Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:02:34.657Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Physics and Ontology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The recent philosophy of physics is confronted with the new ontology, as it emerges after philosophy proper has fully articulated the linguistic turn. The classical ontologists asserted or denied, controversially, that certain entities “existed.” Rather than adding to these controversies, the new ontology uncovers their dialectics. The ontologically problematic entities of physics are of two kinds, represented by forces and particles, respectively. The dialectics has been dominated by eight patterns. Two of these, independence and realism, belong to philosophy proper. The latter is here considered in order to relieve the philosophy of physics of a burden only philosophy proper can bear. That leaves six patterns: concreteness (including the orbit feature), acquaintance, simplicity, significance, process, and model. The paper sketches how each of these may be used and probably has been used, either explicitly or implicitly, in the recent controversies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 1961 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1961

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

∗

Read, with some omissions, as part of a symposium at the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science held at Stanford University.

References

1 For supporting arguments, see Philosophy of Science (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1957) and two volumes of essays, The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (Longmans, Green and Company, 1954) and Meaning and Existence (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1959). Specially relevant, among older essays not included in the two collections, are the two pieces on the philosophy of physics in H. Feigl and M. Brodbeck (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953). Among recent essays, see “Ineffability, Ontology, and Method,” The Philosophical Review, 69, 1960, pp. 18-40 and “Dell'Atto,” Rivista di Filosofia, 51, 1960, pp. 3-51. (“Acts,” the original of the Italian piece, is now being published in The Indian Journal of Philosophy, August and December, 1960.)

2 Die Problematik, la problematica, la problématique are handy nouns in German, Italian, and French. I often wish we had their equivalent in English.

3 Concerning the place of the independence pattern in the nominalism complex, see Edwin B. Allaire, “Existence, Independence, and Universals,” The Philosophical Review, 69, 1960, pp. 485-496.

4 For argument, see my special review of Strawson's “Individuals,” The Journal of Philosophy, 57, 1960, pp. 601-622.

5 Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus and earlier, was greatly impressed by this piece of dialectics. Unfortunately, he also insisted that form was literally nothing and strained toward the view rejected in 3a. These two errors were among those that propelled him toward the views he propounded in the Investigations. See also two essays by Edwin B. Allaire in Analysis: “Tractatus 6.3751,” 19, 1959, pp. 100-105, and “Types and Formation Rules: A Note on Tractatus 3.334,” 21, 1960, pp. 14-16.

6 Philosophers will also notice that in order to avoid the dialectics of particularity and individuality, I have avoided both ‘particular’ and ‘individual’, used the rather ambiguous and non-commital ‘object’ instead.

7 Just as the dialectics of simplicity and consisting can be separated, so for the point at hand it does not matter where we actually peg the level of acquaintance.

8 If 'C itself is not primitive, its definiens will contain a primitive constituent which is a quasirelation. Then the arguments apply to this constituent. The same goes for 'N' below.

9 As for V, so for ‘M’. Let 'p 1' be the propositional character which means p 1. M is a logical entity. Hence, there is no absurdity in “p 1” Mp 1' being true even though 'p 1' be false. If one is a thing ontologist (i.e., no “fact” exists, irrespective of whether it be “true” or “false”), that solves the problem of false beliefs. This too shows, as does the argument in the text, that there is a stylistic discrepancy, to say the least, between the very idea of a thing ontology and that of primitive quasirelations.

10 Frege as early as 1903 rejected the idea of implicit definitions as inherently and irremediably confused. The Philosophical Review (69, 1960, pp. 3-17) recently has earned our gratitude by printing an English translation of this impressive piece.

11 More precisely, physical things, i.e., either objects or characters (i.e., either properties or relations). The point must by now be obvious. So I follow here and elsewhere stylistic convenience.

12 The story of the shadow this commitment cast on his later life is well known. See also my review of the Einstein volume in The Library of Living Philosophers. (The Philosophical Review, 60, 1951, pp. 268-74).

13 This part of my analysis has a certain similarity with the Aristotelian-Thomistic solution. The second feature preserves what is sound in the Kantian notion of the transcendental unity of apperception. The third feature is the heart of the matter. The fourth provides, as it were, a phenomenal model of perception. That makes it structurally, if perhaps not genetically, the deepest root of the idea of an external world. The deepest root of the classical phenomenalists' failure is that they either ignored or misconstrued the mental things or even denied that they exist. Concerning perceptual error, see fn. 9; for ample detail about all this, “Dell'Atto,” l.c.

14 The strength of the process pattern shows itself in the classical dialectic of the mind-body nexus. I have never really understood the alleged distinction between epiphenomenalism and parallelism. All I can make out is this. The bodily series, as it is called in these discussions, is part of a comprehensive process. The mental series neither is itself such a process nor can it plausibly be thought of as part of one. The epiphenomenalist, under the impact of the process pattern, expresses this difference by calling mind “merely” an epiphenomenon. The parallelist shrinks from such verbal impeity.

15 As far as I know, the phrase is Reichenbach's. It will do no harm as long as one realizes that these “coordinations” are not really definitions. For a very thorough analysis of the several ways ‘model’ has been used by scientists and philosophers of science, see M. Brodbeck, “Models Meaning, and Theories,” in L. Gross (ed.), Symposium on Sociological Theory (Row, Peterson and Company, 1959), pp. 373-406.

16 For a more detailed statement of this point, see “The Logic of Psychological Concepts,” Philosophy of Science, 18, 1951, pp. 93-110. The reconstruction may in this case not unreasonably be called an existential hypothesis. I mention the phrase because it is being used by old-style realists, such as Feigl. The way they use it, it is ontologically problematic; the way I just used it, it is not. The difference is roughly that between construction and reconstruction.

17 For ample detail, see “The Logic of Quanta,” which is reprinted in the Feigl-Brodbeck anthology. Also, in The Philosophical Review, 69, 1960, pp. 267-270, the review of the recent symposium volume, Observation and Interpretation.