Ronald N. Giere

Does scientific knowledge describe the world as it really is, independent of human existence, or is it merely another type of social activity in which scientists reach a consensus on what to say about the world? The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is one of the most profound in philosophy of science.

Here, Giere argues that, while the realist camp has an advantage, the anti-realists (the focus here is on the social constructivists who see science as a social activity rather than producer of objective truths) have a point. Science does seem to be the best game in town for figuring out the natural world, but there's a larger element of historical and cultural contingency than a hardliner might want to acknowledge.

Giere sets out to show how "objective realists" -- those in the vein of Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who see science as providing universal and timeless truths about an objective world -- are as mistaken as those who treat science as an exclusively arbitrary construct. Working within the framework of naturalism, which he defines as a skepticism towards a priori knowledge*, Giere argues that we have little reason to accept either position.

Instead, he seeks a middle ground. Accepting that empirical sciences are the only way to the less-incorrect understanding of reality (if only for good methodological reasons rather than Truths), Giere suggests that knowledge of the world is neither entirely objective or entirely constructed, but is rather perspectival, derived from the interaction between a human brain and certain aspects of the world.

The analogy of color vision stands in as the key metaphor, as Giere argues there are no objective colors in the world. It is the facts about the human visual system, about light, and about certain physical properties of objects that all come together to create the properties we call "color". Giere extends the metaphor to scientific instrumentation and, from there, to scientific theorizing in broadest scope. Since our scientific theories apply not to the world itself but to our models of particular physical phenomena, Giere argues that our scientific knowledge is best treated as perspectival, with each model providing an essential, useful, but essentially incomplete description of some specific facet of reality.

Nevertheless, and despite the seeming step into relativism, he suggests that there is an "intersubjective objectivity" to such things: we can expect that human observers will largely agree upon what is being observed provided they share the same or similar vantage point. For Giere, this scientific perspectivism isn't just a good-enough compromise; there is no possibility of a God's eye "absolute objectivist" position. Perspectival knowledge is the only possible knowledge. Knowing the world means adopting as many of these perspectives as we can.

The final chapter is a discussion of "distributed cognition". Giere discusses the relationship between humans and our tools -- inclusive of writing and language itself, as well as mathematical and diagrammatic or visual modes of reasoning -- and how the boundary between an individual, on the one hand, and the system formed but human-instrument interactions, on the other, is not as clear as we might often think. Instrumentation and the "group efforts" of research programs mean that cognition itself "smears out" into more abstract information-processing networks. This, too, has an effect on how we relate to knowledge, and it means we must ask ourselves exactly who (or what) is doing the problem-solving. The very idea of cognitivist accounts, which treat thought as computation, is called into question with the realization that human brains are pattern-matchers which may only mimic some features of symbol-manipulation.

All in all this was a fascinating book, surprisingly full of thought-provoking insights despite its short length. It was surprisingly accessible, with no exceptional amounts of jargon or technical language (and what is there is carefully explained). This book should be required reading for anyone who believes (on a priori grounds no less!) that science is the final arbiter of reality or capital-T Truth.

* One implication being that claims to objective knowledge of the world are just as fruitless for objective realists as for any theologian; science cannot "observe its own correctness" in that sense. Naturalistic epistemologies must deal with the problem of non-empirical sources of knowledge: the notion of a causal order or regularity to reality; that reality is only "one way", and that this existence is accessible to us; and that our criteria for judging theories (simplicity, elegance, consilience, etc.) are actually meaningful and not simply products of our own preferences. The "no miracles" argument to science's historical successes is a powerful argument in favor of these assumptions, but it is by no means iron-clad, and has (in my opinion) little to say about science's role in establishing metaphysical truths (as compared to methodological guidelines, heuristics, and expectations, as is Giere's preference in this book).… (mehr)

An interesting set of essays on a fascinating set of ideas in contemporary philosophy of science. The book reads as Giere laying down the precursors of his preferred form of methodological naturalism, a view that reaches a more mature form in his more recent Scientific Perspectivism.

As the essays are spread out by topic matter, there is a little here for even the layman interested in an "insider's" look at both the practice of science and the philosopher's reflections on them. Not everyone will be satisfied with Giere's account, which he argues as realist (and my reading supports that view) but which contains enough of a historicist leaning to be mistaken as support for any nearby anti-realists.

Still, his arguments against a strict form of metaphysical realism and in favor of a more empiricist, history-sensitive philosophy make sense to me (perhaps more than they should to any would-be analytic philosopher), and as a whole it strikes me as a more true-to-life account.… (mehr)