NIETZSCHE, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Editors

JURGEN RENN, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science and KOSTAS GAVROGLU, University of Athens ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University

Editorial Advisory Board

THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University

ADOLF GRZNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh

SYLVAN SL. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University

JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY t (Editor 1960-1997)

VOLUME204

NIETZSCHE, EPISTEMOLOGY,

AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

NIETZSCHE AND THE SCIENCES II

Edited by

BABETTE E. BABICH

Fordham University

in cooperation with

ROBERT S. COHEN

Boston University

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A C.I.P Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-481-5234-6 ISBN 978-94-017-2428-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2428-9

Printed an acid-free paper

AII Rights Reserved © 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999 No part of this publication may be reproduced or

utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

In memory of

Marx W artofsky

1928-1997

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Used

ALASDAIR MACINTYRE I Preface

INTRODUCTION

BABETTE E. BABICH I Truth, Art, and Life: Nietzsche, Epistemology,

ix Xl

XV

Philosophy of Science 1 Section Summaries 14

ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES: TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

RICHARD SCHACHT I Nietzsche: Truth and Knowledge 25 ROBERT C. WELSHON I Perspectivist Ontology and de re Knowledge 39 R. LANIER ANDERSON I Nietzsche's Views on Truth and the Kantian Background of his Epistemology 47 PAUL J.M. VAN TONGEREN I Nietzsche's Symptomatology of Skepticism 61

ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES:

ATOMISM, REALISM, NATURALISM, POSITIVISM

ROBIN SMALL I We Sensualists 73 ROBERT NOLA I Nietzsche's Naturalism: Science and Belief 91 JONATHAN COHEN I Nietzsche's Fling with Positivism 101 DANIEL CONWAY I Beyond Truth and Appearance: Nietzsche's Emergent Realism 109

NIETZSCHE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL DARING

BARRY ALLEN I All the Daring of the Lover of Knowledge is Permitted Again 1 23 JUSTIN BARTON I How Epistemology Becomes What It Is 141

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Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS

DUNCAN LARGE I Hermes contra Dionysus: Michel Serres's Critique of Nietzsche 151 BELA BACSO I The Will to Truth 161 DAVID OWEN I Science, Value, and the Ascetic Ideal 169 DAVID B. ALLISON I Twilight of the Icons 179

PERSPECTIVES ON NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE

GREG WHITLOCK I Roger J. Boscovich and Friedrich Nietzsche: A Re-Examination 187 PATRICK A. HEELAN I Nietzsche's Perspectivalism: A Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science 203 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSACKER I Nietzsche: Perceptions of Modernity 221 PAUL VALADIER I Science as New Religion 241 WALTHER CH. ZIMMERLI I Nietzsche's Critique of Truth and Science: A Comprehensive Approach 253 ANDREA REHBERG I Nietzsche's Transvaluation of Causality 279 PETER POELLNER I Causation and Force in Nietzsche 287

NIETZSCHE AND THE SCIENCES

SCOTT H. PODOLSKY AND ALFRED I. TAUBER I Nietzsche's Conception of Health: The Idealization of Struggle 299 ERIC STEINHART I The Will to Power and Parallel Distributed Processing 313 PETER DOUGLAS I The Fractal Dynamics of a Nietzschean World 323 ULLRICH MICHAEL HAASE I Nietzsche's Critique of Technology: A Defense of Phenomenology Against Modern Machinery 331

Selected Research Bibliography 341

Notes on Contributors 359

Table of Contents of Volume One: Nietzsche, Theories of Knowledge, and Critical Theory: Nietzsche and the Sciences I 365

Index 367

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The publisher's permission to translate Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker's essay, "Nietzsche: Art, Science, Power" in Wahmehmung der Neuzeit, (Hanser Verlag 1983) is gratefully acknowledged. Richard Schacht's "Nietzsche, Truth and Knowledge," derives from Schacht's Nietzsche, ©Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, and appears here with the permission of the publisher.

I take the happy opportunity to herewith affirm my respect and admiration for RobertS. Cohen and I thank him for suggesting and encouraging my work on this volume, as well as for the range of his contributions to its scope. As always, too, Patrick A. Heelan has my constant gratitude for his insight, critical advice, and indispensable personal support. I am also inspired by his enthusi­asm for philosophy and the breadth of his continuing, current research interests. The institutional support provided by the Graduate School of Georgetown University is herewith also gratefully acknowledged because the practical labor on this collection was in pa11 supported by the research project, Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Approaches to the Philosophy of Science, directed by William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, Patrick A. Heelan.

In an important way, this work first began when as a doctoral student I visited a conference on the topic Nietzsche: Kunst und Wissenschaft in the Spring of 1985 at the IUC in Dubrovnik in the former, peacefully united Yugoslavia with the aid of a Fulbright Fellow's small travel grant. There I immediately recognized the need for a book which might adumbrate the key differences and points of contact between the German language reception of Nietzsche's philosophy and Anglophone approaches to Nietzsche - especially with regard to formal and epistemic issues. Particularly influential were Gunter Abel, Tilman Borsche, Volker Gerhardt, Friedrich Kaulbach (t), Wolfgang MOller­Lauter, Birgitte Scheer, and Josef Simon. In addition to my own response to the challenge of thinking between English and German reflections in Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science (1994), the current collection represents some of the many different voices and scholarly perspectives to be heard in this tradition, as broadly various in the Anglophone as they are in the German contributions below, a range also including other voices and languages- here presented in English to facilitate the communication that remains still to be broadened between different language traditions and different scholarly formations.

lX

X ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Beyond the direct personal trajectory of this collection, the tradition of reading "Nietzsche and the Sciences" dates from Nietzsche's earliest interpret­ers. Supplementing the pioneering insights of Hans Vaihinger and Abel Rey, Alwin Mittasch, Oskar Becker, and, more recently, Milic Capek, must be acknowledged. Contemporary currents continue with Robin Small's work on recurrence and the theory of time and Angele Kremer-Marietti combines research on Nietzsche with a special expertise on Comte. Walther Ch. Zimmerli's influential paper on Nietzsche's critique of science, published here for the first time in the present volume, as well as for the broader work of Jean Granier, Reinhard Low (t), and Dieter Henke (with reference to theology and Darwinism), and the still-as-yet untapped insights of Dieter Jiihnig' s reflections on the problem of science as a philosophic problem with regard to the origins of art in history and culture encourages further research on the themes collected here. Further: the new and growing interest in Nietzsche and truth (and including science, metaphysics, and epistemology) on the part of new scholars, especially those hailing from analytic philosophical quarters, may well be expected to enhance the project of understanding Nietzsche's thinking while at the same time highlighting a theme that both invites and supports the possibility of continental/analytic dialogue.

I express deepest personal thanks to David B. Allison, Richard Cobb-Stevens, Theodore Kisiel, Alexander Nehamas, Tracy B. Strong, and Marx Wartofsky (t). Alasdair Macintyre has my special gratitude for his kind encouragement as well as my appreciation of the contemporary and ongoing engagement with the problem of science represented in his Preface to this collection. And, I thank Holger Schmid for his assistance with both collections and for working with me to correct literally every one of the translations from the German, especially for philosophic conversation in Nietzsche's own spirit on the esoteric kernel of antiquity, language, poetry, and music.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED

In general, references to Nietzsche's works are abbreviated and included in the body of the text. References to all other works are listed in the notes to each individual contribution, though this may vary with different authors. In addition, because this collection is not intended for the specialist reader alone, an effort has been made to keep references as general as possible. Specialists will not find this rigorous but it is hoped that by the same token, nonspecialists may find the discussions less forbidding. This is an overall guide. Some essays will employ individual conventions.

NIETZSCHE'S WORKS:GERMAN EDITIONS

GOA Werke. Groj3oktav-Ausgabe, 2nd. ed., (Leipzig: Kroner, 1901-1913).

KGB Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by. G. Colli and M. Montinari, (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1975 sqq.).

KSA Siimtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe (Miinchen/Ber1in, New York: DTV/ Walter de Gruyter, 1980). Cited as KSA followed by the page number. Some authors include notebook volume and number.

KGW Nietzsches Werke (Kritische Gesamtausgabe) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967 ff.) Cited as KGW followed by the page number.

NIETZSCHE'S WORKS: ENGLISH EDITIONS

The following abbreviations refer to in-text references to English translations of Nietzsche's works. The original date of publication is listed in parentheses. The manner of citation, whether to essay and section number or to section number alone, or to specific page numbers in the translated edition is also noted in the notes to each essay. Citations have been standardized only where possible and references are not always to the same translation. Where more than one current translation of the same original work is used in the essays to follow, listings are given below in order of citation frequency. The specific reference is also listed whenever possible in notes to each essay.

PT Philosophy and Truth. Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, (1872-3), ed. and trans., Daniel Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979). Das Philosophenbuch, originally published in

xi

xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED

Nietzsches Werke, Vol. X, ed., Ernst Holzer and August Homeffer, (Leipzig: Kroner, 1907), pp. 1 09-232; KSA 7, 417 ff., and elsewhere. English source edition cited by page number.

TL "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," (1873), pp. 77-97 in Philosophy and Truth. KSA 1, 875-890. See also "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense," pp. 246-257 in Sander Gilman, Carole Blair, David J. Parent, ed. and trans., Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, (Oxford University Press, 1989). Cited from Philosophy and Truth by the page number.

PTG Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, (1873), trans. Marianne Cowan (Chicago: Gateway, 1962). KSA I, 804-872. Cited by page number.

BT The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, (1872), trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1969). Cited by section number.

UM Untimely Meditations, (1873-76), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Cited by page number.

HH Human, All Too Human, (1878-80), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Cited in some essays by volume, part, and section number.

D Daybreak, (1881), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Cited by section number.

GS The Gay Science, (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). Cited by section number.

Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (1883-85), trans. Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann, ed., The Portable Nietzsche, (New York: Viking Penguin, 1954 ). Cited by page number. See also Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1961). Certain essays also include section headings.

BGE Beyond Good and Evil, (1886), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmond­sworth: Penguin, 1973). See also Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966). Cited by section number.

GM On the Genealogy of Morals, (1887), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). Cited by essay and section number.

AC The Antichrist, (1895), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1968); see also Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche. Cited by page number.

TI The Twilight of the Idols, (1889), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1968); see also Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche. Cited by page number; certain essays list section headings or shortened titles as indicated in italics in the following listings. For convenience in

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED Xlll

referencing other translations or the original text, the section titles cor­responding to cited page ranges are: "Foreword'': 21-22; "Maxims and Arrows": 23-27; "The Problem of Socrates": 29-34; "'Reason" in Phi­losophy": 35-39; "How the 'Real World' at last Became a Myth": 40-41; "Morality as Anti-Nature: 42-46; "The Four Great Errors": 47-54; "The 'Improvers' of Mankind": 55-59; "What the Germans Lack": 60-66; "Expeditions of an Untimely Man": 67-104; "What I Owe to the An­cients": 105-111.

EH Ecce Homo, ([1888] 1908), trans. R. J.Hollingdale (Harmond­sworth!London: Penguin, 1979, 1992). Cited by page number; certain essays list essay headings and section numbers. For convenience in ref­erencing other translations or the original text, the section titles corre­sponding to cited page ranges are: "Foreword''; 33-36; "Epigraph": 37; "Why I Am So Wise": 38-50; "Why I Am So Clever": 51-68; "Why I Write Such Excellent Books": 69-77; "The Birth of Tragedy": 78-83; "The Untimely Essays": 84--88; "Human, All Too Human": 89-94; "Daybreak": 95-97; ''The Gay Science": 98; "Thus Spoke Zarathustra": 99-111; "Beyond Good and Evil": 112-113; "The Genealogy of Mor­als": 114-115; "Twilight of the Idols": 116-118; "The Wagner Case": 119-125; "Why I Am A Destiny": 126-134.

WM The Will to Power, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). Cited by section number. For corre­sponding Nachlaj3 references please see the recent double concordance to the KSA and KGW editions by Scott Simmons in New Nietzsche Studies I:l/2 (1996):126-153. See also Marie-Luise Haase and Jorg Salaquarda, "Konkordanz. Der Wille zur Macht: Nachlass in chronolo­gischer Ordnung der Kritische Gesamtausgabe," Nietzsche-Studien 9 (1980): 446-490.

OTHER WORKS

KdrV I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990). Also listed as CPR with reference to The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp­Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1929).

NSI Babich, ed., Nietzsche, Theories of Knowledge, and Critical Theory: Nietzsche and the Sciences I (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999).

NSII Babich, ed., Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science: Nietzsche and the Sciences II (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999).

ALASDAIR MACINTYRE

PREFACE

Why should a philosopher of the natural sciences be interested in Nietzsche's writings? How one answers this question will depend in part on who you are. Those who identify themselves wholeheartedly with Nietzsche's central positions - and this is a harder task than is commonly supposed - have a straightforward answer. Nietzsche has shown us how the philosophy of science should be done. And we have an 1:xcellent model for such a response in Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science by the editor of these volumes.

Historians of philosophy also have a straightforward answer. The story of the development of Nietzsche's thought remains incomplete, indeed in some respects unintelligible, until his reflections upon and relationships to the natural sciences have been charted. But what about those of us who are not Nietzscheans or who are anti-Nietzschean?

Consider some recent remarks by Steven Weinberg, the elementary particle physicist. Weinberg is attacking David Bloor and Stanley Fish for contending that the theories of physics are in part a work of culture, social constructions, interpretations of a reality that undercletermines those interpretations. Weinberg is prepared to allow that in the past, when the laws that physicists now acknowl­edge were in the course of being discovered, cultural and psychological influences may often have informed their theorizing. But in the final form of these laws "cultural influences are refined away." So Weinberg concludes that "the laws of physics as we understand them now are nothing but a description of reality." 1

In 1885 Nietzsche wrote that "It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics too is only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (accord­ing to our own requirements, if I may say so!) and not an explanation of the world."2 Nietzsche's view at first sight appears to be the antithesis of Wein­berg's, yet about the physics of Nietzsche's time Weinberg seems to agree with Nietzsche. The physicists of the late nineteenth century, on Weinberg's view, had not yet disentangled that in their work which was genuinely description and explanation from that which was socially and psychologically influenced interpretation. Yet of course that was not their view of their theories. They were - almost all of them - as confident then as Weinberg is now that they had provided nothing but explanation and description. They too would have rejected Nietzsche's characterization of their theorizing.

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B. Babich (ed.), Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science: Nietzsche and the Sciences II, xv-xvii. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

XVI ALASDAIR MACINTYRE

History has shown them to have been mistaken, as Weinberg acknowledges. Whence then comes Weinberg's confidence that he and his contemporaries will not suffer the same fate? Weinberg has two answers. He is convinced that our understanding of Maxwell's equations, quantum mechanics, relativity and the standard model of elementary particles "is culture-free ... because the purely scientific arguments for these theories seem to me overwhelmingly convinc­ing."3 And change in "the typical background of physicists" has not changed physics. 'These laws in their mature form have a toughness that resists cultural influence."4 What is striking about these answers is that both could have been given by the physicists who were Nietzsche's contemporaries. So why should we believe Weinberg? Is Weinberg's confidence not misplaced?

Consider what is importantly right in Weinberg's arguments. Physicists are, by the nature of their enquiries, committed to eliminating from their theories whatever in them is there not because of experimental or observational evidence, or because of the compelling character of theoretical argument, but because of the contingencies of cultural influence. Physics is an enterprise self­consciously dedicated to freeing itself up from determination by social and psychological factors. Moreover if a physical theory can be defended only as one interpretation among others (and of any interpretation it is true that it is always in competition with its rivals), then so far it has not been vindicated as a physical theory. So long as the evidence permitted the phenomenon of light to be interpreted either in terms of waves or in terms of particles, physics had not yet provided a scientifically adequate account of light.

It follows that, insofar as physics is a successful enterprise by its own standards, it is just what Weinberg says that it is and not at all what Nietzsche said that it is. Yet the history of physics teaches us that time and again what was at one time treated as explanation and description has later turned out to be no more than interpretation and that time and again what was at one time not recognized as in important part the cultural product of social and psychological influence later turned out to be just such a product. And, that is to say, we need to think about physics and more generally about the natural sciences in two different and not easily reconcilable ways. We need two alternative images of science.

One is the type of image elaborated by Weinberg, the self-image of most professional scientists, an image that is an expression of a deep confidence in the science of the present. The other is the type of image elaborated by Nietzsche, an image of natural science as unable to transcend the limits of interpretation, as akin to the work of the artist in ways that it finds it difficult to acknowledge, as always inviting a suspicious interrogation of its claims and a glance towards a possible future in which its pretensions have been unmasked. Either image without the other, I want to suggest, is apt to corrupt. If we understand science only in terms of the scientist's self-image, we will blind ourselves to the part played in the sciences by the will to knowledge and the will to power. If we understand science only in Nietzsche's terms, if we treat the views that Nietzsche aspires to undermine as nothing but error, then we will have not understood the point of the scientific enterprise. We need Nietzsche in

PREFACE XVll

the philosophy of science as elsewhere, as perpetual antagonist, as combative outsider, as someone to whose writings we have to return recurrently in order to reconsider what answer to him we are able to make.

If I am right, then the reading of Nietzsche is almost as important to those of us who in the end reject Nietzsche's positions as to those who to some large extent accept them. And it is important in part for aspects of his work about which I have so far said nothing: the range of his insights, their depth, his engagement with scientific thinkers as various as Boscovich and Darwin, the material that he has provided for later reflection. The contributors to this volume have all in their essays contributed significantly to the project of making Nietzsche's philosophy of science more easily available and placing it in the context of a variety of debates and enquiries. In so doing they have put us all, historians and philosophers, Nietzscheans and antiNietzscheans alike, very much in their debt. As has their editor.

Duke University

ENDNOTES

1 Steven Weinberg, "Physics and History" in Daedalus 127, I. Winter 1998, p. 162. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, R. J. Hollingdale, trans., (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 14, p. 26. 3 Weinberg, p. 162. 4 Weinberg, p. 163.