{"id":1092,"date":"2011-04-25T13:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-25T01:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/?p=1092"},"modified":"2012-09-25T02:05:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T14:05:36","slug":"should-we-call-newton-a-structural-realist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/should-we-call-newton-a-structural-realist\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we call Newton a ‘Structural Realist’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Walsh writes…<\/strong><\/p>\n

At our symposium<\/a> last week, someone wondered if we can characterise Newton as a \u2018structural realist\u2019.\u00a0 It is certainly anachronistic to attempt to interpret Newton\u2019s epistemic stance in light of the present-day scientific realism debate.\u00a0 But the sin of anachronism may be forgiven, if it advances our understanding.\u00a0 So let us see what advantages this interpretation may provide.<\/p>\n

Briefly, structural realism is the view that epistemically, a scientist should only commit herself to the mathematical or structural content of her theories, and remain sceptical about the unobservable entities posited by those theories.<\/p>\n

To characterise Newton as a structural realist, one might make the following argument:<\/p>\n

    P1.\u00a0Newton is a realist about his theories, but not about his hypotheses.
    \nP2. Newton\u2019s theories make claims about theoretical structures, whereas his hypotheses make claims about unobservable theoretical entities.
    \nC. Therefore, Newton is a realist about theoretical structures, but not about unobservable theoretical entities.<\/ol>\n

    Firstly, consider Newton\u2019s hypothesis\/theory distinction.\u00a0 In a previous post<\/a> I argued that Newton claims that his doctrine of light and colours is a theory, not a hypothesis, for three reasons:<\/p>\n

      T1. It is certainly true, because it is supported by (or deduced<\/em> from) experiment;
      \nT2. It concerns the physical properties<\/em> of light, rather than the nature of light; and
      \nT3. It has testable<\/em> consequences.<\/ol>\n

      In contrast, he attaches no special epistemic merit to his corpuscular hypothesis because:<\/p>\n

        H1. It is not<\/em> certainly true, because it is not <\/em>supported by experiment;
        \nH2. It concerns the nature<\/em> of light; and
        \nH3. It has no<\/em> testable consequences.<\/ol>\n

        T1 and H1 support P1.\u00a0 They tell us that Newton is a realist about theories because they can be shown to be true on the basis of experiment.\u00a0 Moreover, he is not a realist about hypotheses because they cannot <\/em>be shown to be true on the basis of experiment.\u00a0 This highlights an important feature of Newton\u2019s methodology: Newton is only epistemically committed to those things that are demonstrated experimentally.<\/p>\n

        T2 and H2 appear to support P2, but only if the \u2018entity\/structure\u2019 distinction maps onto Newton\u2019s \u2018nature\/physical properties\u2019 distinction.\u00a0 Prima facie<\/em>, it does.\u00a0 While Newton probably wouldn\u2019t have been comfortable with the entity\/structure distinction, the structural realist debate is often framed in terms of the nature\/physical properties distinction.\u00a0 For example, here\u2019s how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/em><\/a> describes the structural realist position:<\/p>\n

          Structural realism is often characterised as the view that scientific theories tell us only about the form or structure of the unobservable world and not about its nature. \u00a0This leaves open the question as to whether the natures of things are posited to be unknowable for some reason or eliminated altogether.<\/ol>\n

          So it looks like the argument for characterising Newton as a structural realist is well-supported by Newton\u2019s distinction between theory and hypothesis.\u00a0 But what do we gain by characterising Newton in this way?<\/p>\n

          Chris Smeenk<\/a> recently pointed out to me in an email that the structural realist label identifies a distinctive feature of Newton\u2019s methodology.\u00a0 Namely, that he is epistemically committed to his abstract mathematical structures.\u00a0 He is not an instrumentalist about his theories, but neither is he a realist about the nature of the phenomena they describe. \u00a0This might shed some light on the optical debate of the early 1670s, for unlike his contemporaries, Newton does not think there is a contradiction in believing that his theory of light is true, while not committing himself to any particular doctrine regarding the nature of light.<\/p>\n

          Is this a large enough pay-off to warrant the offence of anachronism?\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n

          In this brief post, I have only considered Newton\u2019s attitudes to his own theories.\u00a0 There are other questions to be raised in connection with structural realism, for example, is Newton a structural realist about the history of science?\u00a0 In other words, what is Newton\u2019s epistemic commitment to the theories of his predecessors?\u00a0 I shall leave this question for another time.<\/p>\n

          On another note, we were very pleased with how last week\u2019s symposium<\/a> went.\u00a0 We look forward to telling you all about it next Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Kirsten Walsh writes… At our symposium last week, someone wondered if we can characterise Newton as a \u2018structural realist\u2019.\u00a0 It is certainly anachronistic to attempt to interpret Newton\u2019s epistemic stance in light of the present-day scientific realism debate.\u00a0 But the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[274,359,224,450],"class_list":["post-1092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-certainty","tag-hypothesis","tag-newton","tag-structural-realism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}