Not only is there empiricism within philosophy, there’s also an empiricist position towards science. Indeed some philosophers have argued that science itself is empiricist (at least in the past).
The Scottish philosopher Dave Hume (1711–1776) put this case very simply when, according to the Irish philosopher Ernan McMullin (in his 1984 paper ‘A Case for Scientific Realism’), he “restricted science to the patterning of sense impressions”. Of course this also — at least partly — stemmed from Hume’s well-known position on causality. And causality was nearly always seen (i.e., up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries) as the “cement of the universe” (J. L. Mackie). Indeed the rejection of causation (or, more correctly, necessary causal relations) was at the heart of empiricist philosophy. In Hume’s case (at least according to McMullin), he
“simply rejects the notion of cause according to which one could try to infer from these impressions to the unobserved entities causing them”.
There are obviously many problems with empiricism. More specifically, there are problems with “empiricist science”.
Take elementary particles.
The fact is that no one has ever observed an elementary particle (such as an electron or certainly a quark). However, people do observe things which lead them to believe that electrons exist.
Take the cloud chambers which are (or were) used by scientists to discover elementary particles and their nature. Charged entities (such as electrons) leave ionized tracks which betray their presence (or at least their former presence). Nonetheless, you still can’t say that you’ve observed an electron. All you can say is that you’ve observed an ionized track in a cloud chamber.
Alternatively, Ernan McMullin writes:
“An electron may be defined as the entity that is causally responsible for, amongst other things, certain kinds of cloud tracks.”
McMullin goes into more detail when he argues that an electron “will be said to exist [] if a number of convergent sorts of causal lines lead to it”.
There are many other simple reasons as to why an empiricist approach to science fails. Or the least you can argue is that empiricism is inadequate.
Take the Devonian geological period.
McMullin calls this period (or its postulation): “a theoretical entity”. It’s a theoretical entity primarily because it can’t be observed. However, clearly that doesn’t mean that we should reject it as a theory or even as a genuine period in the Earth’s history. In other words, even though the Devonian period can’t be observed, we can still say that this period existed roughly 400 to 350 million years ago. McMullin also says that during the Devonian period
“the dominant life form on earth was fish and a number of important developments in the vertebrate line occurred”.
The American theoretical physicist, string theorist and mathematician physicist Brian Greene (1963-) also offers some choice examples from the history of science.
Firstly, James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic fields. Greene writes:
“James Clerk Maxwell’s architecture introduced a significant step in abstraction. Vibrating electric and magnetic fields are not the kinds of things for which our senses have evolved a direct affinity. Although we can see ‘light’ — electromagnetic undulations whose wavelengths lie in the range our eyes can detect — our visual experiences don’t directly trace the undulating fields the theory posits.”
Then elsewhere Greene mentions general relativity and quantum mechanics:
“Now, I’ve seen watches tick and I’ve used rulers to measure, yet I’ve never grasped spacetime in the same way I grasp the arms of my chair. I feel the effects of gravity, but if you pressed me on whether I can directly affirm that I’m immersed in curved spacetime, I find myself back in the Maxwellian situation… Probability waves give rise to predictions for where there this or that particle is likely to be found, but the waves themselves slither outside the arena of everyday reality.”
Shockingly (or perhaps not), then, it can be argued that this line of reasoning may lead us to happily embrace such things as the multiverse, strings, branes and whatnot, as it does in the particular case of Brian Greene. Whether these theories (or things) clash violently with empiricist science is, of course, an issue all on its own.
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