In defense of convergent realism

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In Defense of Convergent RealismAuthor(s): Clyde L. Hardin and Alexander Rosenberg

Source: Philosophy of Science, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 604-615Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/187168 .

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IN DEFENSE OF CONVERGENT REALISM*

CLYDE L. HARDIN and ALEXANDER ROSENBERGt

Department of PhilosophySyracuse University

Many realists have maintained that the success of scientific theories can be

explained only if they may be regardedas approximately true. Laurens Laudanhas in turn contended that a necessary condition for a theory's being approxi-mately true is that its central terms refer, and since many successful theories ofthe past have employed central terms which we now understandto be non-re-

ferential, realism cannot explain their success. The present paper argues that arealistcan adopta view of reference according to which a theory might plausiblybe said to be approximately true even though its central terms do not refer, oralternatively, he may construe reference in such a way as to assign referenceto a range of successful older theories which includes Laudan's purportedcoun-

terexamples.

1. Approximate Truth and Predictive Success. Scientific realists, ac-

cording to Laurens Laudan (1981), are committed to theses like the fol-

lowing:

R1) Scientific theories (at least in "mature" sciences) are typically ap-

proximatelytrue and more recent theories are closer to the truththanoldertheories in the same domain;

T1) If a theory is approximately true, then it will be explanatorily suc-

cessful;

T2) If a theory is explanatorily successful, then it is probably approxi-

mately true.

However, claims Laudan, "the realist seems to be . . . short on either

a semantics or an epistemology of approximatetruth . . .[and] until we

have a coherent account of what approximate truth is, central realisttheses like (R1), (T1), and (T2) arejust so much mumbojumbo" (Laudan

1981, p. 32).This conclusion does not follow; it is like saying the assertion that we

lack, or, for a long time, did lack an adequate analysis of the central

terms in the claim that there are other minds, implies that the claim that

there are other minds was or is unintelligible. The non sequitur does not

*Received November 1981; revised April 1982.

tPart of this research was supported by grants to Rosenberg by the American Councilof Learned Societies and the John Solomon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Philosophy of Science, 49 (1982) pp. 604-615.

Copyright ? 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association.

604



IN DEFENSE OF CONVERGENT REALISM

minimize the importanceof the problems in expounding realism that Lau-

dan puts before us, but it does put them into perspective. Like the thesis

of other minds, scientific realism is intuitively plausible and widely em-braced, but very difficult to state perspicuously. Indeed, the intellectual

history of these two problems shows so many parallels precisely because

their treatmentdemands that we come to grips with very much the same

set of fundamentalproblems in semantics and epistemology. For exam-

ple, the inadequacies of behaviorist analyses of statements about other

minds areclosely analogous to the inadequacies of operationalistaccounts

of scientific theories, while epistemological objections to argumentsfrom

analogy for the existence of other minds are counter-balanced by argu-

ments against naive forms of scientific realism apropos of theoretical en-tities.1

The chief difference between these two philosophical problems is that,while hardlyanyone has ever been tempted to deny the existence of other

minds on the grounds that we have had neither an adequate semantics or

epistemology to underwritethis thesis, some contemporaryphilosophers,

many historians, and not a few scientists have rejected scientific realism.

If forced to weigh our strong intuitions about other minds against our

incapacity to expound these intuitions, we all embrace the intuitions and

reject conclusions that underminetheir truthor intelligibility. Why, then,has anti-realism received so different a treatment and such a wide hear-

ing? Perhapsthe main reason is a belief that careful study of the historyof science shows that the intuitions that sustain realism, in the absence

of a philosophically respectable exposition andjustification of its claims,are themselves unwarranted. The real motivation for anti-realism is to be

found in its apparentlymore faithful reading of the record of the historyof science as non-cumulative and non-progressive, rather than in con-

ceptual objections to realism.

One indication of this fact is the ease with which, after stigmatizing(RI), (Tl) and (T2) as "so much mumbo jumbo", Laudan can grant in

the next paragraph,for the sake of argument, that (T1) is true, and goon to investigate the plausibility of (T2) by comparing it against the rec-

ord of the history of science. Now, if these theses were mumbojumbo,this task could not be undertaken. If the claims of realism were com-

pletely without semantic foundation, it would be no more possible to

granttheirtruthfor the sake of argument, or investigate their plausibility,than it would be to treat, in similar fashion, a representative pseudo-sen-

tence from Lewis Carrol's "The Jabberwock".The real basis for rejecting theses like (T1) and (T2) therefore lies, not

in the belief that they are unintelligible, but rather in the belief that for

'For a discussion of these parallels see Fodor (1968), especially chapters two and three.

605



CLYDE L. HARDIN AND ALEXANDER ROSENBERG

a large number of importanttheories in the sequence of "advances" in

naturalscience, the antecedent of (TI) is false, while the consequent of

(T1) is true, and the antecedent of (T2) is true, while the consequent of(T2) is false. Accordingly, it is alleged, the history of science shows no

invariableconnection between approximatetruthand explanatory, or for

thatmatter, predictive success. This apparenthistorical record makes the

difficulties Laudan finds with the concepts of approximatetruthand suc-

cessful reference seem to be fundamentalobjections ratherthanjust tran-

sient vexations.

2. Approximate Truth and Reference. Of course, it is just because the

crucial notions in any expression of convergent realism are complexenough not to have succumbed to analysis so far, that the discussion of

particular cases is inevitably controversial. Thus, consider Laudan's

claim "that the realist would never want to say that a theory was ap-

proximately true if its central theoretical termsfailed to refer. If there

were nothing like genes, then a genetic theory, no matter how well con-

firmed it was, would not be approximately true. [A] necessary condi-

tion-especially for a realist-for a theory being close to truthis that its

central explanatory terms must genuinely refer" (emphasis in original,

Laudan 1981, p. 33). It is, however, by no means clear that this thesismust be embracedby a realist, and the concept of the gene together with

its theories provides an excellent example of why it need not. Thus,Mendel's 1866 theory, embodying its laws of segregation and assortment,

clearly constitutes the first in a sequence of successive theories which are

held by life scientists to constitute a series converging on the truth. Men-

del's theory is often credited with approximatetruth and still taught be-

cause of its simplicity, and the ease with which it can be complicated in

the direction of presumably more accurate and more complete genetic

theories, theories more nearly approximateto the truth. Yet it may plau-

sibly be reportedby a realist that there is nothing like genes, or pheno-

types, as Mendel or his immediate successors construed them.2 The par-ticularpropertiesof whole organisms, which they construed as phenotypes,andthe kinds of particulateunits that are transmittedbetween generationsand generate these properties, which they construed as genes, can rea-

sonably be asserted not to have existed. This is because all of the func-

tions indicative of the Mendelian gene are now credited to widely dif-

ferent amounts, highly complex combinations, and incredibly diverse

2Mendel did not, of course, use the term 'gene'. It was coined by Johansson in 1911.

According to J. A. Ramsey (1965), p. 301, "neither Mendel himself, nor most of the

geneticists who followed up his lead during the early years of the twentieth century, were

greatly preoccupied with the problem of how the heritable characters were representedwithin the germ cells".

606




Here reference is severed from detailed beliefs of the theorist, and its

success is accorded retrospectively in the light of subsequent furtherap-

proximations to the truth. The realist can accept either account of thematter. If he accepts the first he must be (and is) able to trace out the

relations between Mendel's theoreticalclaims andcurrentlyaccepted onesin a way that shows why his laws were approximately correct, even

though they failed to secure reference. If the realist accepts the second

construction of what happened in the history of genetics, he must buyinto a somewhat different account of reference, at least for the nonce.

Since no theory of reference is as yet fixed in the philosophy of science,the realist may avail himself of several alternative accounts of the refer-

ential success of particulartheories, and can demand that his claims aboutthese theories' referential successes be judged on a case by case basis,and not in the light of a univocal account of reference that he must es-

tablishandjustify ab initio. Similarly, he is in a position to credit theories

with approximatetrutheven where he considers it more accurate to saythat the theories did not secure reference to what, with hindsight, we now

hold to constitute the fundamental ontology of their domains.

3. Problem Cases from the History of Science. The variabilityof con-

nection between approximatetruth and successful reference is particularlycrucial for Laudan'sargumentagainst (T2), the thesis according to which,if a theory is explanatorily successful, it is probably approximately true.

Laudanargues against this thesis by counterexample, indeed by multiple

counterexamplesfrom the most significant episodes in the history of sci-

ence. He attacks (T2) by maintaining that these examples manifest great

explanatory and predictive success while failing to secure reference to

entities we now believe to exist and to be operative in their domains.

Accordingly, they are successful without approximating to the truth as

we now see it. This argumentwill seriously detain the realist only if (a)he is committed to the connection with which Laudan burdens him be-

tween approximate truth and referential success, and (b) the examples

really show explanatory success without appropriatereference. (a) is, of

course, not an issue that can be settled in the absence of agreed-upontheories of reference, but (b) deserves careful scrutiny. For if it can be

seriously undermined, the realist can turn his attention to (a), free from

the worry that the answers to the problem it poses must come out in onlyone way, if his claims about the nature of science are to be vindicated.

In the compass of this discussion we cannot offer the careful scrutinyof cases from the history of science that the present problem demands,but we can show that the cases upon which Laudan relies to undermine

a thesis like (T2) are by no means as unambiguous in their support for

non-realism as he suggests. Laudan writes:

608




Now, whatthe historyof scienceoffers us is a plethoraof theorieswhich were bothhighlysuccessfuland(so faras we canjudge)non-

referentialwithrespectto manyof theircentralexplanatoryconcepts.I discussedearlierone specific familyof theorieswhich fits this de-

scription(thesubtlefluids andaethersof 18thand 19thcenturyphys-ics andchemistry).Let me add a few moreprominentexamplestothe list:

-the crystallinespheresof ancientand medievalastronomy;-the humoraltheoryof medicine;-the effluvialtheoryof staticelectricity;

-'catastrophist' geology, with its commitmentto a universal(Noachian)deluge;-the phlogistontheoryof chemistry;-the calorictheoryof heat;-the vital force theoriesof physiology;-the contact-actiongravitationalaetherof Fatio andLeSage;-the electromagneticaether;-the opticalaether.

Thislist,

which could be extendedadnauseum,

involves ineverycase a theorywhich was once highlysuccessfuland well confirmed,

but which containedcentraltermswhich(we nowbelieve)were non-

referring.Anyonewho imaginesthat the theories which have beensuccessful and long-livedin the historyof science have also been,withrespectto theircentralconcepts,genuinelyreferringtheorieshasstudiedonly the more 'whiggish'versions of the historyof science

(i.e., the ones whichrecountonly thosepasttheorieswhich are re-

ferentiallysimilar to currentlyprevailingones) (Laudan1981, pp.

33-34).The list looks imposingindeed.Buton closerexamination,manyof thecasespose less of a problemforthe epistemicrealistthanLaudanseemsto think. Forone thing, realists have typicallyclaimed thattheirthesisis intendedto applyto the theoriesof a "maturescience", one thatis,in RichardBoyd'sterm,pasta "take-offpoint", which he characterizesas "a point in the developmentof the relevantscientificdisciplineatwhichthe acceptedbackgroundtheories are sufficientlytrue and com-

prehensive"(Boyd1981).Thisnotion,like theconceptsof referenceand

approximatetruth,is far fromsharp,and Laudanis undoubtedlyrightin

insistingthatthe lot of them need a more adequateaccountthantheyhave so farreceived.Nonetheless,it seemsthattherealistdoes not extendhis explanatoryclaimsto just any old theorythat has been includedinthehistoryof science,but wishes to make a distinctionanalogousto the

609




Kuhniandivision between pre-paradigmaticand paradigmaticscience. If

one is to draw such a line in chemistry, for example, it would most plau-

sibly come with the publication of Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistryandthus would exclude phlogiston theory as a counterexample. In a similar

fashion, the realist would likely find humoral theories of medicine to be

outside the historical domain to which his theory is intended to apply.This way of ruling out several of the purported counterexamples is

likely to strike one who shares Laudan's outlook as reflecting just that

"whiggish" reading of the history of science which he deplores. For is

the line not drawn at just that point at which older theories begin to re-

semble the ones to which we now adhere? To this the realist must reply

that, if theories past the "take-off point" resemble contemporary theo-ries, it is because they, unlike theirpredecessors, are both comprehensiveandrobust, i.e., supportedby convergent lines of independent argument.An example of a theory which is not robust in this sense is the crystalline

sphere theory of ancient and medieval astronomy. That theory, we recall,started life as parasitic upon kinematic astronomy and never relinquishedthat role. As far as we can tell, it played no heuristic part in Eudoxus'

solution to Plato's problem nor in the subsequent development of astron-

omy as an exact science. To be sure, Ptolemy felt the urge to suggest in

his Hypothesis Planetarium how epicyclic constructions might be phys-ically realized on a case by case basis, but he did not feel a concomitant

need to describe a comprehensive model for all of the planets. In fact,he held that physics, unlike astronomy, could not be an exact science.

In what sense, then, could it be said that the crystalline spheres theory

explained the course of the heavens? What the theory did demonstrate

was that there could exist a mechanism which was consistent with the

chief dynamic theory of its time. (To say that the theory played no role

in mathematical astronomy is not to say that it had no "surplus mean-

ing". Indeed it did, but this generated predictions which could not betested observationally until Tycho Brahe's observation of the comet of

1577 and Galileo's observation of the moons of Jupiter showed them

false.)The contrast of the comprehensive and robust Newtonian astrophysics

with the anemic astrophysics of crystalline sphere theory is too well

known to be rehearsedhere. Kepler's laws were extended and corrected,

the reappearanceof Halley's comet and the existence of Neptune were

predicted, the law of universal gravitationchecked by terrestrialtest, and

on and on. Furthermore,the subsequent development of astrophysics hasbeen a textbook case of overall convergence, relativity theory notwith-

standing.We may, it seems, conclude that the sphere theory was not explanatory

in any sense relevant to the argument of the epistemological realist and

thus cannot serve as a counterexample to it.

610




4. Ether Theories and Their Models. Let us now turn to a consider-

ation of "the subtle fluids and aethers of 18th and 19th century physics

and chemistry". We may begin by striking from the list of serious coun-terexamples pre-take-off theories like the Abbe Nollet's electrical efflu-

vium and nonrobust parasitic gravitational ethers like LeSage's which

advanced planetary mechanics no more successfully than did the crys-talline spheres before them. We are, nonetheless, left with several the-

ories. Perhapsthe most powerful and fertile of these were the ones which

postulated a medium for the transmission of light and, later, electro-

magnetism. By any reasonable standard, such ether theories were post-take-off. Furthermore,the non-existence of the ether is generally held to

have been established by the negative result of the Michaelson-Morleyexperiment. Here, if anywhere, Laudan should be able to make his case:

if these successful theories failed to secure reference, then securing ref-

erence would seem to be irrelevant to success.

In our discussion of Mendel's theory, we showed how the realist could

sustain his position by holding that the theory may be regarded as ap-

proximately true even though its central theoretical terms such as 'gene'failed to refer. In the case of ether theories, we shall show how the realist

could consistently adopt the opposite stance: ether theories were suc-

cessful to the extent that their central theoretical terms did refer.4 To dothis, we shall adopt that account of reference which severs it from the

detailed beliefs of the theorist, and help ourselves to Putnam's (1978, p.

22) "principle of charity" in deciding whether or nor the central terms

in a theory refer. Thus equipped, we shall argue that if it is legitimateto say that the atomic theories of Dalton, J. J. Thomson, Bohr, and

Schr6dinger all refer, and refer to the same sort of entity, namely, the

atom, then it is equally legitimate to say that the ether theories of Fresnel,

MacCullagh, Maxwell and Lorentz all refer, and refer to the same entity,

namely, the electromagnetic field. To make our case clearer, we thinkit useful to say something about the role that mechanical models playedin the theory constructions of these four ether physicists.

Fresnel's chief interest in employing a mechanical model seems to have

been to use it as a stalking-horse for uncovering suitable fundamental

principles for wave optics. The mechanical characterof his medium was

shaped to agree with experiment rather than to serve as a way of ex-

plaining experiments. As Whittaker(1960, p. 137) remarks, in discussing

Cauchy's later efforts. "Cauchy's theories, then, resemble Fresnel's in

postulating types of elastic solid which do not exist, and for those as-sumed propertiesno dynamical justification is offered." This casts a dif-

4Itshould be observed that we have chosen, in each case, to show how one could defend

the stance that Laudan rejects. He apparently supposes that realists must hold 'gene' to

refer and 'ether' not to refer.

611




ferent light on Laudan's observation:

Of more than passing interest, optical aether theories had also madesome very startlingpredictions, e.g., Fresnel's prediction of a bright

spot at the center of the shadow of a circular disc; a surprising pre-diction which, when tested, proved correct. If that does not count as

empirical success, nothing does! (1981, p. 27)

It counts indeed as empirical success for the wave theory, but not for

the impossible hypothetical mechanisms Fresnel used to develop it.

MacCullagh remedied what he and many of his contemporaries took

to be thedeficiency

in Fresnel's account of the ether.Drawing

on the

extensive theoretical investigations of material media which had taken

place after Fresnel, MacCullagh was able to solve all of the outstandinginternalproblems of mechanical theories of the luminiferous ether such

as the boundary problem for refraction between two media and the prob-lem of suppressing longitudinal motion. In fact, MacCullagh's equationscan be reinterpretedas Maxwell's field equations. By a certain standard,he was the most successful of the ether theorists. For all of that, what

he really showed was that one could give a consistent mechanical model

for the bearer oflight

vibrations. He did notgive any independent

reasons

for supposing that to be the correct model. The theory of his hypotheticalsubstratumwas comprehensive but not robust.

In his later years, Maxwell saw that, when it came to electromagne-tism, the crucial matter is the opposition between action-by-contact and

action-at-a-distance theories. The hypothetical constitution of the ether

is a secondary concern:

In speaking of the Energy of the field . . . I wish to be understood

literally. All energy is the same as mechanical energy, whether it

exists in the form of motion or in that of elasticity, or in any other

form. The energy in electromagnetic phenomena is mechanical en-

ergy. The only question is, where does it reside? On the old theories,it resides in the electrified bodies, conduction circuits, and magnets,in the form of an unknown quality called potential energy, or in the

power of producing certain effects at a distance. On our theory, it

resides in the electromagnetic field, in the space surrounding the

electrified and magnetic bodies, as well as in those bodies them-

selves, and is in two different forms, which may be described without

hypothesis as magnetic polarization and electric polarization, or ac-

cording to a very probable hypothesis, as the motion and the strain

of one and the same medium (Maxwell 1966, p. 564, emphasis ours).

Although he still favored the supposition of a mechanical substratum,

612




for realists to say that 'ether' referred to the electromagnetic field all

along. This should not, however, commit them to using the term 'ether'

for these purposes in the future, simply because they may not choose toburden themselves with the term's historical associations. On the other

hand, it is interesting to notice that Einstein came to refer to the electro-

magnetic and metric fields as 'the ether'. We might also attend to Whit-

taker's remarks about the manner in which he chose to label his history:

A word might be said about the title, Aether and Electricity. As

everyone knows, the aether played a great part in the physics of the

nineteenth century; but in the first decade of the twentieth, chieflyas a result of the failure of

attemptsto observe the earth's motion

relative to the aether, and the acceptance of the principle that such

attemptsmust always fail, the word 'aether' fell out of favour, and

it became customary to refer to the interplanetary spaces as 'vac-

uous', the vacuum being conceived as mere emptiness, having no

properties except that of propagating electromagnetic waves. But

with the development of quantum electrodynamics, the vacuum has

come to be regardedas the seat of the 'zero-point' oscillations of the

electromagnetic field, of the 'zero-point' fluctuations of electric

charge and current, and of a 'polarization' correspondingto a dielec-tric constant different from unity. It seems absurd to retain the name

'vacuum' for an entity so rich in physical properties, and the histor-

ical word 'aether' may fitly be retained (Whittaker 1960, preface).

In the final analysis, the situation for 'ether' is analogous to that for

'gene': realists may hold such terms to denote, or they may not. If they

do, for reasons of the sort that we have given here, Laudan's criticisms

have no foothold. If they do not, realists simply have to show how, in

particularcases, the terms of past theories served to isolate some of the

causal roles played by the entities of present theories. In this way, realistscan explain both why past theories succeed where they did succeed and

failed where they failed.

6. Conclusion. It thus appears that the history of science need hold no

terrors for proponents of scientific realism. However, the realist can

hardly rest comfortably on this conclusion. There is much to be done,a good deal of which is catalogued in the rest of Laudan's paper.6 But

6Some of this work in defense of realism, especially concerning the reduction of theontology of superseded theories to that of their successors, has already been done. See,for instance Yoshida (1977), an unjustly neglected monograph that quite explicitly takes

up many of the claims in Laudan's section 6-6.4 and comes to diametrically opposedconclusions about ontological retentionand convergence. After the present paper was writ-

ten, Kitcher's article presents an account of reference fixing for scientific theories whichrealists should find quite congenial.

614




reflection on the degree to which his arguments requirethe attributionto

realists of a fixed theory of reference and a hard and fast connection

between successful reference and approximate truth, suggests that thestrategies exemplified above may forestall more than just his attack on

one of the characteristic theses of convergent realism.

Thus, it is not difficult to show, as Laudan does, that theoretical on-

tologies differ even when the formalisms of distinct theories are identical;but again the demonstrationrequires that definitional incompatibility en-

tails diversity of reference. Is this a thesis the realist must embrace? Short

of a full-fledged account of reference it is impossible to say. Likewise

it is not difficult to see that the sort of cumulation that realism demands

cannot be capturedby a treatmentof theory-semantics no richer than thetools of first order logic permit us, but Laudan's conclusion that such

failures discredit realism involves the supposition that realists would

agree on still other issues, like the logical form of theories. Here too, a

realist is surely entitled to remain agnostic on such issues without his

account thereby becoming "just so much mumbo jumbo".

REFERENCES

Born, M. (1962), Einstein's Theory of Relativity. New York: Dover.

Boyd, R. (1981), "Scientific Realism and Naturalist Epistemology". In ms.Fodor, J. (1968), Psychological Explanation. New York: Random House.

Gillispie, C. (1960), The Edge of Objectivity. Princeton: Princeton U.P.

Hull, D. (1974), Philosophy of Biology. Englewood, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Kitcher, P. (1978), "Theories, Theorists and Theoretical Change", Philosophical Review,Vol. 87 no. 4: 519-547.

Laudan, L. (1981) "A Confutation of Convergent Realism", Philosophy of Science, 48:

19-49.

Maxwell, J. C. (1966), The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven, ed.

2 vols. New York: Dover.

Putnam,H. (1978), Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Ramsey, J. R. (1965), The ExperimentalBasis of ModernBiology. Cambridge:Cambridge

U.P.Whittaker, E. (1960), A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol. I, New

York: Harper.Yoshida, R. (1977), Reduction in the Physical Sciences, Canadian Journal of Philosophy,

Monograph 4.

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