Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:31:33.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Method to “Meaning”: A Reply to Leplin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Nancy J. Nersessian
Nancy J. Nersessian*
Affiliation:
Program in History of Science Princeton University
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Program in History of Science, 129 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544–1017.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In his article, “Is Essentialism Unscientific?” (1988), Jarrett Leplin claims that I do not have sufficient grounds for rejecting the customary “philosophical method of discovery” that allows for the direct transfer of theories developed in the philosophy of language to science. While admitting that all attempts at transfer thus far have failed, he still maintains that method is sound. I argue that the wholesale failure of these attempts is reason enough to suspect the method and to try to devise one more suitable to fathoming how “meaning”, “reference”, and “meaning change” are to be understood for scientific theories. The method I have proposed in Nersessian (1984b), and subsequent work, demands that we learn how to incorporate the actual practices of meaning construction in science into our analyses. Leplin distorts my analysis and, thus, fails to understand the insights that study provides.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 678 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Preparation of this paper was supported by National Science Foundation Scholars Award DIR-8821422. I wish to thank Floris Cohen for his invaluable assistance in revising this article.

References

Enfield, P. (1985), Review of Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories, by Nancy J. Nersessian. Philosophy of Science 52: 641–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. ([1783] 1911), Prolegomena zu einer jeden künstigen Metaphysik die al Wissenschaft wird auftreten können, vol. 4. Berlin: Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Leplin, J. (1987), Review of Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories, by Nancy J. Nersessian. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38: 575–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leplin, J. (1988), “Is Essentialism Unscientific?”, Philosophy of Science 55: 493–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moravcisk, J. (1981), “How Do Words Get Their Meanings?”, The Journal of Philosophy 78: 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1979), “The Roots of Epistemological ‘Anarchy‘”, Inquiry 22: 423–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1984a), “Aether/Or: The Creation of Scientific Concepts”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 15: 175–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1984b), Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1991), “How Do Scientists Think? Capturing the Dynamics of Conceptual Change in Science in R. Giere (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 15, Cognitive Models of Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (In press.)Google Scholar
Shapere, D. (1966), “Meaning and Scientific Change”, in R. G. Colodny (ed.), Mind and Cosmos: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 41–85.Google Scholar
Shapere, D. (1982), “Reason, Reference, and the Quest for Knowledge”, Philosophy of Science 49: 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapere, D. (1991), “Discussion: Leplin on Essentialism”, Philosophy of Science 58: 655–677.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, E. and Medin, D. (1981), Categories and Concepts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, H. (1987), “After the Baltimore Lectures: Some Philosophical Reflections on the Subsequent Development of Physics”, in R. Kargon and P. Achinstein (eds.), Kelvin's Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 375–398.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1987), “The Semantic Approach to Scientific Theories”, in N. J. Nersessian (ed.), The Process of Science: Contemporary Philosophical Approaches to Understanding Scientific Practice. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 105–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1968), Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed. Translated by Anscombe, G. E. M. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar