NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/sci/philosop/tech/4737

Text File | 1993-01-11 | 4.7 KB | 87 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Which theory before observation ?
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Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:45:14 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <schiller.726394556@hpas5> <[e-mail]> <schiller.726487694@hpas5> <[e-mail]> <schiller.726741786@hpas5>
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In article <schiller.726741786@hpas5>, [e-mail] (schiller c) writes:
|>
|> Wow ! When a sientist pretends to "see" an alpha-particle, in a Wilson chamber,
|> what he says is an abbreviated form of the following:
|>
|> We see a track. There is a ray of something producing a track. Now let's see if
|> one can describe this thing in more detail. Let's put the chamber in a magnet.
|> Ah, the track bends. Ah, the particle is positively charged. The mass over
|> charge ratio has a certain value. Then one measures the mass. One gets a
|> certain value. Ah, in the beginning of the century, particles with the same
|> properties had already been seen, and then such a particle, with that charge and
|> that mass, was named an "alpha particle".
|>
|> (This actually was the historical path.)
|>
|> If somebody sees a vapour ray with the same properties again, and directly says
|> : "It is an alpha particle !" He just wants to say that what he has seen now is
|> the same thing he has seen 30 years ago.
|>
|> No theory is involved. Just the idea that you see again what you had seen
|> before. Naturally, you need the concept of mass and charge, and of magnetic
|> field. But you can repeat the same reasoning for these concepts, just as done
|> for the concept "alpha particle".

I love it!  Instrumentalism lives!  Not only is no theory "involved"
according to this account.  No theory is even *necessary*.  I will not
attempt to repeat here all of the (well known and telling) criticisms
of such positions which date back to at least the '30s.  We seem, along
the way, to have lost track of various claims concerning "facts" and their
relation to theory.  Perhaps this is because the position has now been
exposed as the most naive of instrumentalist or operationalist views.  If
every claim of a scientist that employs a theoretical term (such as
'alpha particle', 'mass', 'charge', etc.) is simply *shorthand* for
a "real" observation statement, then of course there is nothing but
facts.  (Of course we are still left with those thorny questions pertaining
to why some of these facts seem more factual than others, and why some
of these facts can be used as *evidence* for others.)

For perhaps a different view of the relation of facts (whatever they may
be) to theory, consider the following quotation fragment:

    Are quarks actually real objects? ...  One atomic spectroscopist
    [... who has been searching for quarks ...]  has not yet seen any,
    nor have any been found at very high energies in cosmic rays.  So
    we must face the likelihood that quarks are not real.

    Actually that is just as well; mathematical quarks are even easier
    to work with than real ones, because certain restrictions imposed
    by reality of the particles can be dispensed with.  And working
    with mathematical quarks, we can begin to make a fairly staisfactory
    theory of the detailed properties of meson and baryon levels.

    If the quarks turn out, in fact, to be mathematical, then there
    is nothing to prevent the quark hypothesis from being equivalent
    to the bootstrap hypothesis. ...  At the present time, this seems
    a very likely state of affairs -- both hypotheses right and
    equivalent.  It is also possible, of course, that they are equivalent
    and both wrong -- or inequivalent and both wrong.  However, if
    it turns out that they are equivalent and one is right and the
    other wrong, we will probably be in trouble.

Certainly there appears to be a fairly sophisticated view of the relation
between fact (evidence?) and theory underlying these remarks.  It does not
seem to be an instrumentalist or operationalist view of theories.  Those who
can guess the identity of the author receive many points.  Those who can
guess the approximate of the quotation receive many more.  If anyone can
actually cite the source of the quotation, I'll be astounded.

--
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / [phone]
[e-mail] ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm