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On the historicity of scientific objects| old_uid | 8732 |
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| title | On the historicity of scientific objects |
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| start_date | 2010/05/19 |
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| schedule | 14h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | The main question I will address in this lecture is whether (and in what sense) scientific objects are historical entities, that is, whether (and in what sense) they change over time. One aspect of the historicity of scientific objects is evident: new objects (e.g., electrons, genes) appear and old objects die out (phlogiston, the ether, etc.). How and why does a new object appear (or pass away)? What exactly comes into (or out of) being in such cases? Furthermore, what happens in between the emergence and disappearance of a scientific object? Does it evolve over time and in what ways?
I will put forward and defend two theses: First, the ontology of science is so rich and variegated that there are no universally valid answers to these questions. A glance at a recent collection on Biographies of Scientific Objects (Daston 2000) would suffice to make my case plausible. How could we give a unified account of objects as diverse as dreams, the ether, and the center of gravity of the earth, to mention just three of the objects studied in the aforementioned collection? The question of the historicity of scientific objects has to be raised and addressed at a local level, the level of particular kinds of objects.
Second, it follows from the first thesis that we need a pluralist account of scientific objects, a pluralist metaphysics if you will, that can do justice to their rich diversity. For instance, consider two kinds of scientific objects: artificially created phenomena in the laboratory and the hidden entities that are postulated to make sense of them. The former often do not exist outside the laboratory (cf. Hacking 1983). Thus, the special conditions that make possible their creation are constitutive of their existence. The latter, on the other hand, are often conceived as natural kinds that pre-existed their detection in the lab and their representation by scientists. To put it in stronger terms, representations of hidden entities often have a built-in presupposition, namely that the entities in question had already been there before they got represented by scientists. Their detection and manipulation in the laboratory are not supposed to be constitutive of their existence. Thus, the ontological status of phenomena differs considerably from that of their hidden causes.
In the rest of the talk I will focus on objects which are supposed to be part of the permanent furniture of the universe. Those objects are not supposed to have a history (e.g., electrons), at least if we take at face value the accepted scientific story about them. I will tackle the questions raised above concerning the birth and historicity of those objects. I will argue that they emerge when various phenomena coalesce as manifestations of a single hidden entity. This happens because the phenomena in question have some, qualitative or quantitative, features in common. Typically, after the postulation of such objects, their representations change over time. Therein lies their historicity. Under certain conditions, however, an evolving representation may still refer to the same "thing". |
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| oncancel | Ajout, |
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| responsibles | Barberousse, Tessier Cardon |
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