Reality 1: Kuhn and Harman

There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle.

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Postscript-1969

First a bit of Thomas Kuhn on two paradigms of dynamics, Newtonian and Einsteinian, and then a bit of Graham Harman on tables.

Newtonian and Einsteinian Dynamics

In one of the later chapters of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn considers the relationship between Newtonian and Einsteinian dynamics (pp. 97-103). The problem arises because, though Einstein’s theory has apparently supplanted Newton’s theory, that theory and its various extensions and elaborations have not been tossed on the dust-heap of history. They remain in daily use by countless engineers and scientists around the world. How can this be so if Einstein’s theory is the more accurate one?

It is not simply that, for a wide range of situations, classical dynamics is sufficiently accurate, though that is the case. It is that for a wide range of situations there is no measurable difference between the classical account and the relativistic account. Perhaps, some have suggested, we can somehow derive the classical account from the relativistic account as a special case so that we really have only one theory, the relativistic theory.

Kuhn shows that this won’t work (pp. 101-102). Yes, we can start with statements of the Einsteinian account and add restrictions so as to cover only the Newtonian cases. While this justifies the continued use of Newtonian laws – Kuhn remarks that “an argument of the same type is used to justify teaching earth-centered astronomy to surveyors” (p. 102) – these derived laws are not, in fact, Newton’s. They don’t have the same form nor do the variables and parameters have the same physical referents. The derivation doesn’t do the required job. The two theories remain distinct. They embody, in Kuhn’s well-known term, different paradigms.

So, for a wide range of situations we seem to be ‘stuck’ with two different valid and attested scientific accounts. This doesn’t present any practical problems. But it seems to present some kind of conceptual problem. Let us, for the sake of argument, say that the problem is a metaphysical one. As such, it requires philosophical consideration.

But of what kind?

Harman on Eddington’s Tables

Ever science reading Kuhn I’d think about that problem from time to time, but to no effect. Mostly I’d just recall Kuhn’s argument, tell myself “how interesting, how strange,” and move on. Then late last year Graham Harman had a post in which he considered a passage from Sir Arthur Eddington:

Because of something I had to write I was going over A.S. Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World (or over the Introduction, anyway, which was the relevant part for my purposes). This Introduction is famous for its discussion of the “two tables”: the scientific table that is mostly empty space and made up of rushing subatomic particles, and the table of everyday life (which Eddington confusingly names the “substantial” table, but never mind that).

I find that I have no sympathy for either of those two tables. The real table is the third table that is neither scientific nor everyday.

Under Eddington’s schema, both tables are dissolved into nearby sets of relations–either into their tiny little components detectable by the sciences, or into their effects on humans.

And that brought Kuhn’s reflections on dynamics to mind. In both cases we have two accounts of the same phenomenon. In Kuhn’s case we have two scientific accounts of the same phenomenon. In Eddington’s case we’ve got the perceptual table and the quantum mechanical table.

Harman proposes that neither the quantum mechanical nor the perceptual table are (ultimately) real but, if I interpret him correctly, they are (equally) manifestations, expressions (realizations?) of a third table, one that is, in a conceptualization Harman has, I believe, from Heidegger, always withdrawing from our awareness, whether that awareness is mediated by our immediate perceptions or by complex and sophisticated scientific instrumentation and theory. Or, in a different formulation, there is only one table, but it is measured, if you will, in two different ways, by our senses (vision, touch, smell, taste, hearing, kinesthesis) and by science.

Provisionally, at least, I find Harman’s proposal satisfying.

And, equally, provisionally, I suggest that we extend it to the matter of Newtonian and Einsteinian dynamics. The Newtonian rocket and the Einsteinian rocket are realizations of the same (withdrawn, real) rocket, not to mention the rocket apparent to our senses. It is that real rocket, presumably, that holds those other rockets together or, if you will, it is what spawns them. Those other rockets arise through relations they have with, as appropriate, human sensory and motor capacities and with scientific instrumentation and abstract conceptualization.

Going back to that pesky Eddingtonian table, I count the one real table (withdrawn) and four manifest (sensuous in Harman’s terms, intentional in more traditional phenomenological terms) tables: 1) sensory-motor, 2) Newtonian, 3) quantum, and 4) Einsteinian.

And so?

Do I believe this? Neither YES nor NO. It’s under consideration.

Finally, consider the second clause of the epigraph from Kuhn: “... the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its ‘real’ counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle.” Ponder the semantic similarity between “illusive” and “withdrawn.” Is Kuhn, in effect, alluding to the notion that the real table is withdrawn?

ADDENDUM 6.13.2012: Found an interesting discussion of Harman's tables over at AGENT SWARM: PLURALIST ONTOLOGY: Let a Thousand Tables Bloom! While you're there take a look around. There's some interesting stuff, including a series of posts on Feyerabend's last interview.