The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science
John Dupré
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0674212614
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The great dream of philosophers and scientists for millennia has been to give us a complete account of the order of things. A powerful articulation of such a dream in this century has been found in the idea of a unity of science. With this manifesto, John Dupré systematically attacks the ideal of scientific unity by showing how its underlying assumptions are at odds with the central conclusions of science itself. In its stead, the author gives us a metaphysics much more in keeping with what science tells us about the world. Elegantly written and compellingly argued, this provocative book will be important reading for all philosophers and scholars of science.
is something (or sometimes a list of things) referred to as a common name. It is not obvious whether these should be thought of as part of ordinary language or as part of a technical vocabulary. Certainly if competence in English does not require enough biological expertise to distinguish a beech from an elm,23 then surely it cannot require an awareness even of the existence of the solitary pussytoes, the flammulated owl, or the Chinese matrimony vine. (Given that such terms are in fact as much
particular theoretical perspective. But this is just where pluralism has the clearest benefits. The taxonomy may be constructed with particular goals in mind, goals that make a particular approach appropriate. O r it may be applied to a group of organisms for which one approach is particularly desirable or practically inevitable (for example, a morphological taxonomy of an asexual group). Since it is likely that those using such a taxonomy will be well aware what is going on, and even why,
variable feature. The Disunity of Science The idea of science as a project that might ultimately be completed in some grand synthesis of all natural knowledge is an understandable and perennial dream. The greatest scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein, was a notorious believer in unification and simplicity as fundamental goals of science. He is quoted, for instance, as remarking: "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." 5 Some of
moral properties to natural properties proposed by philosophers such as G. E. Moore and R. M . Hare. 12 That these are the philosophers most closely connected with the denial of the "naturalistic fallacy," the attempt to define moral concepts in terms of nonmoral properties, makes it clear that they conceived such supervenience as nonreductive. More recently supervenience has been discussed extensively as a possible formulation o f nonreductive physicalism in the philosophy of mind. 13 More
mathematically necessary that some function, admittedly perhaps very complex, exist to satisfy this condition. Earman remarks: "Combining Russell and Popper, w e have the first intimation o f the Scylla and Charybdis between which determinism is forced to sail: tack one way in defining determinism and determinism wrecks on obvious falsity; tack the other w a y and it wrecks on triviality" (1986, p. 11). What seems to be needed to rescue Russell's approach from this triviality is some appeal to