- Email: [email protected]
On what we know we don't know: Explanation, teory, linguistics and how questions shape them
Book Reviews
139
On What We Know We Don't Know: Explanation, Theory, Linguistics and How Questions Shape Them, Sylvain Bromberger (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 231 pp., $16.95 paper, $41.95 cloth. As the subtitle suggests, this collection of essays deals with 'Explanation, Theory, Linguistics, and How Questions Shape Them'. Bromberger primarily concerns himself with the role questions play in science. Apart from structuralistic approaches of the Sneedian type, scientific theories are normally regarded as deductively closed sets of accepted or at least seriously entertained statements, i.e. as systemized knowledge. In contrast to this, Bromberger considers unanswered questions (what we don't know) an essential part of a science (p. 101) since it is by questioning that we 'motivate and structure scientific activities' (p. 9). Consequently, he regards the apparent truism that science seeks answers to questions as the most tenable defining goal of scientific research (pp. 1-2). Such a seemingly trivial approach has far-reaching consequences. Contrary to what many philosophers of science since Duhem have claimed, scientific investigations do not confine themselves to collecting, systemizing and predicting experimental data. Rather, they are shaped by the available facts as well as by the unknown: 'The search for and discovery of scientific explanations [...] is essentially the search for and discovery of answers to questions that are unanswerable relative to prevailing beliefs and concepts. It is not, therefore, merely a quest for evidence to settle which available answer is correct, it is a quest for the unthought-of' (pp. 812). Thus, the emphasis Bromberger places on questions directly points to an often neglected task: philosophers of science should make explicit not only the rational principles that govern the acceptance of alleged knowledge but also the rationality involved in the choice of fiaxitful questions. The ability to choose rationally from all possible questions obviously requires a good deal of knowledge. Consequently, Bromberger tries to work out how much and what sort of things one must know in order to ask fruitful questions (pp. 128-136, 141-144, and 147-154). For example, one has to know that the presuppositions of a question are true. Unlike 'What binds neutrons and protons in an atomic nucleus?', the question 'What is the specific gravity of phlogiston?' does not represent a genuine item of ignorance, since both its existential and its attributive presupposition ('Phlogiston exists' and 'Phlogiston has mass') are false. To define scientific progress as 'eradication of ignorance' (p. 127) is not, however, to equate it with what Kuhn calls 'puzzle-solving'. Although the notion of puzzle-solving is probably the only current concept in the philosophy of science that points to the importance of questions, Bromberger's description of how ignorance affects research strategies has little in common with Kuhn's portrayal of 'normal science'. Since a puzzle is a rather special type of question, namely a question whose possible answers are known in advance (as in wavelength measurements), according to Kuhn, the assured existence of a solution is a criterion for a puzzle. In contrast to this, Bromberger's chief concern is the epistemic situation one is in when one believes that a certain question has a correct answer, but one cannot think of it (pp. 29, 69, 81, 108, and 117). Such a situation--which is often brought about by why-questions----calls for an explanation (p. 7). If more drastic innovations are required to overcome it, it may motivate scientific revolutions (p. 5). Hence, scientific progress does not only consist of answering questions but also of dissolving them, i.e. of revising the assumptions (presuppositions) that led to them (pp. 43, and 131, note 4). Consequently, Bromberger pays a lot of attention to why-questions. The essay entitled 'Why-Questions' and several passages in other papers deal with the linguistic analysis of these peculiar interrogative sentences. Hence, his approach to the philosophy of science bears directly on the old controversy of empiricism in which science should merely describe the formal relations between phenomena and avoid why-questions as opposed to realism in which science must inquire into the hidden causes of phenomena, that is to seek answers to why-questions.
Volume 21, No. 1, February 1995
140
Book Reviews
Bromberger's most interesting result is that 'why' behaves in ways other interrogative operators such as 'when', 'what', and so on, cannot (pp. 154-165). True presuppositions of whyquestions, therefore, 'seldom if ever determine unique answers' (p. 94; cf. p. 13). Bromberger concludes that the rational thing to do 'is to forget about why-questions and to turn to other questions instead' (p. 169). However, this merely methodological advice does not, by itself, refute realism, as true answers to why-questions include, as he emphasizes, 'some of our most beautiful intellectual prizes '~(ibid.). Bromberger's analysis of what constitutes a correct answer to a why-question doesn't, however, satisfy a realist since it rests on abnormic laws. That is to say: Bromberger sees such answers as departures from general rules (pp. 88-92, 95-96 and 108-109). However, a realist will object, saying science must also seek explanations (e.g. contact-action models) for general rules (e.g. the laws of ideal gas theory) and not just for unexpected phenomena. In future philosophers of science will have to work out the characteristic features that make such general explanations convincing. Alex Burri
University of Bern
Creating the Nation in Provincial France, Religion and Political Identity in Brittany, Caroline Ford (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993) xii + 255pp. ISBN 0691-05667-6. $45/£30. This is a book whose title overstates its scope, but whose conclusions go a long way towards justifying the overstatement. Ford's real concern is with the relationship between religion and politics in the department of the Finist~re between the 1880s and the 1920s. Geographically remote, this was a Breton speaking area of small scale bocage agriculture, devout catholicism and high emigration. It seems, therefore, an area unlikely to prove receptive to nationalism, which was left of centre and anticlerical for much of the nineteenth century, steeped in the revolutionary tradition that went back to the First Republic. Indeed it was, but Ford argues instead that a different form of national identity was created, based on a catholic culture and mediated through a regional identity. Thus, she implicitly rejects the simplified view of nationalism as being just a form of modernization, radiating out from the centre of civilisation and culture that was Paris. Instead of railways, recruitment and education which lie at the heart ofEugen Weber's analysis of the transition from peasants into Frenchmen, she concentrates on the roles played by religion, politics and social change. The religious catalyst in this case was the emergence of social catholicism among the lower clergy in the late 1880s, which pre-dated Rerum Novarum and led the parish priests of the Finist6re to use the machinery of the republic as a vehicle through which to tackle social problems, with themselves acting as power brokers to the capital. Crucial factors at work here included the influence of the Quimper seminary from the mid-1880s onwards, the independence of mind of the lower clergy of the area, and the studied use of Breton songs, almanachs and the Catholic press to spread the word. As for the political catalyst, this stemmed from the clergy's use of the democratic mechanism of the republic to articulate its campaign. Social change too played its part through the erosion of the traditional dominance of a powerful local nobility, strongly catholic and royalist, in favour of a new lay leadership drawn from the wealthier peasant and professional urban strata.
History of European Ideas
139
On What We Know We Don't Know: Explanation, Theory, Linguistics and How Questions Shape Them, Sylvain Bromberger (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 231 pp., $16.95 paper, $41.95 cloth. As the subtitle suggests, this collection of essays deals with 'Explanation, Theory, Linguistics, and How Questions Shape Them'. Bromberger primarily concerns himself with the role questions play in science. Apart from structuralistic approaches of the Sneedian type, scientific theories are normally regarded as deductively closed sets of accepted or at least seriously entertained statements, i.e. as systemized knowledge. In contrast to this, Bromberger considers unanswered questions (what we don't know) an essential part of a science (p. 101) since it is by questioning that we 'motivate and structure scientific activities' (p. 9). Consequently, he regards the apparent truism that science seeks answers to questions as the most tenable defining goal of scientific research (pp. 1-2). Such a seemingly trivial approach has far-reaching consequences. Contrary to what many philosophers of science since Duhem have claimed, scientific investigations do not confine themselves to collecting, systemizing and predicting experimental data. Rather, they are shaped by the available facts as well as by the unknown: 'The search for and discovery of scientific explanations [...] is essentially the search for and discovery of answers to questions that are unanswerable relative to prevailing beliefs and concepts. It is not, therefore, merely a quest for evidence to settle which available answer is correct, it is a quest for the unthought-of' (pp. 812). Thus, the emphasis Bromberger places on questions directly points to an often neglected task: philosophers of science should make explicit not only the rational principles that govern the acceptance of alleged knowledge but also the rationality involved in the choice of fiaxitful questions. The ability to choose rationally from all possible questions obviously requires a good deal of knowledge. Consequently, Bromberger tries to work out how much and what sort of things one must know in order to ask fruitful questions (pp. 128-136, 141-144, and 147-154). For example, one has to know that the presuppositions of a question are true. Unlike 'What binds neutrons and protons in an atomic nucleus?', the question 'What is the specific gravity of phlogiston?' does not represent a genuine item of ignorance, since both its existential and its attributive presupposition ('Phlogiston exists' and 'Phlogiston has mass') are false. To define scientific progress as 'eradication of ignorance' (p. 127) is not, however, to equate it with what Kuhn calls 'puzzle-solving'. Although the notion of puzzle-solving is probably the only current concept in the philosophy of science that points to the importance of questions, Bromberger's description of how ignorance affects research strategies has little in common with Kuhn's portrayal of 'normal science'. Since a puzzle is a rather special type of question, namely a question whose possible answers are known in advance (as in wavelength measurements), according to Kuhn, the assured existence of a solution is a criterion for a puzzle. In contrast to this, Bromberger's chief concern is the epistemic situation one is in when one believes that a certain question has a correct answer, but one cannot think of it (pp. 29, 69, 81, 108, and 117). Such a situation--which is often brought about by why-questions----calls for an explanation (p. 7). If more drastic innovations are required to overcome it, it may motivate scientific revolutions (p. 5). Hence, scientific progress does not only consist of answering questions but also of dissolving them, i.e. of revising the assumptions (presuppositions) that led to them (pp. 43, and 131, note 4). Consequently, Bromberger pays a lot of attention to why-questions. The essay entitled 'Why-Questions' and several passages in other papers deal with the linguistic analysis of these peculiar interrogative sentences. Hence, his approach to the philosophy of science bears directly on the old controversy of empiricism in which science should merely describe the formal relations between phenomena and avoid why-questions as opposed to realism in which science must inquire into the hidden causes of phenomena, that is to seek answers to why-questions.
Volume 21, No. 1, February 1995
140
Book Reviews
Bromberger's most interesting result is that 'why' behaves in ways other interrogative operators such as 'when', 'what', and so on, cannot (pp. 154-165). True presuppositions of whyquestions, therefore, 'seldom if ever determine unique answers' (p. 94; cf. p. 13). Bromberger concludes that the rational thing to do 'is to forget about why-questions and to turn to other questions instead' (p. 169). However, this merely methodological advice does not, by itself, refute realism, as true answers to why-questions include, as he emphasizes, 'some of our most beautiful intellectual prizes '~(ibid.). Bromberger's analysis of what constitutes a correct answer to a why-question doesn't, however, satisfy a realist since it rests on abnormic laws. That is to say: Bromberger sees such answers as departures from general rules (pp. 88-92, 95-96 and 108-109). However, a realist will object, saying science must also seek explanations (e.g. contact-action models) for general rules (e.g. the laws of ideal gas theory) and not just for unexpected phenomena. In future philosophers of science will have to work out the characteristic features that make such general explanations convincing. Alex Burri
University of Bern
Creating the Nation in Provincial France, Religion and Political Identity in Brittany, Caroline Ford (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993) xii + 255pp. ISBN 0691-05667-6. $45/£30. This is a book whose title overstates its scope, but whose conclusions go a long way towards justifying the overstatement. Ford's real concern is with the relationship between religion and politics in the department of the Finist~re between the 1880s and the 1920s. Geographically remote, this was a Breton speaking area of small scale bocage agriculture, devout catholicism and high emigration. It seems, therefore, an area unlikely to prove receptive to nationalism, which was left of centre and anticlerical for much of the nineteenth century, steeped in the revolutionary tradition that went back to the First Republic. Indeed it was, but Ford argues instead that a different form of national identity was created, based on a catholic culture and mediated through a regional identity. Thus, she implicitly rejects the simplified view of nationalism as being just a form of modernization, radiating out from the centre of civilisation and culture that was Paris. Instead of railways, recruitment and education which lie at the heart ofEugen Weber's analysis of the transition from peasants into Frenchmen, she concentrates on the roles played by religion, politics and social change. The religious catalyst in this case was the emergence of social catholicism among the lower clergy in the late 1880s, which pre-dated Rerum Novarum and led the parish priests of the Finist6re to use the machinery of the republic as a vehicle through which to tackle social problems, with themselves acting as power brokers to the capital. Crucial factors at work here included the influence of the Quimper seminary from the mid-1880s onwards, the independence of mind of the lower clergy of the area, and the studied use of Breton songs, almanachs and the Catholic press to spread the word. As for the political catalyst, this stemmed from the clergy's use of the democratic mechanism of the republic to articulate its campaign. Social change too played its part through the erosion of the traditional dominance of a powerful local nobility, strongly catholic and royalist, in favour of a new lay leadership drawn from the wealthier peasant and professional urban strata.
History of European Ideas