GUSTAVO BUENO THEORY OF CATEGORIAL CLOSURE I GENERAL INTRODUCTION SEVEN APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF SCIENCE Contents General aim 2 1 General aim of this overview 2 2 General work plan 6 I Gnoseology as a philosophical theory of science 8 3 Four meanings of the term ’science’ 8 4 Science in its ’modern’ sense 9 5 ’Sciences of science’ 11 6 On the apparent philosophical neutrality of the History of science and the formal analysis of science 13 7 Two types of questions regarding sciences whose treatment does not allow for philosophical neutrality 17 7.1 Does modern science control the whole reality of its field? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 7.2 What freedom does science leave men with? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 8 The gnoseological approach as an alternative among other possible approaches 21 9 The constitution of modern science and the reorganization of the gnoseological distinction between ’matter’ and ’form’ 26 1 General aim 1 General aim of this overview We call this introduction an overview1 , meaning that it must not be understood as referring exclu- sively to the present volume, but to the totality of the fifteen volumes whose titles are included in the publisher’s catalogue2 , through which we try to expose the most characteristic contents of the general part (general Gnoseology) of the Theory of categorial closure. The first drafts of this conception of sciences, which has been denominated ’Theory of categorial closure’ (see, for instance, the Dictionary of contemporary philosophy, 1976, s.v. ’categorial closure’3 ; or José Ferrater Mora, Dictionary of philosophy, 1986, s.v. ’categorial closure’4 ; or the Scientific- social terminology, 1988, s.v. ’categorial closure’5 ), were published in the early 70s (Gustavo Bueno, Ethnology and utopia, Palma de Mallorca 1971; Gustavo Bueno, Essay on the categories of Political Economics, Barcelona 1972; and, most importantly, Gustavo Bueno’s opuscule, Idea of science from the theory of categorial closure, Santander, Universidad Menéndez Pelayo 1976). In 1978 Gustavo Bueno published (El basilisco, 1st period, n.2, pp.12-47) the article ’About the concept of human sciences; distinction between α-operational and β-operational sciences’, which summed up the Mem- oir, in four books, written under the patronage of the Juan March Foundation in 1976, and whose excessive length, not to mention its immaturity, made it unprintable6 . In the Proceedings of the I Congress in the Theory and Methodology of Sciences (Oviedo 1982), two detailed expositions of the Theory of categorial closure are included, which refer, respectively, to the physical-chemical sciences and the human sciences7 . 1 T.N: introducción conspectiva in the original. I translate it as overview since ’conspectivo’ is an obscure term in Spanish and I’m not sure it has a direct English equivalent (conspective?). The meaning seems to be close enough. 2 T.N: Pentalfa in the original 3 Diccionario de filosofı́a contemporánea, directed by Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, Ediciones Sı́gueme, Salamanca 1976, s.v. ’Cierre categorial’, pp. 82-86 4 José Ferrater Mora, Diccionario de Filosofı́a, 6th ed., Alianza, Madrid 1986, s.v. ’Cierre categorial’, book 1, p.506 5 Terminologı́a cientı́fico-social. Aproximación crı́tica, directed by Román Reyes, Barcelona 1988, s.v. ’Cierre categorial’, pp. 118-123 6 Gustavo Bueno, Gnoseological state of the human sciences (typed Memoir presented to the Juan March Founda- tion, Programa Filosofı́a/1973, Oviedo 1976, 4 books, 1850 pp.). In the first part of this treatise (books 1 and 2), the Theory of categorial closure is presented. The second part (books 3 and 4) deals with the analysis of the concept of human sciences. This memoir included a first version of the Theory of categorial closure which may be considered surpassed as a whole by the present version, wherein the systematic links are established in a more coherent global manner, according to the developments that the theory has experimented during the last fifteen years. 7 Gustavo Bueno, ’categorial closure applied to physical-chemical sciences’, pp.101-177; Gustavo Bueno, ’Gnoseology of the human sciences’, pp.315-347; in Proceedings of the I Congress in the Theory and Methodology of Sciences (Oviedo, April 1982), Pentalfa, Oviedo 1982, 687 pp. 2 1 GENERAL AIM OF THIS OVERVIEW However, the Theory of categorial closure as a whole has not been published to date. That is, in great part, because its recent conception made it advisable to let some time go by so that it could reach the proportions that it was due. During the 70s and 80s, several contributions (seminars, PhD thesis, articles, etc.) determined a considerable growth and consolidation of the Theory via its development through gnoseological analysis of concrete disciplines; likewise, we must also mention some re-expositions of the whole that have contributed to outline the gist of the Theory and specify its reach in the context of the best-known theories of science8 . Anyhow, the truth is that the core of the Theory -particularly, that which refers to the conception of scientific truth as synthetic identity- remains unpublished, which would already be enough to make the gist of it appear somehow unfocused in what has indeed been printed; most of the critiques to many current theories of science, which crystalized after popperism, from the 70s onwards (Kuhn, Feyerabend, Sneed, Stegmüller, Tuomela, Niiniluoto, etc.) have not been published either. These treatments of science, developed in parallel, simultaneously and independently from the Theory of closure, have come to constitute, in our times, the main content of the university courses in the Faculties of Philosophy -though many times in ’areas of knowledge’ that do not designate themselves as Philosophy, but as Logic9 - and are usually taught by members of a most recently self-denominated ’scientific community’ consecrated to the nurturing of the ’Theory of Science’. This ’community’ operates within conventional approaches that have been settling into a new scholastic, which is often called ’science of science’. One could say, to sum up, that it is time to offer an adequate exposition of the main doctrine of the categorial closure -since the books in this series are not meant to include, except ocasionally, or as an example, to the gnoseological analysis of particular sciences, disciplines or theorems-. Regardless, and given the conjuncture in which the systematic publishing of the Theory of categorial closure takes place (its posteriority to the constitution of that ’scientific community’, already crystalized in Spain and bureaucraticised in its guild themes), it is convenient to become aware of how likely it is that this publication is destined to ’swim against the tide’ of that ’scholastic’ theory of science that is usually taught, as we have said, in the Faculties of Philosophy. Because of 8 Pilar Palop Jonquéres, Epistemologı́a genética y filosofı́a, análisis gnoseológico de la epistemologı́a piagetiana (PhD thesis, Universidad de Oviedo 1976, 774 pp.), Epistemologı́a genética y filosofı́a (Ariel, Ariel bi-weekly n.160, Barcelona 1981, 246 pp.); Julián Velarde Lombraña, Gnoseologı́a de la gramática generativa (PhD thesis, Universidad de Valencia 1976, 341 pp.); Tomás Ramón Fernández Rodrı́guez, Gnoseologı́a de las ciencias de la conducta (PhD thesis, Universidad de Oviedo, 1981, 690 pp.); David Alvargonzález Rodrı́guez, Análisis gnoseológico del sistema de clasificación de Carl von Linne (Bachelor memoir, Universidad de Oviedo, 1984, 188 pp.), Análisis gnoseológico del materialismo cultural de Marvin Harris (PhD thesis, Universidad de Oviedo 1988, 734 pp.), Ciencia y materialismo cultural (UNED, Madrid 1989, 386 pp.); Juan Bautista Fuentes Ortega, El problema de la construcción cientı́fica en Psicologı́a: análisis epistemológico del campo de la psicologı́a cientı́fica (PhD thesis, Universidad Complutense 1985); Carlos Iglesias, Alberto Hidalgo and Gustavo Bueno, Symploké (Jucar, Madrid 1987, 543 pp.; 2nd augmented edition, Júcar, Madrid 1989, 464 pp.); Carmen González del Tejo, La presencia del pasado, introducción a la filosofı́a de la historia de Collingwood (Pentalfa, Oviedo 1990, 246 pp.); Elena Ronzón, Notas para una historia crı́tica de la antropologı́a española (PhD thesis, Universidad de Oviedo 1990, 586 pp.), Antropologı́a y antropologı́as. Ideas para una historia crı́tica de la antropologı́a española. El siglo XIX (Pentalfa, Oviedo 1991, 515 pp.); Alberto Hidalgo Tuñón, Gnoseologı́a de las ciencias de la organización administrativa; la organización de la ciencia y la ciencia de la organización (PhD thesis, Universidad de Oviedo 1990, 1177 pp.) 9 Royal Decree 1888/1984, 26th September (BOE, 26 October 1984, pp. 31057 onwards) 3 1 GENERAL AIM OF THIS OVERVIEW that, our discourse will not be able but to harshly criticise this scholastic theory, whom it must begin by accusing of vacuity, due to its ’formalism’ and ’byzantinism’ (the most characteristic stigmata of ’bureaucratic’ knowledge). We share the differential diagnosis that a professor who is well known among us makes of the ’current philosophy of science’: Comparing logic with philosophy of science casts a harsh light on the different situation of both disciplines, indubitably inter-related. Current logic is not much older than the current philosophy of science, but where the first has managed to accumulate an ex- traordinay treasure of solid, rigorous and practically definite knowledge, the second keeps stumbling and becoming agitated by continuous ’revolutions’ and polemics. Maybe the explanation lies in that logic is in the end mathematical, while the philosophy of science is ’only’ philosophy’. Maybe.10 As for me, I would radicalize this diagnosis, removing the ’maybe’: theory of science is not science - such is our thesis-, but philosophy, and not as a conjuncture (’until one day it reaches the safe road...’), but constitutively. Precisely because of it we consider a mirage, a phenomenon of ideological-guild order, and a most interesting sociological fact, the will of the scholastic-bureaucratic theory of science to present itself as ’science of science’ and even as ’formalized science’, even at the cost of letting the substance of sciences itself slip between its fingers. That is why we are forced to insist more than we should wish in the attacks against this scholastic ’pseudo-science’, which is capable of accumulating trivialities or tautologies that only apparently refer to the actual body of sciences (’let the proposition T from the theory Tk...’). We are not hopeful about the effectiveness of these attacks, in order to perforate in the short run the cuirass of an incipient ’comunity’ or brotherhood that is forced to reinforce its ideological defense lines in order to make clear the ’rites of initiation’ into the guild, as well as its ’marks of identity’ and of exclusion (to philosophers). But we do not dedicate our exposition exisclusively to the members of this community, guild or brotherhood, who, on the other hand, are not scientists and do not want to be philosophers; rather, we dedicate it chiefly to scientists, philosophers and the public in general. This is because our argumentations does not want to remain exclusively in the contrived ’breeding ground’ of this ’conventional theory of science’ -it can not be content with citing Stegmüller against Popper, or Popper against Carnap-, but must refer to the matter itself, the effective sciences, and start from them. The greater power of a theory of science compared to another is not measured so much in the number of adherents or bureaucratic advantages that it has reached at a given time, but in its greater capability to analyze, in each case, a science or part of a given science. It should somehow be said that if the Theory of categorial closure intends to be ’deeper’ than other alternative theories of science it is not because it can face them in a rhetorical way, or because of its auhority, but because it offers richer and more precise tools of analysis of particular sciences, demarcation criteria, etc., than those of alternative theories. The presentation of a theory of science such as this is, thus, something of a challenge. Defending theory of science 10 Jesús Mosterı́n, ’Prologue’ to Andrés Rivadulla Rodrı́guez, Filosofı́a actual de la ciencia, Tecnos, Madrid 1986, p.17 4 1 GENERAL AIM OF THIS OVERVIEW as philosophy is as much as challenging those who defend alternative positions to analyze a given science, a given theorem, in a more profound, rich and pertinent way, than the analysis that they can offer. Because we do not think that the philosophy of science must be understood either as a criticism of the formalist theory of science or as an analysis of the ’spontaneous’ philosophies (of science) of scientists themselves (physicists, biologists, etc.) when they ’reflect’ on their own work. These reflections must always be taken into account; but the material of the philosophy of science is constituted by sciences themselves (and not, indeed, by the Idea of a science or ideal method which could be proposed as the norm for every science or a class of sciences11 ). The purpose of this Introduction is not -and it could be- to offer a justification, a defense against criticism, a proem, an apology, or a preamble. Ths Introduction does not intend to return to supposed previous questions fo the theory that is going to be presented, considered necessary for its full understanding, since we assume that the following exposition includes its own foundations. This Introduction is not a prologue either. The purpose of this Introduction could be considered to give an overview of a content that is going to be explained throughout 15 volumes: it is to offer a ’panoramic guide’ that forwards to the reader the features of a doctrine that will be developed extensively. Without this general Introduction, the reader could not grasp the reach of every step that is taken, because we are not giving an exposition of an axiomatic scientific theory, susceptible of starting from very few primitive propositions, such that each conclusion was the one to manifest the true scope of the principles. A philosophical theory such as we conceive this one has no ’principles’ or, rather, in a sense, all of its contents are. Therefore, the method of exposition must be adjusted to a circular dialectic and, thus, must suppose that every step forward, as a rectification of other alternatives, comes from its results, as these are (among other possible alternatives) the ones that force it to move. If we didn’t have from the beginning a panoramic idea (con-spective) of the ground that will be trodden, the steps given in each section, and even in each paragraph of each part, would not reach their true meaning. Hence, this Overview is not a mere summary. Its chapters correspond indeed to the different parts of the work as a whole, but the correspondence is not that between a summary and the complete exposition, but rhather that between a map and the terrain. This is because the mere attempt at summing up a philosophical argumentation, of giving an overview, usually determines a change in the general links -as the mere fact of singling out the melodic line in an orchestral composition forces us to paint a characteristic, and even ’substantive’ drawing-. Giving an overview means, by eliminating many details, to establish characteristic global relationships, ’force lines’, that even stop being perceived in the detailed exposition. Only when we are far enough from a mountain chain along whose every part we have traveled and look backwards can we begin to see its outline. But the difficulty that an overview entails is, reciprocally, that of its possibility itself: would it not be forced to give every pertinent step itself and, therefore, would it not be redundant, an ’abbreviated reproduction’ of the whole work, with duplication, therefore, of the global situation? No, if one can refer to every step given in the body of the text in a, so to speak, ’meta-linguistic’ 11 We share many of the points of view, but not all of them, that Francisco Fernández Buey holds in his book La ilusión del método (Ideas para un racionalismo bien temperado), Crı́tica, Barcelona, 1991. 5 2 GENERAL WORK PLAN way, that is, re-flecting on them, in what they have of dogmatic content (which links them together), omitting the processes of foundation. We do not understand dogmatic exposition so much as a summary exposition -as opposed to a detailed one-, but rather as a global-structural exposition of the system of the thesis, in opposition to a genetic exposition of each content. To put it another way: the purpose of this Introduction is to offer a global overview of the ’dogmatic’ or doctrinal ’thread’ that links the different knots in the Theory of categorial closure, omitting the foundation or composition of the threads that compose each of said knots, and without letting said foundation be considered mere detail, since it is the body itself of the theory. It is true that the reader who knows the publications cited above, or others that are similar, can find this Introduction at least partly superfluous: only partly, since in those publications our current purposes were not in mind, and anyway, the work we are about to introduce would stop being autonomous by making subordinating it to publications that took place in contexts different from his. 2 General work plan The work is structured according to the following general plan, taking into account that the mate- rial which will be exposed throughout 15 volumes develops the core topics of general Gnoseology, excluding the expositions regarding special Gnoseology. The work as a whole can be divided in five parts. Part I is a proem, and in it are included the most notable questions regarding the nature and history of theory of science itself and its differentiation from other approaches to the analysis of sciences. Part II systematizes the different theorys of science that are given for granted on a gnoseological scale. Part III takes on exposing the gist of the chosen gnoseological option, the Theory of categorial closure. Part IV develops the different ways in which categorial closure can take place, that is, the classification of sciences. Part V includes the main questions arising from the inter-relations of sciences and the relations of sciences with non-scientific forms (including philosophy). Each of this Parts is divided in Sections (which are, at the same time, organised in Paragraphs). Here’s a summary enumeration of the Sections, with an indication of the volumes in which they will be treated: Part I. Proem – 1 Section 1. Seven approaches to the study of science – 2 Section 2. Gnoseology as philosophy of science – 2 Section 3. History of theory of science Part II. System of gnoseological doctrines – 3 Section 1. The four basic families – 4 Section 2. Descriptivism 6 2 GENERAL WORK PLAN – 4 Section 3. Theoreticism – 5 Section 4. Adequationism – 5 Section 5. Circularism Part III. The idea of science from gnoseological materialism – 6 Section 1. Field and gnoseological space – 7 Section 2. Principles and modes of sciences – 8 Section 3. Theory of scientific truth – 9 Section 4. The concept of Theory and questions on reductionism Part IV. Classification of sciences – 10 Section 1. The problem of the classification of sciences – 11 Section 2. The concept of formal sciences (auto-forming and hetero-forming operations: Logic and Mathematics) – 12 Section 3. The concept of natural sciences – 13 Section 4. The concept of human sciences Part V. Dialectic and history of science – 14 Section 1. Dialectic between sciences – 15 Section 2. Dialectic between technology, science, ideology and philosophy: history of science The five following chapters which compose this Introduction correspond each to the five general parts of this work: the first, Gnoseology as a philosophical theory of science, corresponds to Part I, which is the Proem (volumes 1 and 2); the second one, The four basic types of gnoseological theories, corresponds to Part II (volumes 3 to 5); the third one, On the general structure of science, its principles and modes, and theory of the scientific truth, corresponds to Part III (volumes 6 to 9); the fourth one, The classification of sciences, corresponds to Part IV (volumes 10 to 139; and the fifth chapter, Dialectic of sciences, corresponds to Part V (volumes 14 and 15). 7 Chapter I Gnoseology as a philosophical theory of science ARTICLE I. The question about the nature of science as a philosophical question 3 Four meanings of the term ’science’ ’Science’ is a term that has very different meanings in our philosophical and mundane traditions. If we interpreted the concept of science as if it had the format of a class or a set (the different sciences), perhaps the first we should do would be to doubt that said class would have the structure of a univocal (plane, uniform) and precise class, because it appears rather as a ’diffuse’ (in the sense of Zadeh) or, at least, climacological12 (with de-generative terms) class. We could order them in a series that would range from the most humble steps, bordering on a craftsman’s knowledge (the ’science of a shoemaker’), to the most sublime (the ’divine science’: science of simple intelligence, science of vision, middle science). Science is, above all, in Spanish, science as knowhow [saber hacer ] (an hacer which is common to facere and agere): it includes techniques and prudential knowledge; that is, it is not only the science of a shoemaker, but also the military science. But science also means, secondly, ’a system of propositions derived from principles’ (this is the meaning of science that translates the episteme from the aristotelian Second analytics; a meaning that was carried on to Philosophy and Theology). Third, ’science’ in Spanish denotes above all, by antonomasia, modern science, as opposed precisely to Theology and even Philosophy: it is the science that is sometimes called empirical, other times mathematical, other times positive, and its meaning is exerted institutionally in the so-called ’Faculties of (classical) Sciences’: Mathematics, Physics, Natural Sciences; the ulterior extension of the denomination ’Faculties of Science’ to the cases of disciplines such as Pedagogy, Economy, Politics, Information (Faculty of Education Science, Faculty of Economical Science, Faculty of Po- litical Science, Faculty of Information Science, etc.) is a relatively recent ideological-administrative phenomenon, whose critique corresponds precisely to theory of science. It must be recognized that this extension fo the concept of ’modern science’, albeit ideological, has come to constitute a widely spread fourth meaning of the term science, as ambiguous and confusing as it is. 12 T.N: from klimax, acos, staircase: ordered according to a hierarchic scale 8 4 SCIENCE IN ITS ’MODERN’ SENSE 4 Science in its ’modern’ sense But in theory, when we ask the title question, when we ask ourselves about the nature of science, we are referring to the science by antonomasia, to science in its strict modern sense, that is, to science insofar it denotes those results of the ’scientific and industrial revolution’ that we call ’Newtonian Me- chanics’ or ’Relativistic Mechanics’, ’Classical Chemistry’ (from Lavoisier and Dalton to Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer) and ’Chemical Physics’, ’Thermodynamics’, etc.; it also denotes ’Mathematics’ (which used to be called Exact Sciences and later on, due to the exogenous influence of precisely some theories of science, were usually denominated ’mathematical language’, as if they were an organon or tool of the other sciences, such that they themselves were not sciences, in the same way ’Logic’ also was not, according to the aristotelian tradition). But the fact that theory of science is basically built around this meaning of science (the third one, according to our earlier recount) does not mean that it must not also confront, though critically (and critique means here, in theory, classification and analysis of the relationships between the classified meanings), the other meanings of the term science, insofar as they are precursors of Science, in its strong sense, or ideological degenerations of it. ’Science’ will be interpreted, then, as a partitive way to designate every ’element’ of the set of sciences, in its modern sense. Without a doubt, this modern meaning has its predecesors and successors, but it is impossible to take a stand about this issue without committing to very precise philosophical presupositions. Indeed: we have already referred to the fact that the term ’science’ (in general, the derivatives of Latin scientia) was widely used to denote not merely subjective knowledge (of the crafts or technical type, insofar as they were ’intellectual virtues’ which included scientia as habitus conclusionis), but also objective systems of propositions, such as those in axiomatized Arithmetic and Geometry, and in Aristotle’s Physics and scholastic Theology (not only natural Theology, considered, according to this second meaning, as a strict science, but also dogmatic Theology, insofar it was interpreted as a science subordinated to the ’Science of the blessed’). However, it is true that no current theory of science would call Aristotle’s Physics or Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Theology sciences -rather philosophy, or metaphysics, or theology, or maybe mythology-, although it would not show the same restraint in considering Euclid’s Geometry as science. This means that when we talk about science, taking those ’sciences of the Antiquity and the Middle Ages’ as a denominator (not to refer to current sciences in a lax sense, the fourth in our recount), we are using a different concept of science than the one we use when talking about sciences in a strict sense (historically: the sciences of the Modern Age). This concept (the third of the ones enumerated earlier) perhaps has the capacity to cover some old formations (euclidian geometry, mainly), segregating them from the ’block’ in which the traditional concept inserted them. But it is evident that this ’block’ -which will henceforth be denominated the ’science-philosophy block’-, even though it has received the name science and possesses a characteristic theory of science (the one of the ’scientific syllogism’, silogismos epistemonikos, detailed in Aristotle’s Second Analytics), could not lead us to a concept of science adjusted to the modern denomination. It is a core thesis that we propose and that we will maintain 9 4 SCIENCE IN ITS ’MODERN’ SENSE as a leit-motiv throughout this work that when Aristotle’s Second Analytics or Posterior Analytics planned to analyze the nature of science (that is, of scientific syllogisms), they didn’t do so starting from a previous idea of science (perhaps yet inexistent, an intentional science, a ’science that is searched for’, setoumene episteme), but from an effective science, which, on the other hand, will only let us consider the Second Analytics as a theory of science today (and not only from the emic- aristotelian point of view) if it is still a science to us. Now, we suppose that this effective science that Aristotle had before him could be no other than Geometry, whose influence on the configuration of Philosophy would have been, on another note, decisive13 . What Aristotle would have been looking for would not ahve been to answer, after ’raising his eyes to the heavens’, the question: ’what is science, or how is scientific knowledge possible?’, but he would be looking to answer, after looking at the earth and noticing that there are different types of knowledge, many forms of rational discussion (that is, they proceed through syllogism), and that there is a form of apodictic knowledge, which is the one possessed by geometrists, the question: ’what is the difference between the reasonings of geometrists (which will be called ’scientific’) and the reasonings of rhetoricians, grammaticians and politicians?’ This must mean, therefore, that the Aristotle’s inquiry on the nature of science is already, from the beginning, a critical question. It is as if Aristotle saw in science, above all, a type of rational construction, rigorous and coherent, which must be opposed to other constructions that are also rational from the logical point of view, but that must be qualified as confusing, sophistic, mischievous or merely probable; and all of this, understood jointly with Aristotle’s project of managing to make metaphysical questions, as characteristic of the ’science that is searched for’ (setoumene episteme), reach the same rigour as true science, that is, Geometry. If this is true, we should say that Aristotle does not start, at the beginning of his gnoseological way, from doubt, but from certainty in Geometry, and that if it was not from Geometry it would be impossible to recover scientific evidence from ’transcendental’ considerations like the ones surrounding the cartesian cogito, since gnoseological evidence stems only from a concrete science, and not from the idea of science, in general, as a ’science that is searched for’. Theory of science must necessarily start from some ’science’ that has already been found. The fact that Geometry turns out to be part of both the old denotation of the term science (second in our earlier list) and the modern (third in our list) one -as if it was the point of intersection of both- does not undermine the connotative (intensional) irreductibility of the respective concepts which we suppose are associated to both denotations. Because despite their differences, the peculiar structure of euclidian Geometry facilitated its absorption (as questionable as this may seem to us today) by the ’old idea’ of science (in its second sense, science as an ideal system of propositions derived from principles), without that implying that Euclid’s (or Apollonius’) Geometry can not be re-interpreted as a ’real’ (not just ’formal’) science, that is, a science which can be included in the modern idea of science, that is, science in its third sense. To sum up, the historical thesis that we hold about the sciences of the Antiquity and the Middle Ages -’we can not speak of the existence of sciences in the modern sense in the Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, except for Geometry’ (without forgetting some ’gnoseological cells’ forming in the 13 Gustavo Bueno, Presocratic Metaphysics, Pentalfa, Oviedo 1974. 10 5 ’SCIENCES OF SCIENCE’ fields of geometric Astronomy and Physics: Eratosthenes, Arquimedes, etc.)- is therefore inseparable from a gnoseological thesis about the idea of science in its modern meaning (third sense). This is the idea of science around which we will build all the theory of science, if we do not want it to have only an equivocal and purely verbal reach. And this decision will not excuse us from the tasks oriented to re-interpret the reach of the old antique and medieval theory of science, as well as from analyzing the dialectic of their relations with the current sciences in the lax sense, and viceversa. Because we suppose as well -and it is a supposition to which we must commit, unless we are willing to commit to the opposite- that these two main determinations of the Idea of science are not simply two different meanings, susceptible of ’coexisting peacefully’. The modern Idea of science, science in its third sense, or strong sense, constitutes itself, in great part, precisely as the denial of the antique and medieval Idea, and therefore, in one way or another, as a critique of that same antique and medieval science (critique of Theology, of Metaphysics); a critique that we must extend to so many modern disciplines (called ’human sciences’, etc.), which have endowed themselves with the name ’science’, in the modern sense; this task includes reinterpreting Geometry as a real science as well. We suppose that the critique to the antique Idea of science originated from the constitution of modern science (for instance, Newton’s Physics) and not from the constitution of the so-called ’theories of science’ of the modern age (like Bacon’s Novum Organum). Admitting the effectiveness of Geometry as a science in the Antiquity does not imply admitting the possibility of the modern Idea of science in the Antiquity, if it is the case that Geometry, as we have said, was contained in the aristotelian Idea of science as propositional knowledge. Only once Newton’s Physics (but not, for instance, Descartes’) constituted itself as a science in a new sense (and, by the way, with the mediation of Euclid’s Geometry, but applied to temporal entities), and only because after Newton new sciences were constituted which were not reductible to Mechanics (such as Chemistry, Thermodynamics and even non-euclidian Geometries), was the beginning of a new Idea of science, as well as an inquiry on the nature of science in a likewise new sense, possible. 5 ’Sciences of science’ Now: just because the Idea of science (in its third sense) around which we build theory of science is a modern -relatively recent- idea that has left craftmen’s knowledge and ’divine sciences’ and ’philosophical sciences’ behind it does not mean that it cannot raise the most acute philosophical questions. There is no reason to suppose that philosophical questions can only be raised around Ideas which are ’eternal’ or, at least, contemporary to men as ’subjects who ask’ -supposing that this even made any sense-. The so-called ’superior religions’ appeared in Humanity’s evolution as a whole at a very late stage; however, only because of its crystalization (we suppose) can we raise questions characteristic of the ’philosophy of religion’, wich, on the other hand, will of course have to turn backwards, resolve itself in components given in other more primitive epochs in the History of mankind (this, regardless of the paradox that an Idea such as that of God, which is historical, is intended to be eternal). This much can also be said about the Idea of State: we must concede that primitive mankind remained aside from the State; however, anyone who tried to account for the 11 5 ’SCIENCES OF SCIENCE’ possibility of a ’philosophy of the State’ in an attempt to penetrate, if not in an ’eternal Idea’, at least in one that was ’consubstantial’ from the origin of man, would have little to stand on. The Idea of Culture is so recent that it can be said it was unknown until the XVIII century; not because of it is the philosophical consideration of the Idea of Culture, consideration which will obviously force us to go back to preceding ideas, such as the theological Idea of Grace, meaningless. ’God’, as the ’State’ or ’Culture’, is an idea whose nature surpasses the capability of analysis of the characteristic methods of categorial sciences. We do not mean with this that we do not recognize the effectiveness of several ’sciences of Religion’ (ethnological, filological, historical, etc.), the effectiveness of several ’sciences of the State’ (sociological, juridical, historical, etc.), or the effectiveness of several ’sciences of culture’ (anthropological, linguistic, aesthetic, etc.), but these different sciences cannot account for the core nature of Religions, or States, or Cultures, simply because said ’natures’ cannot be ’enclosed’ in categorial circles, they flow over any circle and, because of it, cannot be treated without ’getting our hands dirty’, that is, without committing to some presupositions (or the alternative ones) which can no longer be considered scientific, since they are either metaphysical, ideological or, in the best case scenario, philosophical, rational (but with a rationality that can not aspire to a convictive capability similar to that which generally corresponds to sciences). It would be vain to try to reduce to the plane of categorial circles these religious, political or cultural configurations that are drawn, so to speak, in spaces that have more than two dimensions; scientific-positive analysis, which are indispensable, will necessarily let their substance escape: it is impossible to say anything meaningful (and with an of course rational meaning, since rationality is not a monopoly of the methodology of sciences, in the strict sense) about the nature of the superior Religions, the State or Culture without committing to philosophical options which flow over the limits of any categorial enclosure. Mutatis mutandis, we will say the same regarding the relation with Sciences in the modern sense: the Idea of Science, like the Idea of God, the idea of the State or the Idea of Culture, is not an eternal Idea, but rather has a history and a relatively recent moment of crystalization. But there is not a ’science of science’, as some pretend -for instance, S. Price and others (Morris: ’we could introduce the term ’metascience’ as a synonim of ’science of science”) that we will consider in Part I, 15 of this work-, at least if the term ’science’ is taken in the sense of the Theory of categorial closure. And not because a scientific treatment of the ’material’ constituted by sciences as such is impossible. We recognize that not one, but several scientific disciplines -Psychology, Sociology, Formal Logic, etc.- have much to say once they apply their methods to the analysis of this world constitued by the ’modern sciences’, and that everything they may say must be taken into account. What we deny, however, is that these disciplines have anything to say, not even about obscure questions, but even about the most pedestrian and obvious ones that arise from the constitution of modern sciences. What they stated according to the neutral or ’aseptic’ ways characteristic of positive sciences would actually be masking extra-scientific (not because of it necessarily irrational) supositions and would, therefore, be ennounced acritically. 12 6 ON THE APPARENT PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE FORMAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE 6 On the apparent philosophical neutrality of the History of science and the formal analysis of science Analysing the wide trayectory covered by the different movements whose common denominator could be precisely their tendency to dispense with any philosophical methodology when preparing to ’truly understand’ the nature, structure and reach of sciences in the modern sense becomes of a characteristic interest precisely when we adopt the philosophical perspective -as a perspective proportioned to treat the most characteristic questions regarding the ’nature’ of sciences in the modern sense. One can distinguish two fronts: the first one, constituted by those who adhere to the method of the History of science (perhaps also Sociology of science); the second one, constituted by those who consider that formal (logical-formal or linguistical-formal) analysis is the most powerful perspective, even more, the only perspective capable of revealing the structure of science. Not because it can be said that these movements have an intrinsic, more or less concealed aversion towards philosophical methods and a tendency to stick to positive methodologies can we forget that these methods show mutual ’aversion’ as well.Historians of science frequently reproach analysts their formalism, their ten- dency towards axiomatization, their estrangement from historical reality, their tendency to ’invent’ structures and fantastic relations, particularly in their inevitable references (which will systemati- cally be called anachronisms) to historical processes (this reproach is the one acting throughout many discussions between Kuhn and Lakatos14 ); analysts call historians out on their estrangement, even ignorance, of the structural questions dissolved in the flow of events, their oportunism, their impossi- bility to distinguish anecdotal and essential relations and, in the end, the impossibility of a historical approximation to sciences, removed from every coordinate that is not anchored in the structure of sciences themselves (it would be meaningless to interpret the knots that Egyptians tied in strings in proportions of 3, 4, 5, as a practical procedure to draw squares, without alluding to the Pythagorean formula, even though speaking of the Pythagorean formula when talking about Egyptian knots is an anachronism; it is also meaningless to discuss the Greek history of Euclid’s fifth postulate in the First book of the Elements without alluding to the coordinates offered by the development of non-euclidian geometries, although it may seem anachronistic to mention these geometries when talking about the history of Euclid’s Elements). From our perspective it seems that the criticisms from historians to analytic logicians are more powerful than the reciprocal. Not because we think that we may dispense with logic when treating the history of a science, but on the contrary because we suppose that Logic is already dissolved or exercized in the processes in such a way that the historian considers that what analysts call ’logic of discovery’ is often just a fantasy reconstruction that has little to do with effective historical logic; it is almost not necessary, therefore, to extract that historical logic, as if it was an ’independent order’. From this point of view, historical empiricism turns out to be one of the best correctives to logicist formalism. 14 I. Lakatos & Alan Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the growth of Knowledge. Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science (London 1965), vol. IV. Cambridge University Press 1973. 13 6 ON THE APPARENT PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE FORMAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE Historians can also not stop coming into contact with their own empirical materials, with the multiple philosophical ideas that cross them; in this manner, it is sure that the aversion many historians feel towards the philosophical method can be explained as a ’transcendental condition’ of their own job, as it sticks to what sciences have been, and not to what they are or what they may be (since the consideration of these instances would stop being a historian’s job). Historians ’feed’ on the past and, therefore, the past is as transcendental to historians as food, in a strict sense, it is transcendental to the cognoscitive subject, in general. Another matter is whether it is possible to penetrate in the great ideas exposed by philosophers or scientists of the past by placing ourselves in a ’perspective zero’, or from the ’zero set of philosophical premises’. Here we assume that this is impossible, and therefore, that the supposed aversion of the historian-filologist of science towards the philosophical method actually constitutes, in and of itself, the exercise of a historicist philosophy. We are, therefore, not before the conflict between a scientific method and a philosophical method, but before the conflict before two philosophical methodologies. The situation that corresponds to the methods of formal analysis is, as drawn from our perspec- tive, very different. Taking the limit, we would say that while historians of science cannot help but come into contact with the Ideas and ideologies that constitute the sphere in which sciences crystalize despite not wanting to consider themselves as philosophers, but as scientists, formalists, though they call their analysis philosophy (philosophy as a ’logical analysis of scientific language’, in the manner of M. Schlick or R. Carnap), tend to lose contact with Ideas, but also, at the same time, with the specific structure of sciences. Because the ’(logical-formal) science of science’, precisely because of its intent, in principlee plausible and worthy of being tested, to stick to the internal structure of sciences itself, just as sciences work, is driven by the very nature of things to remain in a merely generic plane. The pretensions of formal analysis can not just register or account for ’scientific languages’, as they are presented to their categories of analysis, but rather must be oriented towards determining what is the logical structure of science itself, and a structure, like a grammar, must always lay in an etic perspective (without needing to be normative or prescriptive). Formal analysis of science, used as a main perspective that is reductive of any other methodology, proceeds necessarily as if it were touching upon ’the very keys to sciences’, on what these ’effectively are’: everything that can not be contained within formal analysis should be left to ’literature’ (including philosophy, unless we arbitrarily restrict philosophy, by guild estipulation, to mean that formal analysis of language). But it happens that the structure of sciences is only reducible to the logical plane, that is, formal, and not material, insofar as it is generic, that is, common to other processes which are not scientific themselves, but rather literary, rhetorical, juridical, philosophical, etc. For instance, the problems regarding Hempel’s ’paradox of confirmation’ (’both an entity that is an element of the swan class and an entity that is an element of the black class confirms the truth of the proposition: ’every swan is white”) are logical-general problems (the paradox is formulated in terms of the critical-dialectical analysis of ’Nicod’s principle of confirmation’; only that this ’principle of confirmation’ is, itself, logical-general) more than problems specific to theory of science -since there is no science that (ex- cept in preliminary cases) holds in its system propositional hypothesis like the quoted one (’every 14 6 ON THE APPARENT PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE FORMAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE swan is white’ or, as Hempel himself put it, ’every raven is black’)15 . Discussing propositions of the form ∀x(Ax → Bx) like Hempel’s is at most a task for general logic, statistics, which is applied, above all, to technological (not scientific) procedures of legal or taxonomical-bureaucratic testimony, which remain on the horizon of distributive classes. But fields in sciences, such as those analyzed by the Theory of categorial closure, are not constituted by distributive classes (by ’predicative proposi- tions’), but by attributive ones; and so, natural science does not concern itself with establishing the likelihood of propositions like ’every raven is black’ -like a police commissioner, or a chief craftsman, respectively establish the likelihood of the propositions ’anyone who wears a mask is a terrorist’ or ’every profile produced by the machine K weighs 3200 kg’-, rather their objective is to determine, for instance, the gene responsible for the white colour of swans and the (attributive) link between that gene and other genes that constitute the genetic heritage of the species. Now, that the generic-formal analysis of science, as it gets more subtle, almost always maintains its aspiration to be appliable to positive sciences, does not mean it becomes less generic. It happens to it the same that would happen to anyone who tried to determin the specific differential structure of a raven or a swan from that of a treatise on ornithology using a simple scale. Regardless of how many particular adaptations we perform on the scale, so that the weighing of a raven that flies and thrashes about becomes as exact as that of the inert treatise, that is, even if we enable ’scales for ravens’ technically differentiated from ’scales for books’ (’formal logic applied to sciences’, which is different from ’general formal logic’), the results of the analysis will always be numbers which express grams. The formal-analytic methodology applied by the ’science of science’, in a strong sense, has become increasingly complex in order to adapt to the analysis of the effective sciences; but all we get from it is ’propositions’ (and what relates to them: ’systems of propositions’, ’propositional theories T1 , T2 , etc.’, ’testability of propositions’, ’probability and verisimilitude’, etc.) -just as we could only get grams from a sophisticated scale-. Only due to that formal estrangement, which takes place the very second we refer to the sciences themselves, can we explain the constant tendency to direct the application of formal artifacts to situations that are not or only appear to be scientific; what happens is that to this artifact, because it is generic, it is indifferent whether it is applied to a genuine scientific system, to science-fiction or to a police investigation (fulfillment of this tendency is eased by a habit of those who seem to want to orient themselves towards ’shortening distances’ with scientists, calling their hypothesis ’theories’ -instead of ’hypothesis about the identity of President Kennedy’s murderer, we will hear: ’theories about the identity of President Kennedy’s murderer’). Here is an example taken from R. Tuomela’s16 work. After establishing, apparently through descriptive means, that a scientific theory can be assigned, as a general structure, the triplet hAf , Am , As i -’factual axioms, mathematical axioms, semantic axioms’-, he applies his ’artifact’ to the ’minitheory’ T , constituted by a fragment of the ’psychoanalytic theory of latent aggression’. He begins by analyzing a supposed axiom from this theory, which, when formalized, would read like this (x being an object variable from the class ’human individuals’, and L a quantitative property that grows in proportion to the 15 C.G. Hempel, Aspects of scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, The Free Press, New York 1965, Ch. I, 3, 5, 8. 16 In his paper ’Scientific Change and Approximation’, published in Acta Philosophica Fennica, XXX, North-Holland, Amsterdam 1979. 15 6 ON THE APPARENT PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE FORMAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE predicate F -’frustration’-, a and b positive real numbers): Ax : L(x) = aF (x) + b. The formula is escorted by supplementary artifacts (for instance, λ = [F ] is the class of observa- tional concepts and µ = [L] is the class of theoretical concepts); moving from theory T to a new one T 0 will be represented as: T /T 0 = hAf , Am , As i/hAf 0 , Am0 , As0 i That said, it will be established that: ’a theory T 0 in the language L0 (λ∪µ) is a non-creative extension of T (in L(λ)) with respect to L(λ) when and only when the deductive consequences of T 0 in L(λ) lead to the same results than the deductive consequences of T in L(λ). What we want to highlight in such an analysis is, first, that Tuomela begins by referring his ’artifact’ precisely to one of the least scientific fragments of all of the sciences he could have chosen: the psychoanalytic theory of latent aggression; on another note, the analysis that he makes of this theory remains in a generic logical-formal plane (axioms, consequences, term classes, etc.), cutting and dislocating parts of the theory, formalizing others in a gratuitous way, without rhyme or reason (’non-creative extension’, ’observational set’, etc.). Such analytic procedure, in theory of science, would be similar to the procedure of a literary critic who, in the theory of literature, referred a theory about the poetic meter to a phrase of rhymed prose and, furthermore, analyzed this phrase in terms of phonetics (labial, dental, open vowels, etc.). If not for their naivety, analysis of sciences like those of Tuomela would seem to be poses of people who wanted to pretend to have a logic-mathematical perspective on their craft (such as when the symbols of real numbers are inserted in the formula of the psychoanalytic theory as a supposed part of its structure, as if psychoanalytic theory ever used such numbers, even indirectly, in any statistical tabulation of empirical observations; tabulation which, at any rate, would still have in those sciences the same generic status that tabulations in a set of vote counts have). Can we conclude, because of this, that this formal-analytic discipline of sciences is wrong? No, in principle; on the contrary, it can reach some notable results. What is more doubtful is that said results, as well established as they may be, have the slightest capability to penetrate the nature, morphology, anatomy and phisiology of the effective sciences. Since although they do refer to them, through ad hoc applicational artifacts, they do so via determinations which are not only generic (sub-generic) but, for the most part, oblique to the scientific bodies themselves. This does not block their ’fertility’ (’creativity’ ?); artifacts of the second, third and n-th order may be built, which will be able to fill blackboards or books of rigorous algebraic appearance; the constitution of a guild in which said artifacts will be discussed and sharpened, and the selection through agreement of a stable set of them will contribute to consolidate the illusion that the bureaucratic discipline called ’Theory of science’ remains aside from philosophical and ideological disputes as a ’science of science’. But this illusion is all the more mischievous the more evidence it seems to reach, as a ’transcendental condition’ of the new craftsmanship of the comunity of formal epistemologists. Because they, it is true, do refer to Science, but in the same way that whoever applied a new discipline called ’Formal- analytic theory of Music’, organised according to the triplet hAf , Am , As i -which we will refer to the ’theories of the classical symphony and the theories of dodecaphonic harmony’-, Af being factual axioms (of the type: ’the sounds of the flute have a different timbre than those of the piano’), Am being mathematical axioms (of the sort: ’the length of an arc S of a smooth curve with parametric 16 7 TWO TYPES OF QUESTIONS REGARDING SCIENCES WHOSE TREATMENT DOES NOT ALLOW FOR PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY equations x = Φ(t) and y = Ψ(t) which corresponds to the variation of the parameter t from a to b Rbq is determined by the integral S = a (dx/dt)2 + (dy/dt)2 dt’) and As being semantic axioms (like: ’the intensity β of a sound wave is defined by β = 10logY /y0 , where y0 is a reference of 10 − 16 W/cm2 corresponding to the weakest sound that may be heard’), would refer to Music. If we refered these axioms to a ’minitheory’ of the classical symphony (which would contain the following as a basic axiom: ’the classical symphony begins with a dominant chord’), the gobbledygook that we might get to produce by analyzing different ’musical poetics’ would not be any more absurd than the gobbledygook of formalist analysts of science. We would be ’talking about music’ in a meta-language, in the same way we spoke of science earlier, but what we said could only be considered a parody of a true theory of music. 7 Two types of questions regarding sciences whose treat- ment does not allow for philosophical neutrality The so-called ’philosophical neutrality’ or ’ideological asepsis’ of the formal-analytic theory of science could perhaps be at least partly explained as an illusion induced by the philosophical neutrality and philosophical asepsis that the stricter positive sciences have reached, at least in their most rigorous periods. Geometry (besides what G. Thomson insinuated some years ago) is neither aristocratic nor democratic; the periodic table of the elements is neither idealist nor realist -or at least, and even though he has to choose, it is established, if not aside from the debates between idealism and realism, then both when the debate is considered from the point of view of idealism and when it is considered from the point of view of realism-; it can also be said that the periodic table is neither fascist nor liberal (Darwin’s theory of evolution was not itself monarchic or republican either, even though some monarchists, which were ’fixist’ in politics, considered it republican, and some republicans, which were egalitarian, thought it was monarchic, because it favoured the aristocracy of the winners in the fight for life). But even though sciences, when they manage to reach a maximum degree of purity, remain ’aside from’, or rather, in a disposition of composibility with, philosophical and ideological positions in debate (although not reciprocally), the theory of science can not be considered composible with every stance that is held in those debates; it can not stay out of those debates if it wants to penetrate the nature and general structure of the sciences. Because the theory of science is not itself a science -as the theory of music can not be played on a piano or an orchestra either-. Sciences prove truths in the sphere of their category; even more, they enable their own internal criteria to accept or reject something as true; but they do not ask themselves about the nature and structure of truth, in the same way that a clockmaker, who builds refined instruments to measure time, does not have to be interested or willing (as a clockmaker) to conduct a philosophical analysis of time (this clockmaker, as such, is the one who could say better than anyone, as Saint Augustine: ’if they do not ask me what time is, I know it; if they ask me, I do not know it’). Mathematicians know what mathematical truth is and have proof criteria within their reach, so one could say that if nobody asks them what mathematical truth is, they know, but if someone asks them, it is more doubtful that they will know 17 7 TWO TYPES OF QUESTIONS REGARDING SCIENCES WHOSE TREATMENT DOES NOT ALLOW FOR PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY (as mathematicians), that is, that they will be able to articulate it; and that, because to ’know’ it they would have to establish, among other things, comparisons between mathematical truth (’their truth’) and truth in Mechanics, or truth in Chemistry, which is to say, they would have to leave their ’specialty’ and become interested in different ones, before which their condition as mathematicians could both help or hinder them. There are two types of inevitable questions for every theory of science, about which one can say for sure that hey can not be treated with ’philosphical’ neutrality, two types of questions whose answers, whatever they may be, already imply alternative philosophical or ideological commitments which it would be vain to try to avoid: the first one includes questions raised in the direction of movement that goes from scientific subjects to their object fields; the second of our types includes questions that are raised in the direction of movement going from the object fields towards the gnoseological subjects. 7.1 Does modern science control the whole reality of its field? One of the most important questions among the ones which shoud be included in the first type -question that matters, first and foremost, to the ’man in the street’ or, as it were, to mundane philosophy (and, indeed, that is inescapable for academic philosophy)- is the question about the effecive reach that modern science can have (or will have in the future, according to its ’internal law’ of development) in relation to the reality of its field, which at the same time forces us to raise the question about the connection of this field with the remaining ones and, therefore, with the world as a whole. This question has to do with the question about truth, but only if we suppose that one to be framed within a very characteristic context, that of the power of science (better said, the power of men through science) to control the phenomenical world that surrounds us. This way of asking about the truth is very different, and perhaps much more acute and profound, than the way antique -and even scholastic- philosophers may have inquired on the truth of sciences, because only due to the development of modern science have men acquired a degree of control or ’rule over the natural forces’ that has shifted the horizon of their questions. While Nature, to Greeks, must remain beyond human control and, in Aristotle’s case, as an unchangeable and eternal system; or while Nature, to christians, was entirely subordinated to God’s will (and through it, but in a religious way, prerational -not to say irrational-, to the wishes of men when they implored miracles interwoven with the natural flow of matters), ’Nature’ -or at least wide regions of it, from electric to nuclear energy-, due to the technologic and scientific revolution, seems to be much more under our rational control. The development of modern science has allowed to establish a strict differentiation -despite the historical variability of the border line- between those regions of reality that we understand and control and those which we do not understand or, at least, can not control. With this distinction, the concept of scientific truth can reach a live meaning, not at all metaphysical, as the one to which the antique or scholastic philosophers were forced to stick when taking the world, in its totality, or God, in His, as their only reference (that is to say, when having to work with an idea of truth so metaphysical and distant as the following could be: ’adequation with the essence of reality’; or perhaps this one: ’adequation with the divine mind’). Modern science shows us what it is to have 18 7 TWO TYPES OF QUESTIONS REGARDING SCIENCES WHOSE TREATMENT DOES NOT ALLOW FOR PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY (not ’trivial’) control over regions of reality and what it is not to have it (for instance, when we recover from illness or lead a spaceship to the Moon). Modern science shows us what it means to have the truth of the connection between things (verum est factum) and what it means not to have it, stumbling in the dark, once we have awakened from the childish dream of an intellectua life open to the light of the truth revealed by Being or by God. But it is these truths achieved by modern sci- ences that force us to ask seriously, philosophically (not metaphysically, but not scientifically either, because we are talking ’about’ science, but not ’within’ science, that is, scientifically), about the reach of such truths, about their limits, about the ’degree of penetration’ of sciences in reality and about the meaning of this penetration. How could it be understood? Scientific truths often seem to manifest necessary relations between terms, not contingent or capricious: is the truth in fact, beyond the appearance of phenomenic contingency, a necessary concatenation of facts? Is the possibility of developing science founded in that necessity of the world? We would re-build like so, apparently, the idea of omniscience, which will not be divine omniscience anymore, but an omniscience that is much closer to men, the omniscience of the ideal scientist, symbolized by the ’genie’ that Laplace talked about. But, under what conditions can one speak of the necessity of the natural world? How could we determine it? Will this determination not imply a thesis on the unity of sciences, deduced from the unity of the world? Is this pretension not absurd? But then, do we not ruin the same idea of sci- entific truth? Would we not have to postulate the subordination of the world to the ’transcendental conditions’ of the scientific operations characteristic of gnoseological subjects themselves? And how to define, without begging the question, the place where those transcendental conditions are found? Because these can be attributed to pure consciousness (very close to God’s consciousness), or in the corporeal subjectivity (a subjectivity which needs to feed) as the only transcendental subjectivity. Any of these options places us already in the middle of the philosophical debates between idealism (or spiritualism) and realism (or materialism). Characteristically philosophical debates, where we are directly led to by the situation established by sciences, in the modern sense (let us quote, for instance, the debates that ’Dirac’s relations’ have started about the so-called ’anthropic principle’17 ). And this is a circumstance that is often forgotten, for instance, when interpreting the meaning of the Critique of pure reason. We do not consider it enough -better yet: we think it devalues the meaning of the kantian approach- to say that Kant set out to establish the limits of human knowledge, re- turning to its ’transcendental conditions’ and continuing the great question through which Descartes would have inaugurated modern philosophy. Because a novelty irreductible to cartesianism and its transcendental cogito (to any kind of particular doubt or evidence) took place between Descartes and Kant: the development of the newtonian theory of gravitation (cartesian mechanics were almost ’science-fiction’). Newton’s Principia established the first positive and effective (not intentional, desiderative, imaginary or tentative, like Copernicus’, Galileo’s, Descartes’ and even Kepler’s) model of natural science. Newton’s science will break the ’science-philosophy block’ (the Idea of science in its second meaning) and will lead to an ever deeper fracture between science and philosophy. Assum- ing this, we would re-interpretate the main sense of the Critique of pure reason simply by placing it in this context. A sense, therefore, that is easily devalued the moment we consider Newton’s Physics 17 John D. Barrow & Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press 1989 19 7 TWO TYPES OF QUESTIONS REGARDING SCIENCES WHOSE TREATMENT DOES NOT ALLOW FOR PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY as an occasional stimulus apt to reactivate an ’eternal question’, the question that to philosophy teachers used to appear as the deepest, most traditional, and most in tune with their proceedings: ’how is knowledge, in general, possible?’. Because this question (at its core absolutely vacuous) seems to be formulated in the cartesian way, that is, as a question that returns ’closer than Mathematics and Physics are’, as a ’radical’ question that is formulated as if Physics had not been achieved yet. Does this question not appear to inquire about the same ’transcendental conditions’ of knowledge, in general? But (we suppose) Kant’s question is given in a non-cartesian context (or, to use the terminology that we will propose in the following paragraph, it is not an epistemological question, related to doubt, but a gnoseological question). It does not start from doubt -because doubting here means as much as doubting Physics, as if Physics had not yet been achieved-, but from the evidence of the theory of universal gravitation. But only from this evidence can we have an internal criteria to distinguish effective knowledge (analyzing its conditions and reach) from pretended metaphysical knowledge. Therefore, the regressus towards transcendental conditions is a regressus which must presuppose the factum of sciences as given. It is not a regressus ’towards transcendental conditions’ aimed at reaching, in the progressus, the ’justification of science’, to prove its validity. This is the cartesian way. Here, the regressus to the transcendental conditions of the possibility of knowledge is as much as the resolutio of the internal components of the physical science itself (once it has been given, not before it), which would be followed by a compositio that does not have to take on the load of an intent to give an absolute proof or justification, in the mathematical way; it has enough with the one relative to the resolution of reference (a compositio close to the one that takes place in Physics or Chemistry, insofar as these have to take their surrounding contexts into account). The program of resolutio or regressus towards the transcendental conditions of possibility contains from the beginning (since it is not referred to knowledge in general, but to some physical and mathematical knowledge) the constatation of other pretensions of different types of knowledge; and the conditions of possibility that are searched for are the ones that constitute the already achieved Physics and Mathematics (Newton, Euclid), insofar as they can be transcendental to other forms of construction and, above all, insofar as they may not be transcendental to metaphysics, if they possess the capa- bility to draw themselves within its limits (in this regard, we would say as well that Geometry was transcendental to the remaining sciences). We are very close to what will afterwards be called, in K. Popper’s formula18 , the problem of demarcation between science and metaphysics How could the theory of science, then, dodge the philosophical question of scientific truth as a question that considers truth as an idea inseparable from the idea of material reality and appears, therefore, as an ontological inquiry? Because it is not about exaggerating the importance that scientific truth has in science, repeating after Popper, for instance, that ’science is morally obliged to search for the truth’. Actually, science is not obliged to search for the truth, rather it is that only when it has found it can it be called science; it is, thus, not a moral demand (which, at most, would affect a scientist’s pragmatic, a gnoseological subject’s), but a constitutive one. Saying that science ’is obliged to search for the truth’ does not reach any further than saying that the triangle diametrically contained in a circumference is geometrically, not morally, ’obliged’ to be square. 18 K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977. 20 8 THE GNOSEOLOGICAL APPROACH AS AN ALTERNATIVE AMONG OTHER POSSIBLE APPROACHES And if ’analysts of science’ want to remain in a less polluted territory, refereeing formal criteria of truth (coherence, predictivity, etc.), then they will not manage to take a stance on the matter of the nature of scientific truth. Most likely they will decide to separate the idea of science from the idea of truth, and place truth within parentheses, to speak only (with Popper) of falsability or verisimilitude. But they will then be opting, in fact, for scepticism, which would be, by the way, just as philosophical (that is, non-scientific) option as materialism or idealism (regardless, as we will prove in its due time, the theory of verisimilitude proposed by Popper masks, under the appearance of its formal expression, extremely vague adequationist metaphysics). 7.2 What freedom does science leave men with? The second type of questions encompasses all those that can be raised in the direction going from the ’world’ towards the operational subject. The most important is perhaps this: if the objective world, controlled by science, is a world of necessary truths (or at least of truths capable of segregating the subjects that have intervened in their genesis from their structure), what place can we assign to subjective operations, therefore to human freedom and, consequently, to human sciences? This second type of questions also stems from modern science, from the moment where this science broke the existent unity not only between science and philosophy, but between natural and moral (or spiritual) sciences. Vainly would we try to dodge the philosophical problems that orbit around this distinction. A theory of science that, elluding ’ideological contaminations’, pretended to treat natural and cultural sciences equally in the name of a formal idea of unitary science is a formal theory, but a theory that is so far removed from the nature of the effective sciences does not even deserve to be called a ’theory of science’. ARTICLE II. Gnoseological theory of science 8 The gnoseological approach as an alternative among other possible approaches The expression ’theory of science’ is a multivocous one, because the term ’science’ is multivocous (we have identified four meanings in §3) and the term ’theory’ is multivocous. ’Theory’ is sometimes a scientific theory -such as when we speak about the ’theory of relativity’ or the ’theory of evolution’- but other times a philosophical theory (Platon’s ’theory of ideas’, or Russell’s ’theory of types’), or even theological theory (Saint Thomas Aquinas’ ’theory on the dogma of transubstanciation’). We could explain again the thesis held in the previous article on the nature of the theory of science, such as we understand it, saying that it is a philosophical theory, but not a theological theory or a scientific theory. But this does not mean that the philosophical theory of science must be opposed only to the empty class of theories, since it can also be opposed to another classes of scientific or theological (and these are more important nowadays than one might think at a glance) theories of science. In fact, we 21 8 THE GNOSEOLOGICAL APPROACH AS AN ALTERNATIVE AMONG OTHER POSSIBLE APPROACHES register theological theories of science in our cultural tradition; besides the (theological) theory of theological science (which considers Theology as a science subordinated to the ’science of the pious’), we also have the (theological) theory of scientific truth (truth as an isomorphic adequation of thought and reality, which implies the idea of a God that is norm and correlate of said truth). But above all, our tradition offers us ’scientific theories’ of science (or, at least, several ’approaches’ which must be considered inserted in scientific theories). Anyhow, the expression ’philosophical theory of science’ is still multivocous, since there are different philosophical theories of science, whose differences can be established not only in regards to their doctrinal content, but to the ’scale’ on which they remain. Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s ’theory of science’ is no doubt philosophical, but its ’scale’ is very different from that on which M. Schlick’s ’theory of science’ is configured. The ’scale’ to which the theory of science that we are going to detail in this work sticks is closer to Schlick’s than to Fichte’s, even when, doctrinally, the Theory of categorial closure is radically opposed to the neopositivist theory of science: contraria sunt circa eadem. The ’scale’ on which we want to move is a scale that we will call ’gnoseological’; that this scale is philosophical does not reciprocally imply that every philosophical theory of science can be reduced to a gnoseological scale. Now, in order to establish the meaning and reach of the ’gnoseological theory of science’ it is mandatory to take the other ’theoretical approaches’ (whether they be scientific, theological, or non- gnoseological but still philosophical) into account. We derive this demand from the very philosophical condition that we have attributed to Gnoseology; a similar demand would not be appliable to the determination of the reach and meaning of a scientific theory of science. Because philosophy as we understand it is not so much an activity that can be considered exempted, as having its own origin and sources. Philosophy is always nurtured by other (mundane, theological or scientific) sources; therefore, the reach of a philosophical theory of science can only be delimited in relation to other theories or theoretical approaches, be these scientific or theological, as well as in its contrast with other philosophical theories. The meaning of the gnoseological approach that inspires this work can only be precised through its reciprocal distinction with other different approaches, many of which have managed to determine a sphere of their own. Among these approaches we cite six as the most characteristic ones, and we will refer to them as follows: (1) logical-formal approach (2) psychological approach (3) sociological approach (4) informatical approach (5) epistemological approach (which we will carefully distinguish from our own gnoseological approach) (6) historical approach. With respect to these approaches (whose global description may be found by the reader in Section I of Part I in this very volume) we will outline our own approach, the (7) gnoseological approach. The approach that we call ’gnoseological’, which we understand as the constitutive approach to the theory of science by antonomasia, is not presented by us at all as a new, unheard-of approach. It is new in relation to the theories of science from the Antiquity or the Middle Ages, since because the material that it is going to analyze, modern science, imposes a scale of concepts that could not have been established in the Antiquity or the Middle Ages. However, in due time we will defend the thesis that this approach was prefigured in the aristotelian treatment of science, in the Second Analytics. More precisely, the gnoseological perspective can bring the Second Analytics back as a theory of science (re-interpreting them in a non-gratuitous way), in parallel to how, from the 22 8 THE GNOSEOLOGICAL APPROACH AS AN ALTERNATIVE AMONG OTHER POSSIBLE APPROACHES modern idea of science (science in our third sense) one may bring Geometry back as a science that was already effective in the Antiquity (which will require to re-interpret it in a different way -the operationally constructive one- than the one in which antique people and scholastics interpreted it, that is, as a deductive science, science in the second sense among the ones described in §3). Only from the general idea of science modelled by modern science (science in the third sense) can we see in Geometry the same palnes (for instance, the phenomenical plane, the essential plane, the physicalist plane of the semantic axis) that, in due time, we will appreciate in ’real’ sciences. It would be preferable, therefore, to speak of the gnoseological approach not so much as a new approach, in absolute terms, rather as an approach that is simply different from the others we have enumerated. But the truth is that nowadays it appears so mixed and tangled up with them (with some more than others, depending on schools and periods) that it is not easier to untangle its constitutive lines than to separate the silhouette of Heracles’ head from a mass of bronze in which it had been re-melted. To put it another way: only if we have a precise and up-to-date idea of the lines that constitute the gnoseological approach will we be able to find again vestiges of this approach in the multiple and confusing tradition of the ’theories of science’. From the Theory of categorial closure there is some meaning in saying that the gnoseological scale for the analysis of science is imposed to us by the ’morphology’ of these sciences itself, as long as we manage to remove the contextual adherences that surround each of these sciences like an on the other hand indispensable atmosphere. Because of it, it is easy to slip into the analysis following one of these adherences, straying from the underlying morphology; in general, this paradoxically happens to scientists themselves (paradoxically because without scientists the morphology of reference itself could not have taken shape). The situation of scientists, agents of science, before the science itself that is built by them could be compared without exaggerating too much, and nowadays, in the phase of science as a socialized and industrialized organization, more than some decades ago, with the situation of the indigenous people of the southern seas regarding the institution of Kula (a circle constituted by two currents that move in opposite senses, and that are formed through concatenated exchanges of necklaces and bracelets), according to Malinowski’s already classic account: No indigenous person, not even the most intelligent one, has a clear idea of Kula as a great organized social institution, much less of its function and sociological implications. If one of them was asked what Kula is, he would answer by giving a few details, leaning more towards an account of personal experiences and subjective points of view on Kula than towards something resembling a precise definition. Not even a coherent partial exposition can be obtained. In fact, they do not have a vision of the whole: they participate in the task and can not see the whole from the outside19 . But the morphology of the sciences that the Theory of categorial closure makes us notice, in the ’gnoseological stage’ in which Aristotle moved already, is a morphology similar to that of ’cultural institutions’. Geometry an Arithmetic may be considered as ’cultural institutions’; institutions that were distinguished not only from non-scientific (technological, rhetorical) institutionalized knowledge, 19 Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), III, ’Main characteristics of Kula’ 23 8 THE GNOSEOLOGICAL APPROACH AS AN ALTERNATIVE AMONG OTHER POSSIBLE APPROACHES but also one from the other, to such an extent that Aristotle came to establish the thesis of the ’incommunicabiliy of the genres’ (arithmetical and geometrical genres)20 . The theory of science appears to us, then, as a theory of those ’objective institutions’, a theory of those ’bodies of doctrines’, inseparable from rulers and compasses, from schools and investigators, from books, etc. Institutions that are given as a factum, and not in singular, but precisely in plural: not as the factum of a one science (that could therefore claim an unlimited field), but as the factum of the diverse sciences (seen, sometimes, as incommunicable genres), which means that these sciences will have to be referred to fields or enclosures limited not so much by not knowing, by ignorance or superstition, but by different scientific knowledge. The fact of the multiplicity of sciences is not, when interpreted like this, a merely empirical factum, contingent and irrelevant (’there are several sciences in the same way that there could be only one’). It is a transcendental factum whose meaning can only be noticed when linked to the topic of scientific truth. Indeed, becoming aware that ’there is more than one science’ means so much as noticing that, therefore, scientific truth does not depend on some first principle, or on a mathesis universalis with respect to which every particular science is just an application or preparation or appearance (as scholastics, neopositivists and Husserl himself thought); it means (at least, the Theory of categorial closure rests on this meaning) that scientific truth must be founded on the characteristic and immanent enclosures of each science, in the ’categorial fields’ with respect to which every science is defined. However, the stage where those ’enclosures’ (in the mathematical sense of operational closure, a sense which does not exclude the limitation of the internal possibilities of construction opened precisely by the closure itself) are outlined, where those scientific bodies appear as enclosures, is the same in which the infinite possibilities of relations and, above all, of newfound (necessary, apodictic) truths -also of mistakes and of contents that are neither truths nor mistakes-. This stage, which Aristotle could perhaps vaguely perceive in the state of sciences in IV century Athens, became hazy very soon when it began to become crowded by other institutions that resembled sciences without being such, perhaps because they were protosciences, perhaps because they disguised themselves with the forms of traditional sciences. And so, in the cultural landscape of the Low Empire we can already contemplate how the judicial sciences, grammatical sciences, and even dogmatic theology, which will centuries later end up being described as a more geometrico science in Nicholas of Amiens’ Ars catholicae fidei, are developed. The theory of science had to be devalued the moment their analysis were to fall on contents founded on the plane that crossed every doctrinal body (pseudosciences, parasciences and even protosciences) as a common denominator, that is, the quasi-grammatical plane of logical-formal analysis applied to the ’methodology’ of sciences. The circumstane that genuine sciences, Arithmetic and Geometry, which were at the origin of the aristotelian theory of science, were not sciences from the class of the ones called natural, but were instead formal, facilitated this shift of the theory of science towards the analysis of axiomatic-propositional (actually: ’hypothetical-deductive’) doctrinal bodies, which were indistinctly designated as sciences. Anyway, those big doctrinal circles remained on the scale of the morphology of genuine sciences. One could consider them -the Theory of categorial closure does- as a projection of those morphologies onto a 20 Aristotle, Met. V, 13, 1020a10, First Analytics, 41a-25. 24 8 THE GNOSEOLOGICAL APPROACH AS AN ALTERNATIVE AMONG OTHER POSSIBLE APPROACHES ’propositional scale’. Under no circumstance, despite some people’s pretensions, would it be justified to interpret said ’doctrinal’ bodies as mere logical-formal systems, since such systems always implied a matter ; hence, their internal analysis would correspond, ’at most’, to the so-called Logica maior (a material Logic, in line with the Second Analytics insofar as these contrasted with the First Analytics). A Logica maior, it is true, that left outside its light cone mainly the tools, the laboratories, considering them reduced to the condition of epistemological instruments (for instance, a microscope, rather than as an operator, would be seen as an ’extension of the eye’; ruler and compass would be seen, rather than as operators or relators, as ’auxiliaries’). Anyway, precisely the question de unitate et distinctione scientiarum was a core (though not unique) question in Logica maior ; a question that may serve as a canon to establish precisely the ’gnoseological scale’. How to free the gaze tied to this ghostly stage where genuine sciences or fragments of sciences appeared in a mutual game and even with inverted hierarchical relations with protosciences, pseu- dosciences and even with philosophy? The liberation could only take place with the advent of new scientific institutions whose material structure was able to ’attract towards them’ Geometry and Arithmetic. Even more, they will make use of them and re-interpret them as material (not formal) sciences. Once the whole is formed, the idea to ’throw’ these apparent sciences out of the stage will emerge. The advent of these new institutions took place, as is well known, during the XVII, XVIII and XIX centuries, and was linked to the Industrial Revolution. The most genuine brand that will distin- guish modern sciences from those that were sciences only in different senses is the criteria of truth: sciences are genuine because the can be proven apodictically (in precise astronomical, technochemi- cal, technoelectrical... results), as opposed to doctrines that are only likely or absurd, or gratuitous, or at any rate non-provable or purely speculative. But much time would have to pass before the lines through which the new material criteria of truth were precised could be unravelled. We could say that the lines that were vigorously marked were the ones that separated, on the one hand, natural sciences and an ’antiquarian’s knowlege’ (what we denotatively call ’human sciences’ nowadays), and scientific and non-scientific knowledge, on the other hand. In the Critique of pure reason, the lines that separated the different types of knowledge that fell into scientific knowledge from one another were blurred, no doubt because the ideal of a unitary science or mathesis universalis was never forgotten (this situation remains even in the popperian approach to the ’problem of demarcation’ between empirical sciences and metaphysical systems, regardless of Popper himself being the one to consider this problem as the ’core problem of the theory of knowledge’ and call it ’Kant’s problem’). And this ideal can not be considered a mere project, perhaps utopian, but always inoffensive. The ideal of a mathesis universalis could do no less than distort the perception of the morphology of science, because by considering these sciences from that unitary-universal (not categorial) perspec- tive it became necessary to conclude that categorial sciences ’were not yet rigorous sciences’ (as even Husserl thought), despite their being on the safe road. It seemed as if their scientificity depended on an undefined future, or on a ’gnoseological millenarism’. Now: the novelty that, we think, must be considered decisive for the new theory of science has to do with the evidence that we have been able to conquer necessary truths rationally, without having 25 9 THE CONSTITUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THE REORGANIZATION OF THE GNOSEOLOGICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ’MATTER’ AND ’FORM’ to go back to absolute principles; it is the evidence that categorial principles, given in the imma- nence of finite yet unended courses (of relatively independent operational processes, whether these be arithmetical, geometrical, mechanical, thermodynamic, chemical, etc.), suffice. Only from ’propo- sitionalist’ perspectives will these categorial or intermediate principles be identified with ’hypothesis’ or ’primitive proositions’, internal principles (principia media). From a non-propositionalist gnoseo- logical perspective, these ’categorial principles’ have to do, above all, with the very architecture of the field, with the determinant contexts or ’armors’ that may be built in it. 9 The constitution of modern science and the reorganiza- tion of the gnoseological distinction between ’matter’ and ’form’ From the moment that the institutional reality of modern natural sciences forces us to admit that both the ’pen and paper’ -that is, the languages of sciences- and the apparatuses; the instruments; the artificiously re-modelled materials of the field themselves, such as chemical substances, which are culturally, industrially -which, at the same time, presupposes a given level of development of the social system- produced configurations, form part of them, only from then on can we begin to understand the scope of meaning of the matter of each science, matter from which the necessary truths independent of other categorial matter shall manifest; only like this can it be understood that we are not before a shapeless, indifferenced, virgin, common (something like the Rickert’s ’heterogeneous whole’ or Hjelmslev’s ’content-substance’) matter, a migma over which ’propositions fly’, but before several organized, diverse and irreductible materialities. Because of it, the objective of theory of science, taking science precisely on this scale, will be to account for the connection between their types of matter (insofar as they are diverse and irreductible, already organized by precise techniques and technologies) and their conformation (or form), which allows us to determine truths in relatively independent spheres. This is also a doubtlessly legitimate re-interpretation of the question de distinctione et unitate scientiarum. In addition, the basis of the connection between the two aspects explicitly contained in this topic (distinction and unity) reveals itself to us on the strictly dialectic-gnoseological plane: because the distinction between sciences will be derived, according to what has been said, from the very nature of some truths that are understood to emerge from the immanence of diverse materialities, while their unity will be configured precisely through the very conformation that has resulted in such truths. The unity that every science may reach by organizing itself around its truths does not need to wait for a hypothetical ’unitary science’. The gnoseological theory, according to this, will reach its own scale when it can recognize the truth characteristic to each science as a form generated or adscribed to the materiality of said science. It is here that the question about the nature of each materiality and the connection between different materialities is raised; question whose development requires the analysis of the dispositions capable of resulting in scientific truths, regardless of our being able to perceive said truths as ’analogic forms’ resulting from those different materialities. This allows us to 26 9 THE CONSTITUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THE REORGANIZATION OF THE GNOSEOLOGICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ’MATTER’ AND ’FORM’ understand the possibility of the existence of several theories of science, even within the gnoseological scale, because several interpretations of the nature of those components and those connections are possible. We may defend that the idea of a ’form of sciences’ according to truth is used in the Second Analytics already to account for the role that syllogisms, that ’formal logic’ as machinery that transforms the matter of sciences, plays in the determination of the different truths (whether aristotelian doctrine circumscribes matter to main propositions, principles, is a different topic). This schematic will be maintained in the scholastic doctrine of science, a doctrine which intends to be ’logical-material’ (matter is given in the three genres of abstraction: matter of the third genre is, paradoxically, the immaterial; the form is universality, and that form is the one that clears the way for syllogisms). In cartesianism itself, as well. In the last paragraph of his Rule X, Descartes says: To prevent our reason above all from leaving on vacation during the examination of some truth, we reject these logical forms as opposed to the goal that we have set for ourselves (...); however, to make it even more evident that this art of reasoning [logica minor, then called ’dialectic’] does not contribute at all to the knowledge of truth, we must notice that dialecticians cannot build with their art any syllogism unless they already possess its matter (...) The ’gnoseological hylemorphism’21 is also maintained in the kantian and neokantian doctrine of the matter of knowledge and the a priori forms of sensitivity (intuitions of time and space) and under- standing (categories). By treating axioms and postulates as equivalent -after the revolution of non euclidian geometries-, the ’hylemorphic’ schematic will drift towards its purely formal components, towards the conception of sciences as hypothetical-deductive systems (a conception propitiated by Hilbert’s formalism). However, the most frequent will come to be interpreting the logical form of sciences as a logical-mathematical form (or a ’formal language’), taking as a given that this form will be applied to an empirical material (designated by the ’observational language’). One could claim (when Mathematics are considered a science) that what is actually being done in this interpretation of the gnoseological functions of form and matter is actually attributing to a science (Mathematics) the function of form of every other observational matter (Kant: ’every science is a science in what it has of Mathematics’). Suppe says22 : From the 20s onwards, building scientific theories as axiomatic [formal] calculi which are given a partial observational interpretation [matter] via rules of correspondence became commonplace for philosophers of science. Such is the central dogma of what Putnam would call the received view in theory of science. What we want to highlight, for our part, is that the aristotelian distinction between form and matter of sciences remains intact. To sum up: theory of science as a gnoseological theory, in the tradition that goes from Aristotle to Kant and that reaches us, seems to revolve always around the distinction, in the very body 21 T.N: hylemorphism is the aristotelian theory according to which ’being’ (ousia) is constituted by matter and form 22 Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories, University of Illinois Pres 1974 27 9 THE CONSTITUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THE REORGANIZATION OF THE GNOSEOLOGICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ’MATTER’ AND ’FORM’ of the objective sciences (and not even in the process of their knowledge), between gnoseolgical matter and form; furthermore, this distinction seems to reach its gnoseological meaning insofar as it has to do with scientific truth. This differentiates theory of science from so-called theory of knowledge (epistemology), because theory of knowledge is based on the distinction between subject and object (regardless of the fact that, at the same time, the relation between the subject and object of knowledge is often understood via the relation between form and matter, either by assigning the subject the function of matter where objects can be imprinted as forms -Aristotle, De anima, III, 5- or, acoording to the schematic of transcendental idealism, conceiving the subject as a form -or a dator formarum- which will ’project’ itself onto sensitive or intelligible matter). None of this would authorize us to mistake ’epistemology’ (insofar as it moves within subject/object coordinates) for ’theory of science’ (insofar as it moves within the gnoseological form/matter coordinates). Because both the gnoseological form and matter must be considered as given within the objective (from the ’object’) field, within the system, so that the moment of plurality of the whole field corresponds to matter, whereas the moment of the objective unity of the field corresponds to form. One could say, therefore, that the approach to the analysis of science that we call gnoseological is constituted via the sui generis distinction between matter and form, with respect to truth. This thesis does not force us to presuppose that all that constitutes the tissue of a science must be conceived in terms of true or not true (if we maintain the image of science as a unity resulting from an interweaving of its multiple materials, truth, as a characteristic form of the unity of said interweaving, should not be put along every interwoven thread, since it would suffice to put it in the knots that every now and then sustain its warp and woof). The Theory of categorial closure does not move outside these gnoseological coordinates (matter, form, truth), but rather vindicates them as constituting the gnoseological scale, and if it distances itself from Aristotle, Kant or Carnap, it is not so much because it rejects that distinction between form and matter, but because it can not accept that the form of science be either the syllogistic form, or the a priori form of understanding, or the linguistical form, or the mathematical form. The Theory of categorial closure seeks the form of science (insofar as it is essentially linked to its truth) in the very unitary concatenations of the parts (materialities) that constitute its internal unity, and places the foundation of that unity in synthetic identity. At the same time, synthetic identity will be held by the Theory of categorial closure as the content itself of scientific truth. This is the ultimate reason by which our thesis on the logical-material nature of theory of science reaches its justification (provided that we presuppose that Logic -both formal Logic and material Logic- moves in the ’atmosphere’ of identity23 ). 23 Gustavo Bueno, ’Preface to the Treatise on Logic’, in Julián Velarde, Lógica formal, Pentalfa, Oviedo 1982, pp. 9-12. 28
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