SHOULD WE ABOLISH THE DISTINCTION

BETWEEN SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS? l

JOHN T. BLACKMORE

SIMPLICIO: Why would anyone want to do that?

SAGREDO: Because there is no agreement on the line between
them. People with different theories of reference and epistem-
ology put it at different places or drop it altogether.

SIMPLICIO: Could you give some examples?

SAGREDO: Yes. Einstein thought that science should attempt to
understand the real physical world) Bohr thought that was "meta-
physical". Perrin helped confirm the reality of atoms. Mach rejected
the existence of atoms as "metaphysical". Faraday doubted that he
could distinguish between science and metaphysics)

SIMPLICIO: But if we dump the distinction how can we tell science

from religion?
SAGREDO: By calling one "natural" and the other "supernatural".

SIMPLICIO: And between science and speculation?

SAGREDO: Scientists often speculate.

SIMPLICIO: No. Astronomy is science; astrology is speculation.

Chemistry is science; alchemy is speculation. Physics is science...
SAGREDO: Nothing is wrong with speculation if it is properly
qualified and no one is deceived by it.

SIMPLICIO: It's still not science.

SAGREDO: Rational people often speculate, but only believe that
their speculations are true to the extent that the weight of evidence
supports them. it is irrational and superstitious to believe beyond
that weight.

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 JOHN T. BLACKMORE

SIMPLICIO: Alright. Some types of speculation may be useful

for science without being strictly scientific, but any speculation or
inquiry of any kind beyond what is empirical or conscious is meta-
physical and unscientific.
SAGREDO: You are criticizing an epistemology and calling it
"metaphysics". You are confusing two different branches of philos-
ophy. Your own epistemology is direct or "presentist" and you
conflate an indirect or "representist" one with metaphysics. Your
definition and distinction are understandable for a follower of
Berkeley, Hume, or Kant. if the physical world is within conscious
experience or can be potentially drawn within it, then your contrast
between science and metaphysics sounds plausible, but if one
holds a realistic epistemilogy and follows the representative theory
of perception as did Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Planck, and
Einstein and happen to identify the external physical world with
what is always and entirely beyond conscious appearance, then
your definition and distinction fail. a You will criticize what an
epistomological realist means by the physical world as "metaphys-
ical", just as Bohr criticized Einstein and Mach attacked the reality
of atoms.

SIMPLICIO: An atom is a mere idea, construct, or image. If it is

beyond conscious experience it is metaphysical.
SAGREDO: Some scientists are realists and some are idealists.
Your definition of "metaphysics" is fine for epistemological
idealists and perhaps even direct realists but not for representational
realists.

SIMPLICIO: I am the realist. Only idealists inquire beyond

experience.
SAGREDO: Even though my definitions are the older and more
traditional ones, 1 don't want to argue over words, s If any signifi-
cant number of reputable scientists reject your distinction between
science and metaphysics, and they do, and it could even be a
majority, then it is unsatisfactory. Can't you see that?

SIMPLICIO: How do you define metaphysics?

SAGREDO: In the traditional way as theory of reality, all reality,
including what is empirical and conscious.

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SIMPLICIO: But that's what science studies.

SAGREDO: Precisely, and that's why science is metaphysical for
indirect realists. The very goal of science is to understand the real
world, so it has to be metaphysical.

SIMPL1CIO: I prefer Kant's definition in the preamble of his Pro-

legomena (section no. 1). What is metaphysical knowledge? "Know-
ledge lying beyond experience."
SAGREDO: I repeat, by limiting metaphysics to the study of what is
not empirical or not conscious, one risks labeling what many realists
consider to be the external world as "metaphysical" in Kant's pejor-
ative sense which saturates his Prolegomena, and realists from
Galileo to Einstein have never accepted that approach. If the entire
physical world is "beyond experience", Kant's definition cannot do
for scientists or science.

S1MPLICIO: People who don't accept it don't have to practice

science, in fact they're only doing metaphysics anyhow.
SAGREDO: If all scientists who accept the representative theory of
perception and a realistic epistemology have to walk the plank, there
won't be many left.

SIMPLICIO: Okay. My friends will be empirical realists and do

empirical science, and your friends can be metaphysical realists and
do metaphysical science.
SAGREDO: Do you want to stop all science until idealists persuade
realists to become "empirical realists"? It will never happen. Both
epistemological persuasions are deeply rooted, and if we are to
continue doing science given this split we will have to get rid of
divisive distinctions such as that between science and metaphysics,
which one of the major philosophical communities in science will
never accept.

SIMPLICIO: And I will never accept that the "real physical world"
is beyond experience. That is an absurd, impossible position.
SAGREDO: But Galileo, Newton, Planck, and Einstein held that
"absurd", "impossible", epistemotogical position. It is both real and
understandable.

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 JOHN T. BLACKMORE

SIMPLICIO: I don't believe it.

SAGREDO: Are quotations good enough?

SIMPLICIO: 1 will find counter-quotations.

SAG REDO: How about this? Einstein to Schlick ( 1930):
In general your presentation fails to correspond to my con-
ceptual style insofar as I find your whole orientation so to
speak too positivistic... 1 tell you straight out: Physics is
the attempt at the conceptual construction of a model of the
real world and of its lawful s t r u c t u r e . . . You will be aston-
ished about the "metaphysicist" Einstein. But every four- and
two-legged animal is de facto in this sense metaphysicist. 6

SIMPLICIO: 1 don't understand.

SAGREDO: Here's what Holton says:
The rest of the pilgrimage is easy to reconstruct, as Einstein
more and more openly and consciously turned Mach's doctrine
upside down - minimizing rather than maximizing the role of
actual details of experience, both at the beginning and at the
end of scientific theory, and opting for a rationalism that
almost invariably would lead him to the conception of an
objective "real" world behind the phenomena to which our
senses are exposed .7

SIMPLICIO: That's only one person out of the four.

SAGREDO: Here's what Planck wrote in his Scientific Autobiog-
raphy:
The essential point is that the world of sensation is not the
only world which may conceivably exist, but that there is still
another world. To be sure, this other world is not directly
accessible to us but its existence is indicated, time and again,
with compelling clarity, not only by practical life, but also by
the labors of science.a

SIMPLICIO: Very weak. It's not clear that he's referring to the
physical world at all.
SAGREDO: Holton quotes Planck more clearly from a short piece
written in 1931 :
Now, the two sentences: ( 1) There is a real outer world which
exists independently o f our act o f knowing and (2) The real

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outer world is not directly knowable form together the cardi-

nal hinge on which the whole structure of physical science
turns. 9

SIMPLICIO: What about Galileo and Newton?

SAGREDO: Alright, let's turn directly to Galileo's own words in
his Assayer of 1623...10

SIMPLICIO: No! I'm tired of quotations.

SAGREDO: Then read Burtt's The Metaphysical Foundations of
Modem Science for the epistemological ideas of both Galileo and
Newton.

SIMPLICIO: Look pedant, can't you prove anything by the use of

strict logic?
SAGREDO: Both Galileo and Newton distinguished between
primary and secondary qualities.

SIMPLICIO: A few words here and there doesn't mean they did it
all the time.
SAGREDO: Do you know of anything in their writings or lives
which was not consistent with belief in the reality and importance
of that distinction?

SIMPLICIO: No.
SAGREDO: Then isn't it probable that they believed or assumed
that the distinction was real and important?

SIMPLICIO: Possibly.
SAGREDO: Did Galileo and Newton accept that the primary pur-
pose of the Copernican theory was merely to "save the appearances"?

SIMPLICIO: No.
SAGREDO: Did they want to understand the re',d motion of real
heavenly bodies?

SIMPLICIO: Yes.
SAGREDO: Is it likely that anyone would.distinguish between
primary and secondary qualities, reject "save the appearances"

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 JOHN T. BLACKMORE

science, and try to understand the real motion of real heavenly

bodies without being a representational realist?

SIMPLICIO: I guess not.

SAGREDO: Will you now accept that there is substantial evidence
that all four men, Galileo, Newton, Planck, and Einstein, were repre-
sentational realists during their mature years?

SIMPLICIO: Yes.,
SAGREDO: Do you think it is wise to consider the epistemology of
four of the greatest scientists of all time "metaphysical" in Kant's
pejorative sense?

SIMPLICIO: No.
SAGREDO: Do you think it benefits science?

SIMPLICIO: No.
SAGREDO: Do you think my logic is strict enough?

SIMPLICIO: Yes. In fact I'm ready to compromise. I will abandon

Kant's unfair distinction if you will admit that what you mean by
"science" is metaphysical after all.
SAGREDO: ! have already stated it. Both science and metaphysics
are concerned with understanding reality. The former looks for ideal
laws which hold under ideal, limited variable conditions, and the
latter for the most basic universal truths which hold under real,
unlimited variable conditions. Furthermore, all science, like all
rational wisdom, rests on referential, epistemological, and meta-
physical assumptions.

SIMPLICIO: What is the difference between science and "rational

wisdom"?
SAGREDO: Science is merely one part of rational wisdom. History,
philosophy, and common sense are other forms.

SIMPLICIO: Then there is more to reason than science?

SAGREDO: Yes. Hopefully we all use reason in most of the things
we do.

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SIMPLICIO: What's wrong with distinguishing between rational

wisdom and metaphysics?
SAGREDO: Because in so far as they would fully exclude each other
the distinction collapses. Rational wisdom like metaphysics is also
concerned with reality, both can be rational, and like science most
or all of rational wisdom rests on metaphysical assumptions.

SIMPLICIO: What will you substitute for the distinction between

science and metaphysics?
SAGREDO: First, I am not arguing that the two are identical.
Technically speaking, what is inseparable may still be distinguish.
able. And second, what 1 oppose is a juxtaposition as if they were
mutually exclusive and discrimination against any recognized epis-
temological option. As for alternatives to "science versus meta-
physics", let me repeat again: 1 will try to distinguish what is natural
from what is supernatural and reason from superstition. But science
rests on metaphysical assumptions, that is, suppositions about what
is real, and everyone in science can and should avoid letting super-
natural and superstitious beliefs influence those assumptions.

SIMPLICIO: Is everything supernatural superstitious?

SAGREDO: No. Superstition is believing beyond what historians call
"weight of evidence". Some people are superstitious in both science
and religion but neither is necessary or desirable.

SIMPLICIO: i see your point now, in fact the whole argument. If

science rests on metaphysical assumptions, then any attempt to fully
contrapose science with metaphysics is impossible.
SAGREDO: Good.

SIMPLICIO: And if we want to avoid setting up a pejorative distinc-

tion, then any attempt to narrow the definition of metaphysics to
less than the study of all reality is wrong.
SAGREDO: Very good.

SIMPLICIO: And in conclusion, if these arguments are sound, then

the contraposition of science with metaphysics to the extent that it
is possible shouM be abolished, but since science and metaphysics

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are n o t identical, we cannot and probably should not abolish all

distinctions between them.
S A G R E D O : E x a c t l y right.

INSTITUT FOR THEORETISCHE PHYSIK

DER UNIVERSIT~,T WIEN,
WIEN, (JSTERREICH A-1090

NOTES

i With apologies to Galileo and his Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems.
2 Gerald Holton, "Math, Einstein, and the Search for Reality", Daedalus,
97 (1968), 660.
3 Yehuda Elkana, The Discovery of the Conservation o f Energy, (Cam-
bridge, 1974), p. 169.
4 E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations o f Modern Science, (Garden
City, 1954) and Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of" Scientific Thought,
(Cambridge, 1973), especially the article on Math and Einstein.
s See S.Z. Hasan, Realism: An Attempt to Trace Its Origin and Develop-
merit in Its Chief Representatives, (Cambridge, 1928).
Holton (footnote 2), p. 660.
Holton (footnote 4), pp. 240 -241.
s Max Planck, Scientiflc Autobiography, (London, 1950), p. 102.
Holton (footnote 4), p. 244.
,0 "I think that if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and
numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds."
C.D. O'Malley and S. Drake (eds.), Controversy on the Comets o f 1618,
(Philadelphia, 1960), pp. 276-277. Also quoted in Elizabesth G. Salmon,
"Galileo: Physics and Phi/osophy ", International Philosophical Quarterly,
2 (1962),623-624.

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