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International Phenomenological Society

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Review: Précis of The Advancement of Science

Author(s): Philip Kitcher and Philip Kitcher
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 611-617
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Vol. LV, No. 3, September 1995

Precis of TheAdvancementof Science*

PHILIPKITCHER
Universityof Californiaat San Diego

During the past three decades, a view of science that was once commonplace
among philosophers, historians, sociologists, and reflective scientists, has
come underincreasinglysevere attack.In many quartersthe once popularidea
that the naturalsciences make progress and that scientists make their deci-
sions in accordancewith objective standardsis regardedas a myth. The chief
negative aim of TheAdvancementof Science (henceforthAS) is to argue that
the insights of recent critics can be combined with central ideas of the old
orthodoxy to sustain the progressivenessand the objectivity of the sciences.
Its more constructive goal is to advance new accounts of scientific progress
and of scientificreasoning.
After an introductorychapterin which the projectis discussed, I proceed,
in Chapter2, to develop a moderatelydetailedhistoricalstudy which serves to
introduceand motivate some of my guiding conceptions. Tracing the initial
acceptanceof Darwin's proposalsthat all organismsare related by a process
of descent with modificationand that naturalselection is one possible agent
of evolutionarychange, I arguethat this revolutionarychange in biology was
adoptedon the basis of compelling reasons. Darwin and his allies were able
to construct an argumentthat showed how importantaspects of the living
world could only be explainedif the doctrinethatall species were createdsep-
aratelygave way to the thesis of the universalrelationshipof organisms.My
reconstructionof this argumentattemptsto show that the Darwinianrevolu-
tion cannot simply be conceived in the traditionalterms of the replacementof
one theory, conceived as an axiomatic deductive system, by another.Rather,
the transitioninvolves substantialchanges in a multi-dimensionalentity, the
practice of biological science. Darwin modified the language of biology, the
set of questions taken as significant,the ways of explaining phenomena,the
kinds of observationaland experimentaltechniquesthat were consideredcru-
cial, as well as the collection of acceptedstatements.

* Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity

without Illusions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

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 The second half of the chapterexplores the way in which the practice of
evolutionary biology has been subsequently modified, through the modern
synthesis in which neo-Darwinism was fashioned, to the state of the disci-
pline at the present day. By rehearsingthe history, if only sketchily, I aim to
show how evolutionary biology has been cumulative in importantrespects.
This discussion, couched in terms of practices, exemplifies the account of
progressto be introducedlater.
Chapter 3 is intended to liberate the notions introduced in my historio-
graphyfrom the specific Darwiniancontext. I arguethat the growth of a field
of science can be analyzedfrom (at least) threeperspectives.One can focus on
the moment-by-momentchanges in the cognitive lives of individuals,as they
interactwith one anotherand with asocial nature.To adopt this perspective
requires the articulationof a psychological picture of the knowing subject,
and I turnto contemporarycognitive science for an outline of some relevant
properties.(Since I intend not to take a standon disputedissues, the resultant
picture is highly schematic.) Still focusing on individuals, one can look at
the changes that occur in a scientist's set of relatively enduring commit-
ments. Here the notion of practice, introducedin Chapter2, reappears,and I
identify individual practices as consisting of the language that the scientist
uses, the questions he identifies as the significant problems of the field, the
statements(and otherrepresentations)he accepts,the set of schemataunderly-
ing the texts he would count as explanatory,his paradigmsand criteria for
identifying othersas authoritative,for good experimentationand observation,
and for correct scientific reasoning.Each of the components of an individual
practice is discussed. The chapter concludes with an account of consensus
practices, conceived as reconstructionsof the state of knowledge of a commu-
nity. Like individualpractices,consensuspracticesare multidimensional,and,
to a first approximation,the consensus practice of a community consists of
those sharedelements of individualpractices,togetherwith all the additional
commitmentsthat come from shareddecisions to regardparticularsubgroups
as authoritativewith respectto particularclustersof questions.
So far AS has attempted to assemble the ingredients out of which ac-
counts of progress and rationalitywill be fashioned. Chapter4 turns to the
task of characterizingscientific progress. I propose that progress should be
understoodin termsof the relationsamong consensuspractices.Thereare two
fundamentaltypes of progress.The first is conceptualprogress,which occurs
when we modify our language so that it better conforms to the divisions of
natural kinds and enables us to formulate descriptions picking out those
kinds.' The second is explanatoryprogress, consisting in the replacementof

HereI drawon an accountof conceptualchangein science,originallydevelopedin my

essays "Theories,Theorists,and TheoreticalChange"(Philosophical Review, 87,
519-47) and "Genes" (British Journalfor the Philosophy of Science, 33, 337-59).

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incorrector partialexplanatoryschematawith schematathat are more correct
or more complete. Guiding my discussion of explanatoryprogress is that we
can recognize a correctidentificationof a dependenceamongphenomena,even
when it is elaboratedin terms of faulty principles, and we can note the ways
in which the explanatoryschema that captures that dependence is rendered
more correct or more complete. Early atomic chemistry was right to trace
chemical reactions to reshuffling of atoms, even though the first atomic
chemists were often wrong about the principles that governed the redistribu-
tions. Similarly, Mendelian genetics claimed, correctly, that phenomena of
hereditydepend on the transmissionof particulatefactors that occur in pairs,
even though there was much that had to be correctedbefore classical geneti-
cists achieved accuratecomplete schematafor explaining inheritance.I show
how the developments here are cumulative, and how they can be understood
in terms of relations among the argumentpatternsaccepted as explanatoryat
differentstages in the developmentof the relevantsciences.
At this point it becomes possible to introduce the notion of a significant
question. Questions are significant because answers to them are needed for
showing how the accepted explanatoryschemata are to be applied in situa-
tions in which there are primafacie difficulties or for demonstratingthat an
apparentlyproblematicpresuppositionof some accepted schema can be true.
At any given stage in the history of a scientific field, practitionerscan usu-
ally represent the significant questions in hierarchical fashion (answers to
some questions seem to depend on answers to others), and they look for an-
swers to significantquestions or for techniquesthatwill deliver such answers.
Much scientific progressconsists in the eliminationof falsehood or ignorance
in favor of true answers to significant questions. Thus I regard the popular
disquiet at the idea that science attains truthas partly due to a focus on the
wrong units (concentration on general theories rather than on specific
significantquestions)and partlydue to a failureof nerve.
Sometimes, however, it is difficult, or impossible to reach the truth, and
scientists have to rest content with approachingthe truth.Breaking with the
classical discussions of verisimilitude,2I suggest that approximatetruthis a
notion that should find its home in particularcontexts, most notably when
we are attemptingto fix a value for a magnitude.Here, the naturalproposalis
to measure approximationto the truthaccording to the distance between the
value we assign and the correctvalue. Insteadof attemptingto develop com-
plex measures,we should let the world do the work for us.
Chapter5 takes up some obvious criticisms of my account of scientific
progress,inspiredby variousrecentobjectionsto the kind of old-fashionedre-
alism underlyingmy account. In answer to Kuhnianworries that invoking a

2
See, for example, Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, Hutchin-
son, 1959), which has inspired a large subsequent literature.

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correspondencebetweenourrepresentationsandthe worlddependson the pos-
sibility of a perspectivefrom which the matchcan be ascertained,I arguethat
no such Archimedeanpoint is needed. Next, I take up the pessimistic induc-
tion on the history of science, arguingthat, when the fine details are exposed,
Laudan's contention that many theories we now view as false were once ex-
tremely successful should not shake our confidence that the success of con-
temporaryscience betokens truth.When we analyze past practices, we dis-
cover that the statementsinvolved in their successes are ones we continue to
recognize as true;conversely, those statementswe have rejectedwere not in-
volved in the past successes. I continue by contending that van Fraassen's
constructiveempiricismsettles for too little, and that we should not favor an
epistemic attitudethatcounsels agnosticismwhenever we might be wrong.
My account of scientific progress presupposes that there are universal
goals that govern all scientific inquiry, the goals of achieving a perspicuous
description of natureand of attainingsignificant truth.Hence the account is
vulnerableto the objection that the goals of science change in the course of
scientific inquiry. I attemptto meet Laudan's version of this criticism by ar-
guing thatonly the derivativegoals are modified,while the more fundamental
aims, those which I identify, endure.
I go on to address the claim that social forces are so strong that the
modificationof our practices has nothing to do with the accuraterepresenta-
tion of nature.In effect, the strongtheses of social constructivismare the po-
lar opposite of naive visions of science that hypothesize bloodless scientists
free from all social and personal complications. As in the dispute between
genetic deterministsand extreme environmentaldeterminists,the interesting
and plausible positions lie between the poles.
After this discussion, I turn to metaphysicalquestions about some of the
notions on which my account of progress relies. How are we to understand
talk of naturalkinds and objectivedependencies?One response,that of strong
realism, takes these at face value, and regardsepistemological worries about
them as groundedin empiricist(Humean)prejudices.An alternative,Kantian
in spirit,links the notions of naturalkind and objective dependencyto our or-
dering of nature,takingthese to emerge, in the limit of inquiry,from the pro-
ject of unifying our system of belief. AS is officially neutralbetween these
approaches,although the second is that defended in some of my other writ-
ings.3 The chaptercloses with an attemptto dissolve alleged puzzles about
explanatorylosses in the historyof science (so-called "Kuhn-loss").

3 See "ExplanatoryUnification and the Causal Structureof the World" (in P. Kitcher and
W. Salmon [eds.], Scientific Explanation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1989, 410-505), "Projecting the Order of Nature," in R. Butts (ed.), Kant's
Philosophy of Physical Science (Dordrecht:Reidel, 1986, 201-35), and "The Unity of
Science and the Unity of Nature," in Paolo Parrini (ed.), Kant and Contemporary
Epistemology (Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1994, 253-72).

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 With an accountof scientific progressand of the goals of inquiryin place,
Chapter6 turnsto epistemological questions. These are framed from the be-
ginning in terms of strategies for achieving the epistemic goals previously
singled out. The task of the chapteris to consider candidatestandardsfor ap-
praising cognitive processes, and to understandhow they might apply to
episodes in the history of science. After respondingto some popularmisun-
derstandingsof the notion of rationality,I discuss an externalstandardfor sci-
entific rationality.According to this standard,shifts in individualpractice are
rationalif they are producedby processes that,given the way the world is and
the nature of human cognition, have a maximally high propensity to yield
new practices that accord with the cognitive good. Although this standard
seems to capturethe centralideas behind the notion of scientific rationality,it
can be elaboratedin many differentways, and, to meet importantobjections,
several complicationswould have to be introduced.After trying to show how
difficult it is to produce a satisfactorystandard,I recommenddissolving the
notion of rationality, in favor of the much vaguer idea of a "sufficiently
good" cognitive process and of comparisonsbetween the epistemic successes
yielded by differentcognitive processes,measuredaccordingto somethinglike
the externalstandard.
The rest of the chapterendeavorsto show how these less definite notions
provide enough to draw the distinctionsthat philosophershave often wanted
to make. Although my approachcounts few historical figures as irrational,
there are limits to tolerance,and I arguethat it can supportthe judgment that
"~scientific creationists"are pseudoscientists.I then consider three models for
analyzing debates in the history of science: a rationalistmodel implicit in the
work of many philosophers,an anti-rationalistmodel found in the writings of
Feyerabendand many contemporarysociologists of science, and a compro-
mise model. The last incorporatesmy own approachto judgments of sci-
entific rationality,honors some of the points on which anti-rationalistshave
wanted to insist, but, I believe, preserves the major themes that have moti-
vated philosophicalrationalists.
The chapterconcludes by showing how the compromisemodel is intended
to apply to some episodes in the history of science. I show briefly how the
model exposes importantfeatures of the DarwinianRevolution, discussed in
Chapter2, how it is instantiatedin the acceptance of Copernicanismin the
seventeenth century, and how it can shed light on the resolution of a nine-
teenthcenturydebatein geology, the "GreatDevonianControversy."
Chapter7 addressesthe task of reconstructingthe processes of observation
and reasoning that underlie individual scientific decisions. I argue that the
deepest worriesaboutthe theory-ladennessof observationoccur in the context
of introducingnew instrumentsor observationaltechniques,but that there are
objective ways of supportingthe conclusion that such instrumentsand tech-

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niques are reliable.Directly addressingone of the most problematicexamples,
Galileo's use of the new telescope and his simultaneousannouncementof the
moons of Jupiter,I contend contra Feyerabend,that Galileo could invoke in-
dependentlyjustified claims that would supportthe reliability of the instru-
ment.
I continue with an account of ampliative inference that emphasizes the
centralrole of eliminative induction.Acceptance of scientific conclusions of-
ten proceeds explicitly througheliminationof alternatives.I try to show that
my account can shed light on some traditionalpuzzles about confirmation,
and that it can addressthe chief difficulty besetting eliminativist approaches,
the problemof underdetermination. Duhemianconcernsare tackledby recog-
nizing that alternative ways of amending a system of beliefs involve epis-
temic losses, characterizablein terms of Chapter 4. When a group of hy-
potheses is at odds with some observationalor experimentalreport,it is cru-
cial to explore the explanatorylosses that would occur if some members of
the inconsistent set were eliminated. Making up the deficiency may involve
new contradictionsor new losses, generatinga tree-like structureof possible
adjustmentsto the corpusof beliefs. The adjustmentsarejudged by their abil-
ity to preserveexplanatoryand predictivesuccesses, while avoiding inconsis-
tency, subject to a constraintof not destroyingthe unity of the system of ex-
planationsoffered by the practice.Fundamentalrevisions of scientificpractice
are often founded on recognizing that the practice faces numerousinconsis-
tency predicamentsfrom which there is no known escape without severe ex-
planatoryloss.
In the concluding sections of the chapter I attempt to illustrate this ac-
count of scientific reasoning by showing how it applies to Darwin's discus-
sions of biogeographical distribution in the Origin of Species, and to
Lavoisier's attackon phlogistonchemistry.I offer reconstructionsintendedto
show that elimination of alternatives,explorationof lines of escape from in-
consistency, and the constraintof unification all play major roles in the ar-
guments espoused by scientists at importantmoments of scientific change.
The final chapter begins the exploration of social strategies for learning
aboutnature.Besides the traditionalphilosophicalproblemof consideringthe
cognitive processes that individual scientists ought to follow, it is important
to consider the ways in which the organization of scientific communities
might promote (or retard)the elaborationof successful consensus practices.
Idealizing, I identify individual scientists with Bayesian decision-makers,
whose motivations are partlyepistemic, partlynon-epistemic,and who stand
in variouskinds of social relations.For particularkinds of recurrentscientific
situations,I ask what kinds of relationsamong individualsor institutionalar-
rangementsmight best promotethe modificationof consensus practice.I also

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explore the ways in which various kinds of motivationsmight lead the com-
munity close to the best distributions.
Virtuallythe entire chapterconsists in developing highly idealized formal
models which attainprecisionby ignoringfeaturesof everydayscientific situ-
ations. I show that the effects of competition among scientists, and of sys-
tems of scientific authorityare very complex. Under at least some conditions,
the practiceof deferringto authoritiesdoes not necessarily lead to stagnation
in the community. I also argue that there are many occasions on which it is
good for the community not to reach consensus on a single point of view,
and that division of opinion (and consequentdivision of cognitive labor) can
sometimes be securedprecisely because scientists are motivatedby non-epis-
temic concerns. One moral of the chapter is that motives and factors often
dismissed as beyond the pale of responsible scientific decision-making can
play a valuable role in the cognitive life of the community. A second is that
detailedexplorationof the ways in which individualdecision-makinginteracts
with the institutionsthat embody community-widecognitive strategies is an
important,neglected, and tractable,epistemologicalproblem.
AS concludes with a very brief discussion of the loose ends it leaves dan-
gling. I regardthe book as introducingnotions that are useful for understand-
ing scientific change, which need to be elaboratedin the context of more de-
tailed accounts from cognitive science, more extensive historical studies,
more precise principles of individualreasoning, and more realistic models of
social learning.Furthermore,as the final paragraphexplicitly acknowledges,
the entirediscussion is directedtowardsunderstandingthe cognitive aims and
successes of the sciences. Beyond that discussion looms an even largerissue,
that of understandinghow the sciences contributenot just to our epistemic
well-being, but to human flourishing.AS is intended as a first step towards
that importantissue-which I see as the issue for a critical philosophy of
science-but it is only the first step.

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