the whole of natural philosophy to be committed to the tenets of experimentalism.
By aligning d’Alembert’s own methodology with Newton’s mathematized experimentalism, Anstey suggests that d’Alembert was a proponent of the second position. However, I think that d’Alembert’s conception of rational mechanics as the queen among the various natural philosophical disciplines reveals him to be more inclined to the first position. In thinking of rational mechanics as taking the lead in the generation of natural philosophical knowledge, d’Alembert turns experimentalism (conceived as the systematic collection of experiments and observations) into no more than a useful addition to a natural philosophical practice firmly rested on a priori reasoning. Experimentalism is here appreciated only in so far as it is able to generate solutions to problems where rational mechanics can advance no further. Or slightly differently put, experimentalism is acknowledged for its usefulness, but far from being regarded as the discipline that gives the whole of natural philosophy its tone and direction.
In short, Anstey’s paper may have shown that d’Alembert sympathized with Lockean experimentalism. However, more needs to be said in order to clarify how it is possible to think of rational mechanics as a discipline that is, in and of itself, experimental in spirit. Otherwise it is hard to see why we should agree with Anstey’s claim that d’Alembert thought of the whole of natural philosophy as an essentially experimental discipline.
Gideon Manning on the Origins of the Experimental/Speculative Distinction
Gideon Manning writes…
Having commented on Peter Anstey’s “The Origins of the Experimental-Speculative Distinction” at the recent symposium in Otago, I am pleased to share a much abbreviated and slightly revised version of my comments. I limit myself here to making two points. First, there is reason to believe the Experimental-Speculative Distinction (ESD) is not all it is cracked up to be. Second, the best place to look for what Peter has called the “pre-history” of ESD might be in the Scholastic distinction and distinct practice of general as opposed to particular physics.
1. Part of what motivates Peter’s interest in the Experimental-Speculative Distinction (ESD) is his belief that in just about every way it is superior to the post-Kantian Rationalism-Empiricism Distinction (RED). I agree that RED is no good – it’s an idealization and it’s imposed after the fact to tell a self-affirming story about how philosophy was waiting for Kant to come along. In addition, RED ignores all sorts of interesting characters in early modern philosophy (like Boyle) and further it ignores the shared doctrines between members of the supposedly opposed camps. Without wanting to defend RED, however, I do want to raise a red flag about ESD’s advantages. With the sole exception that the terms employed in ESD were used by many of the actors in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, I see the same worries Peter identifies with RED coming up for ESD. Specifically, where RED over emphasizes epistemology ESD over emphasizes methodology; where RED admits to too many significations of “empiricism” and “rationalism” ESD admits to too many significations of “experiment” and “experimental”; where RED leaves a demarcation problem with figures like Boyle – and I would add Hobbes and Berkeley – ESD leaves a demarcation problem with figures like Huygens and Descartes. Put succinctly, the fact that ESD is an actor’s distinction does not mean it is not an idealization imposed to tell a self-affirming story.
2. In passing, Peter notes that Niccolò Cabeo’s commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology (1646) uses the phrase “experimental philosophy / experimentalis philosophia”. I urge him to pursue this lead further. For, there was a Scholastic distinction between two approaches to natural philosophy found in Aristotle’s corpus: physica generalis and physica particularis. Physica generalis is exemplified by Aristotle’s Physics, where he defines the object of natural philosophy, notes the conditions for the possibility of any kind of motion or change, and identifies matter, form, privation and the four causes as the principles of nature. Physica particularis is exemplified by On Generation and Corruption and the fourth book of the Meteorology, where Aristotle defines the object of natural philosophy as corpus potentia sensibile, considers what the object of sense-perception is, and concludes that touch is the most fundamental of all the senses. Physica generalis is a metaphysical and theoretical or speculative approach to the study of nature since it is based on the conceptual analysis of the concept of a natural body. Physica particularis is an experimental approach to nature since it is based on an empirical analysis of what is or seems to be given in sense-perception, as Cabeo observed. Put succinctly, physica particularis was unquestionably experimental with its own experimental philosophy, so if the story of the “new science” and ESD represent a move away from the general to the particular and toward experimentation, we must look closely at physica particularis.
The case of Daniel Sennert further supports this suggestion. Sennert was aware of the two approaches to natural philosophy in Aristotle’s corpus and as he matured he grew, in Bill Newman’s words, “increasingly impatient with the traditional scholastic focus on the more theoretical side of Aristotle’s thought”. In fact, in Sennert’s late Hypomnemata physica (1636) he complains about traditional scholastic practice:
- I consider the chief cause of the imperfection of physics to be the fact that in previous centuries those who considered themselves particularly subtle consumed the greatest part of their life in those very general questions about the prime matter, form, privation, motion, and the like, and wore out their time in those disputations repeated so many times ad nauseam. Indeed they never considered the specifics from whose observation their principles should have been derived, or those specifics which should have provided the foundations of medicine and other disciplines…. And this to such a degree that so many wagon-fulls, practically, of commentaries on Aristotle’s books of general physics have been born, stuffed for the greatest part with questions that are not physical, but rather metaphysical, and often empty speculations. But very few are found who would read or comment on Aristotle’s Meteorology, Historia animalium, De partibus animalium, De generatione animalium, and De plantis. (Newman’s translation)
Sennert’s impatience with contemporary Aristotelians (and even his own earlier Aristotelianism) was tied to their preference for the general over the particular. In focusing on ESD and its history, I think Peter and his group are reminding us what Sennert and his followers knew; that physica particularis was where the action was in the early modern period.
Gleanings from the symposium
Peter Anstey writes…
Two weeks ago about a dozen scholars assembled in Dunedin to discuss the nature and role of the distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy in early modern thought. The focus of our attention was a group of six pre-circulated papers on topics ranging from the origins of the experimental/speculative distinction (ESD) in the early seventeenth century to the emergence of the rationalism/empiricism distinction (RED) in the late eighteenth century. Two important issues arose that I would like to report on here. Both of them raise potential problems for the ESD. Let us examine them in turn.
The first is the issue of demarcation: just how different is the ESD from the RED? When push comes to shove, doesn’t the experimental philosophy really just collapse into empiricism? And isn’t speculative philosophy merely a rebranding of rationalism? Furthermore, given that the RED is so entrenched in early modern scholarship and philosophical pedagogy, there really must be some significant advantages that accrue to the ESD before philosophers of today abandon the RED in favour of the ESD.
The second issue is closely related to the first. It is the problem of classification: does the ESD really do a better job at classifying early modern philosophers than the RED? Is it not the case that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz end up being speculative philosophers and Locke, Berkeley and Hume are experimental philosophers? If the ESD categorises along the same fault-line as the RED what advantages accrue to the ESD on the issue of classification?
It is not enough to respond to these two issues by claiming that the great advantage of the ESD is that it is an actors’ category, that is, it is the very distinction that the early moderns themselves used. For, it may be that, in spite of its historical relevance, the RED has more explanatory power and pedagogical utility than the actors’ categories. What are needed are some concrete answers to the issues of demarcation and classification. Happily, I believe that such answers are not too difficult to find.
In response to the issue of demarcation, it is important to note that the early moderns developed the ESD as a means of characterising two very different methodologies in the acquisition of knowledge of nature. (Later it came to have wider application than natural philosophy and medicine, but we will ignore that development here.) As such, it was concerned with the nature and role of experiment, of instruments, of hypotheses, of demonstrative reasoning, and of the faculties of the mind, in the acquisition of knowledge of nature. The RED, by contrast, when it is given a clear definition, is almost always presented as a distinction between two very different theories of knowledge: rationalism being the acceptance of both innate ideas (and principles) and the efficacy of demonstrative reasoning based upon them, independent of experience; empiricism being the denial of innate ideas and the claim that all knowledge of the natural world derives from experience.
Therefore, the ESD encompasses some of the features of the RED, such as the role of demonstrative reasoning and the senses, but it embraces much more. As a result it has greater explanatory range. In particular, it enables us to account for the views of many who were not strictly philosophers (in the modern sense of the word) because it was developed in a period when disciplinary boundaries were quite different from today. For example, it enables us to give a clear and persuasive explanation of Newton’s attitude to hypotheses. It also enables us to explain why Thomas Sydenham was regarded as the archetypal Hippocratic physician. He was not a philosopher and certainly did not have a theory of knowledge, but he did promote most of the salient doctrines of the experimental philosophy in the late seventeenth century, such as decrying hypotheses and promoting natural histories of disease.
In response to the issue of classification, it is important to stress that the ESD was not developed with a view to classifying philosophers, natural philosophers or physicians, so it should not worry us if a philosopher does not fit into either category. It is also important to stress that so successful was the experimental philosophy that by the early eighteenth century the speculative philosopher became something of a straw man. Nevertheless, significant advantages do accrue to the ESD on the question of classification. First, some experimental philosophers were partial to innate ideas. One example is Robert Boyle, yet no one would want to classify him as a rationalist. Second, Thomas Hobbes has proven notoriously difficult to classify as either a rationalist or an empiricist. But given that he was openly opposed to the experimental philosophy, it is both natural and historically accurate to classify him as a speculative philosopher.
I conclude that a careful consideration of both the demarcation problem and the classification problem provides further reasons for accepting the superiority of the ESD. But not all are convinced. Stay tuned for Gideon Manning’s post on Monday in which he expresses reservations about some aspects of our project.
Lost in translation
Peter Anstey writes…
Sometimes our historiographical categories can so dominate the way we approach the texts of great dead philosophers that we project them onto the texts themselves. Unhappily this is all too common among historians of early modern philosophy who take as their terms of reference the distinction between rationalism and empiricism.
For example, Stephen Priest, in The British Empiricists (2nd ed. 2006, p. 8) claims:
- Although historians of philosophy claim that Kant invented the empiricist/rationalist distinction and retrospectively imposed it on his seventeenth- and eighteenth-century predecessors, this is a historical mistake. The distinction was explicitly drawn using the words “empiricists” and “rationalists” at least as early as 1607, when the British empiricist Francis Bacon (1561–1626) wrote: “Empiricists are like ants; they collect and put to use; but rationalists are like spiders; they spin threads out of themselves” and:
Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance.
[…] Leaving aside the use of the words “rationalism” and “empiricism” (or similar) the distinction between the two kinds of philosophy is as old as philosophy itself. It is true that many rationalist and empiricists do not describe themselves as rationalists or empiricists but that does not matter. Calling oneself “x” is neither necessary nor sufficient for being x.
However, a careful reading of Bacon’s Latin reveals that he is not using the Latin equivalents of ‘empiricists’ and ‘rationalists’, but rather empirici and rationales, terms that have quite different meanings in Bacon. For Bacon, the empirici are those who focus too much on observation and the works of their hands (New Organon, I, 117). Quacks who prescribe chemical remedies without any knowledge of medical theory are commonly called empirici and the term is usually a pejorative in the early seventeenth century (see De augmentis scientiarum, Bk IV, chapter 2). By contrast rationales are those who ‘wrench things various and commonplace from experience… and leave the rest to meditation and intellectual agitation’ (New Organon, I, 62).
Another example of projecting the rationalism/empiricism distinction onto a text is found in the recent English edition of Diderot’s Pensées sur l’interpretation de la nature. Diderot’s work contains a very interesting discussion of philosophical methodology. Article XXIII says,
- Nous avons distingué deux sortes de philosophies, l’expérimentale et la rationnelle.
The translation in the Clinamen Press (1999, p. 44) edition reads:
- We have identified two types of philosophy – one is empirical and the other rationalist.
But Diderot doesn’t contrast empirical with rationalist. Rather the contrast is between experimental philosophy (la philosophie expérimentale) and rational and the context makes it clear that rationnelle here is used to refer to what the English called speculative philosophers. The terminology and the content of Diderot’s discussion makes far more sense when read in the light of the experimental/speculative distinction. Yet this is lost in the English translation.
Having pointed out two examples of reading the traditional historiography into the texts themselves, I should like to end with a note of caution. Those of us who regard the experimental/speculative distinction as having more explanatory value than the traditional post-Kantian terms of reference also need to be aware that we too can fall into the same trap of reading the ESD into the texts under study and not allow the texts to speak for themselves.
