heusdens
2002-Oct-23, 01:05 PM
The following is an excerpt from an article by Robert Steigerwald. The whole article is available at this link: http://www-vms.physics.umn.edu/~marquit/steig133.htm
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Natural processes, and nature itself, seem unproblematic to the so-called normal faculty of cognition in the sense that nature, with the laws and forces governing it, in its spatial and temporal existence, is accessible to cognition. On this basis, a more or less conclusive and scientifically founded view of the world arose in correspondence with the assumptions of classical physics. Only at its extremes—down “below” in the microuniverse, and up “high” or “outward” in the universe—did it need further development, further perfection. Our common sense, using ordinary language, seemed adequate to give us a description of this world in a coherent way. This so-called normal attitude toward perceiving nature presupposes that our ability of cognition directly interacts with nature and directly procures knowledge about nature for us.
This is not the case. Before World War I, when scientists tried to get on the track of the atom, many important conditions were lacking for the fulfillment of this task. Rutherford knew that within the atom there must be a nucleus and electrons. Therefore he tried to approach the unknown by imagining that the atom could be formed similar to the solar system. Instead of the atom, which was not yet accessible to him, he used as a model[iii] what was already known in order to consider what was unknown. In subsequent work with this model, in improving it, in the attempt to remove incompatibilities between the model and the actual atom, scientists used not only current knowledge of the atom, but went far beyond what we began with, by assuming quantum physics at the outset. The new world picture built up in this way also had to be most accurate scientifically to serve highly specialized fields. (Strictly speaking, this took place in part earlier; one can go back to the previous work in mathematics by Riemann.) This was more accurate and specialized than what we deal with in everyday language. In the microphysical world, we encounter objects that we describe partly with concepts from the macrophysical world, so that the question of the interconnection between both domains arises. These microphysical objects, however, have a real existence even though they have properties that cannot be described in terms of macrophysical concepts.
On 12 March 1895, Engels wrote a letter to Conrad Schmidt in which he discussed the relation of knowledge of the world in terms of concepts created by us to the objective reality itself. Engels wrote in part:
The reproaches you make against the law of value apply to all concepts, regarded from the standpoint of reality. The identity of thought and being, to express myself in Hegelian fashion, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other yet never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. But although a concept has the essential nature of a concept and cannot therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it must first be abstracted, it is still something more than a fiction, unless you are going to declare all the results of thought fictions because reality has to go a long way round before it corresponds to them, and even then only corresponds to them with asymptotic approximation . . . .
Or are the concepts which prevail in the natural sciences fictions because they by no means always coincide with reality? From the moment we accept the theory of evolution all our concepts of organic life correspond only approximately to reality. Otherwise there would be no change: on the day when concepts and reality completely coincide in the organic world development comes to an end. The concept fish includes a life in water and breathing through gills: how are you going to get from fish to amphibian without breaking through this concept? And it has been broken through. (1942, 527, 530)
In material production, we place instruments between ourselves and nature. From Hegel comes the designation of these instruments as means, as the means between us and nature, as our mediated effect on nature. Analogous with this is the widely used concept of means of thought. For example, Brownian motion or the splitting of the atom can be simulated by means of models in order to understand them better, to approach the real object in this way. Yet the atoms are not only split in the model, but also in reality. We can use models in experiments. In some fields we are only able to work with models. But the real object of microphysics is the microobject, even if it can only be examined by means of models. The statement that something is a model does not yet define its epistemological nature. The model is inserted between subject and object; it is elaborated; the results of this elaboration are then transcribed. The question is how far can this procedure be carried on. The essence of an object of cognition is not embraced by the model. The question is to what extent are the means of cognition and the object of cognition related to each other, to what extent is knowledge gained, do the model and the modeled object correspond to each other? Models are supposed to mediate between our knowledge and nature, to help us in the same way as in material production, to come to new “products,” new knowledge, in intellectual production.
This actually does not mean that we do not know anything about nature itself; that we cannot come to know it. The problem of reality is posed. Of course it could not be posed if the models of which are speaking were like that, for example, of a miniature railway that originally corresponded to a real railway, but only in miniature. But this miniature railway just models the known, copying it as exactly as possible. The previously mentioned models of science indeed are also constructed in analogy to known things, but do not copy the object to which they refer, since it is not yet known with the same precision (except for some unusual cases). The task here is to provide an increasingly exact understanding of something still unknown. On the other hand, would it be possible argue the matter if the problem of reality were a closed book, or only a closed book?
Thus the problem of reality exists in two aspects, since there is no thought that is detached from reality and since we do not know with certainty if our thinking corresponds to reality.
Two major groups of philosophical positions should be mentioned, a realist one and a positivist one. The difference between them concerns the understanding of the real itself. For the group of positivism, the real consists of what we consider as the observed (of course, by experimental investigation using scientific/technical apparatuses), whereas realism assumes that not only what is observed exists, but that there is, or can be, something more essential than that.
In both groups we find variations. Within realism. we find variations concerning the question of what should be considered real. For materialism, it is not possible that material nature is arises from the immaterial, since it exists independently of our consciousness. For critical realism, the real is ultimately dependent on spirit (from God, or an objective, absolute idea; thus it is an objective idealism).[iv] For internal realism the real is the material of our mental processes, which amounts to a subjective idealism.
Within positivism we find varying positions about what the observed elements consist of. After all, they always are attributed to the epistemological subject. Within so-called Machism (empirio-criticism), they are understood as sense data; in the versions of linguistic analysis, as subjectively judged forms of speech; in logical empiricism, as logical structures detached from the real.
The question discussed up to this point primarily concerns whether outside the world of our thoughts, another world still exists and what is it like. Moreover, we have the question about what mental activities are needed to open up this world to our cognition. We are concerned here with the epistemological question, in distinction to the ontological one.
Reality forced the makers of models, the scientists, to change their model if they wanted to find out what was real, and during the history of science, again and again, models that had come into contradiction with reality have had to be abandoned or modified. But how could something have a compelling effect if it did not exist? Thus we are dealing with model builders, models, and reality in a three-sided relationship, with correlations among them, with the activity produced by the constructor and mediated by the model aimed at reality. The constructor, mediated by the model, meets with the resistance of reality and is thus forced to change the model in order to gain more exact knowledge about reality. As a result, a model having proved to be useful cannot be entirely free from the correspondence, the resemblance, the copy, the representation of what has been modeled, that is, reality. Thus it contains the subjective as well as the objective.
Several positions also emerge in regard to the subject and the process of cognition. Here too, we can divide them into two major groups, one which affirms cognition and one which (in varying degrees) denies cognition.
We cannot say that every kind of realism includes the affirmation of cognition. Critical realism can accept cognition only within certain boundaries, because the objective spiritual being creating reality principally remains inaccessible to cognition, and in the best case can be characterized by a series of negations (as not mortal or immortal, for instance), thus indefinable.
Internal realism—and we must ask if it deserves this name since, after all, it reduces reality to the world of our thoughts!—allows in the best case, a hypothetical outside world, but denies its perceptibility, as Kant does with his epistemology.
Human beings have a direct access to nature, namely the nature of their own bodies, since they themselves are also part of nature. Elementary life activity takes place by direct and indirect material exchange with nature and within nature. Human access to nature is possible on the basis of those physical and intellectual tools created by humans. These tools are used only to accomplish the purpose intended. The activity aims at, or corresponds to, that part of nature that is supposed to be influenced by the mediating tools. To express it another way: In the course of humanity’s historical and social processes, “references” have congealed and are thus saved. The intellectual tools indeed do not exist outside of consciousness. Thus they differ from the material ones, but still represent something objectified in the sphere of the mental. Thanks to speech and societal processes, consciousness includes the accumulated “references” of nature. In a mediated way we therefore possess knowledge of nature itself. These intellectual means enable us to transmit such knowledge, so that it is proper to distinguish, but not to tear apart, the work of the natural sciences and epistemology. This process of acquiring knowledge always occurs in a social context. There is no production “in itself”—it is always socially determined production. Therefore the material and intellectual tools are always socially influenced. As a consequence, work in the natural sciences includes its models, idealizations, and so on; it is influenced by society. Insofar as social influences necessarily contain a connection to group interests, work in the natural sciences has roots in nonscientific conditions, which, at the same time provide the orientation for scientific work. Also by reason of this, a strict division between natural and social sciences cannot be maintained. From all this it follows that we can receive deeper knowledge about nature “in itself” not only through philosophy, but also through the work of natural sciences.
--------------------------------------------
Natural processes, and nature itself, seem unproblematic to the so-called normal faculty of cognition in the sense that nature, with the laws and forces governing it, in its spatial and temporal existence, is accessible to cognition. On this basis, a more or less conclusive and scientifically founded view of the world arose in correspondence with the assumptions of classical physics. Only at its extremes—down “below” in the microuniverse, and up “high” or “outward” in the universe—did it need further development, further perfection. Our common sense, using ordinary language, seemed adequate to give us a description of this world in a coherent way. This so-called normal attitude toward perceiving nature presupposes that our ability of cognition directly interacts with nature and directly procures knowledge about nature for us.
This is not the case. Before World War I, when scientists tried to get on the track of the atom, many important conditions were lacking for the fulfillment of this task. Rutherford knew that within the atom there must be a nucleus and electrons. Therefore he tried to approach the unknown by imagining that the atom could be formed similar to the solar system. Instead of the atom, which was not yet accessible to him, he used as a model[iii] what was already known in order to consider what was unknown. In subsequent work with this model, in improving it, in the attempt to remove incompatibilities between the model and the actual atom, scientists used not only current knowledge of the atom, but went far beyond what we began with, by assuming quantum physics at the outset. The new world picture built up in this way also had to be most accurate scientifically to serve highly specialized fields. (Strictly speaking, this took place in part earlier; one can go back to the previous work in mathematics by Riemann.) This was more accurate and specialized than what we deal with in everyday language. In the microphysical world, we encounter objects that we describe partly with concepts from the macrophysical world, so that the question of the interconnection between both domains arises. These microphysical objects, however, have a real existence even though they have properties that cannot be described in terms of macrophysical concepts.
On 12 March 1895, Engels wrote a letter to Conrad Schmidt in which he discussed the relation of knowledge of the world in terms of concepts created by us to the objective reality itself. Engels wrote in part:
The reproaches you make against the law of value apply to all concepts, regarded from the standpoint of reality. The identity of thought and being, to express myself in Hegelian fashion, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other yet never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. But although a concept has the essential nature of a concept and cannot therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it must first be abstracted, it is still something more than a fiction, unless you are going to declare all the results of thought fictions because reality has to go a long way round before it corresponds to them, and even then only corresponds to them with asymptotic approximation . . . .
Or are the concepts which prevail in the natural sciences fictions because they by no means always coincide with reality? From the moment we accept the theory of evolution all our concepts of organic life correspond only approximately to reality. Otherwise there would be no change: on the day when concepts and reality completely coincide in the organic world development comes to an end. The concept fish includes a life in water and breathing through gills: how are you going to get from fish to amphibian without breaking through this concept? And it has been broken through. (1942, 527, 530)
In material production, we place instruments between ourselves and nature. From Hegel comes the designation of these instruments as means, as the means between us and nature, as our mediated effect on nature. Analogous with this is the widely used concept of means of thought. For example, Brownian motion or the splitting of the atom can be simulated by means of models in order to understand them better, to approach the real object in this way. Yet the atoms are not only split in the model, but also in reality. We can use models in experiments. In some fields we are only able to work with models. But the real object of microphysics is the microobject, even if it can only be examined by means of models. The statement that something is a model does not yet define its epistemological nature. The model is inserted between subject and object; it is elaborated; the results of this elaboration are then transcribed. The question is how far can this procedure be carried on. The essence of an object of cognition is not embraced by the model. The question is to what extent are the means of cognition and the object of cognition related to each other, to what extent is knowledge gained, do the model and the modeled object correspond to each other? Models are supposed to mediate between our knowledge and nature, to help us in the same way as in material production, to come to new “products,” new knowledge, in intellectual production.
This actually does not mean that we do not know anything about nature itself; that we cannot come to know it. The problem of reality is posed. Of course it could not be posed if the models of which are speaking were like that, for example, of a miniature railway that originally corresponded to a real railway, but only in miniature. But this miniature railway just models the known, copying it as exactly as possible. The previously mentioned models of science indeed are also constructed in analogy to known things, but do not copy the object to which they refer, since it is not yet known with the same precision (except for some unusual cases). The task here is to provide an increasingly exact understanding of something still unknown. On the other hand, would it be possible argue the matter if the problem of reality were a closed book, or only a closed book?
Thus the problem of reality exists in two aspects, since there is no thought that is detached from reality and since we do not know with certainty if our thinking corresponds to reality.
Two major groups of philosophical positions should be mentioned, a realist one and a positivist one. The difference between them concerns the understanding of the real itself. For the group of positivism, the real consists of what we consider as the observed (of course, by experimental investigation using scientific/technical apparatuses), whereas realism assumes that not only what is observed exists, but that there is, or can be, something more essential than that.
In both groups we find variations. Within realism. we find variations concerning the question of what should be considered real. For materialism, it is not possible that material nature is arises from the immaterial, since it exists independently of our consciousness. For critical realism, the real is ultimately dependent on spirit (from God, or an objective, absolute idea; thus it is an objective idealism).[iv] For internal realism the real is the material of our mental processes, which amounts to a subjective idealism.
Within positivism we find varying positions about what the observed elements consist of. After all, they always are attributed to the epistemological subject. Within so-called Machism (empirio-criticism), they are understood as sense data; in the versions of linguistic analysis, as subjectively judged forms of speech; in logical empiricism, as logical structures detached from the real.
The question discussed up to this point primarily concerns whether outside the world of our thoughts, another world still exists and what is it like. Moreover, we have the question about what mental activities are needed to open up this world to our cognition. We are concerned here with the epistemological question, in distinction to the ontological one.
Reality forced the makers of models, the scientists, to change their model if they wanted to find out what was real, and during the history of science, again and again, models that had come into contradiction with reality have had to be abandoned or modified. But how could something have a compelling effect if it did not exist? Thus we are dealing with model builders, models, and reality in a three-sided relationship, with correlations among them, with the activity produced by the constructor and mediated by the model aimed at reality. The constructor, mediated by the model, meets with the resistance of reality and is thus forced to change the model in order to gain more exact knowledge about reality. As a result, a model having proved to be useful cannot be entirely free from the correspondence, the resemblance, the copy, the representation of what has been modeled, that is, reality. Thus it contains the subjective as well as the objective.
Several positions also emerge in regard to the subject and the process of cognition. Here too, we can divide them into two major groups, one which affirms cognition and one which (in varying degrees) denies cognition.
We cannot say that every kind of realism includes the affirmation of cognition. Critical realism can accept cognition only within certain boundaries, because the objective spiritual being creating reality principally remains inaccessible to cognition, and in the best case can be characterized by a series of negations (as not mortal or immortal, for instance), thus indefinable.
Internal realism—and we must ask if it deserves this name since, after all, it reduces reality to the world of our thoughts!—allows in the best case, a hypothetical outside world, but denies its perceptibility, as Kant does with his epistemology.
Human beings have a direct access to nature, namely the nature of their own bodies, since they themselves are also part of nature. Elementary life activity takes place by direct and indirect material exchange with nature and within nature. Human access to nature is possible on the basis of those physical and intellectual tools created by humans. These tools are used only to accomplish the purpose intended. The activity aims at, or corresponds to, that part of nature that is supposed to be influenced by the mediating tools. To express it another way: In the course of humanity’s historical and social processes, “references” have congealed and are thus saved. The intellectual tools indeed do not exist outside of consciousness. Thus they differ from the material ones, but still represent something objectified in the sphere of the mental. Thanks to speech and societal processes, consciousness includes the accumulated “references” of nature. In a mediated way we therefore possess knowledge of nature itself. These intellectual means enable us to transmit such knowledge, so that it is proper to distinguish, but not to tear apart, the work of the natural sciences and epistemology. This process of acquiring knowledge always occurs in a social context. There is no production “in itself”—it is always socially determined production. Therefore the material and intellectual tools are always socially influenced. As a consequence, work in the natural sciences includes its models, idealizations, and so on; it is influenced by society. Insofar as social influences necessarily contain a connection to group interests, work in the natural sciences has roots in nonscientific conditions, which, at the same time provide the orientation for scientific work. Also by reason of this, a strict division between natural and social sciences cannot be maintained. From all this it follows that we can receive deeper knowledge about nature “in itself” not only through philosophy, but also through the work of natural sciences.