One-day conference – Date: 8 December 2007
Place: Ecole normale supérieure Paris (45, rue d'Ulm)
Salle Cavaillès (Staircase A, 1st Floor)
9h00-9h15 Introduction
by Delphine BELLIS and Etienne BRUN-ROVET
9h15-10h15 Delphine BELLIS (Paris IV)
La métaphysique cartésienne et ses modèles optiques
10h15-11h15 Marion CHOTTIN (Paris I)
Science et métaphysique chez Berkeley
BREAK
11h45-12h45 Anna ZIELINSKA (Grenoble II)
Ontologie comme organon. Repenser la place de la métaphysique dans le travail du scientifique
LUNCH BREAK
14h00-15h00 Anastasios BRENNER (Montpellier III)
Vérité scientifique, vérité métaphysique
15h00-16h00 Etienne BRUN-ROVET (EXeCO)
La science comme test des théories métaphysiques
BREAK
16h30-17h30 Don ROSS (Cape Town/Alabama)
Non-domesticating metaphysics
Summary of the main themes:
In a classical mindset, metaphysics is portrayed as the search for principles and first causes. Thus understood, metaphysics constitutes a forteriori the foundation of physics – and, more generally, of science defined as the collection of all the special sciences – as it offers science principles of ontology or even of rational theology. It is in such a mindset that Descartes, in the image of the tree of “philosophy” that he provides in the letter-preface of the Principles of Philosophy, represents metaphysics as the roots of the tree whose trunk is physics and whose branches are the special sciences (medicine, mechanics and morals). However, the somewhat paradoxical etymology of the term “metaphysics”, which makes it denote that which comes after physics (although it is known that this denomination refers to the order in which Aristotle’s works were classified) could lead us to consider the possibility that metaphysics, although foundational in its ambitions, always comes in some sense “after” science. Is it not possible that the normative and foundational work of metaphysics could also intervene, in the constitution of knowledge, after the elaboration of scientific theories? Or even that metaphysics itself might be impacted by scientific theory? Such a possibility heralds a hiatus between, on the one hand, the function assigned de jure to metaphysics and, on the other, the particular conditions of its development; this gap, most familiar in contemporary post-positivist philosophy of science, was not entirely absent from metaphysical constructions even in this classical era.
It is especially in the last century, however, that the question of the relation between scientific knowledge and metaphysics has undergone profound changes. To the extent that the expansion of science corresponds with the emergence of a positivist conception of science, or even with an extreme form of scientism, it is no longer possible to affirm, even in a post-positivist context, the conceptual priority of the study of being to that of natural phenomena. But, even so, the question is not entirely eschewed. Indeed, two strategies have been used to account for the relation which could obtain between specifically scientific constructs on the one hand, and their putative foundations (inaccessible to empirical methods and therefore forever invisible) on the other. The first strategy consists in making explicit and criticising the non-empirical presuppositions of science (realism, laws of nature, causality) and, where necessary, in reformulating these concepts so that they might be made compatible with scientific practices as they emerge from an observation of the way scientists work. It is within this strategy, for instance, that the universality of the laws of nature has been put into doubt to be replaced by an ontology of causal powers coherent with scientific observation. But this approach consists ultimately in a form of compatibility test which any metaphysical conception should pass before being (provisionally) accepted by the scientific community: science thus perceived is a means by which one can select between different metaphysical theories, where these theories are nonetheless still understood as constituting the conceptual foundations of science. There is however a second strategy which operates a more radical inversion of the respective roles of science and of metaphysics. This second approach considers that, far from founding science, metaphysics itself should be naturalised. The question is then no longer what ontology is fitting for science, but rather how ontological questions might be resolved by the methods of science. In particular, this conception of metaphysics might answer the question of the unity of science by invoking arguments unsuspected by the positivists.
The aim of our one-day conference is to explore the consequences of these varying degrees of naturalisation on the pressing questions in contemporary philosophy of science, in particular with respect to scientific realism, to the status of the laws of nature and to the unity of science. Is it possible that science, in the final analysis, might be the ultimate model for metaphysics, both methodologically and within a strict definition of “model”. Science could indeed be a model for metaphysics in many different ways: it might give metaphysics its structure or its methods; it could constitute a point of reference with variable normative contents; but science might also provide metaphysics with schemas and with rational paradigms, hence forming a kind of “metaphysical image”, itself a set of images for metaphysics.
Place: Ecole normale supérieure Paris (45, rue d'Ulm)
Salle Cavaillès (Staircase A, 1st Floor)
Program:
9h00-9h15 Introduction
by Delphine BELLIS and Etienne BRUN-ROVET
9h15-10h15 Delphine BELLIS (Paris IV)
La métaphysique cartésienne et ses modèles optiques
10h15-11h15 Marion CHOTTIN (Paris I)
Science et métaphysique chez Berkeley
BREAK
11h45-12h45 Anna ZIELINSKA (Grenoble II)
Ontologie comme organon. Repenser la place de la métaphysique dans le travail du scientifique
LUNCH BREAK
14h00-15h00 Anastasios BRENNER (Montpellier III)
Vérité scientifique, vérité métaphysique
15h00-16h00 Etienne BRUN-ROVET (EXeCO)
La science comme test des théories métaphysiques
BREAK
16h30-17h30 Don ROSS (Cape Town/Alabama)
Non-domesticating metaphysics
Summary of the main themes:
In a classical mindset, metaphysics is portrayed as the search for principles and first causes. Thus understood, metaphysics constitutes a forteriori the foundation of physics – and, more generally, of science defined as the collection of all the special sciences – as it offers science principles of ontology or even of rational theology. It is in such a mindset that Descartes, in the image of the tree of “philosophy” that he provides in the letter-preface of the Principles of Philosophy, represents metaphysics as the roots of the tree whose trunk is physics and whose branches are the special sciences (medicine, mechanics and morals). However, the somewhat paradoxical etymology of the term “metaphysics”, which makes it denote that which comes after physics (although it is known that this denomination refers to the order in which Aristotle’s works were classified) could lead us to consider the possibility that metaphysics, although foundational in its ambitions, always comes in some sense “after” science. Is it not possible that the normative and foundational work of metaphysics could also intervene, in the constitution of knowledge, after the elaboration of scientific theories? Or even that metaphysics itself might be impacted by scientific theory? Such a possibility heralds a hiatus between, on the one hand, the function assigned de jure to metaphysics and, on the other, the particular conditions of its development; this gap, most familiar in contemporary post-positivist philosophy of science, was not entirely absent from metaphysical constructions even in this classical era.
It is especially in the last century, however, that the question of the relation between scientific knowledge and metaphysics has undergone profound changes. To the extent that the expansion of science corresponds with the emergence of a positivist conception of science, or even with an extreme form of scientism, it is no longer possible to affirm, even in a post-positivist context, the conceptual priority of the study of being to that of natural phenomena. But, even so, the question is not entirely eschewed. Indeed, two strategies have been used to account for the relation which could obtain between specifically scientific constructs on the one hand, and their putative foundations (inaccessible to empirical methods and therefore forever invisible) on the other. The first strategy consists in making explicit and criticising the non-empirical presuppositions of science (realism, laws of nature, causality) and, where necessary, in reformulating these concepts so that they might be made compatible with scientific practices as they emerge from an observation of the way scientists work. It is within this strategy, for instance, that the universality of the laws of nature has been put into doubt to be replaced by an ontology of causal powers coherent with scientific observation. But this approach consists ultimately in a form of compatibility test which any metaphysical conception should pass before being (provisionally) accepted by the scientific community: science thus perceived is a means by which one can select between different metaphysical theories, where these theories are nonetheless still understood as constituting the conceptual foundations of science. There is however a second strategy which operates a more radical inversion of the respective roles of science and of metaphysics. This second approach considers that, far from founding science, metaphysics itself should be naturalised. The question is then no longer what ontology is fitting for science, but rather how ontological questions might be resolved by the methods of science. In particular, this conception of metaphysics might answer the question of the unity of science by invoking arguments unsuspected by the positivists.
The aim of our one-day conference is to explore the consequences of these varying degrees of naturalisation on the pressing questions in contemporary philosophy of science, in particular with respect to scientific realism, to the status of the laws of nature and to the unity of science. Is it possible that science, in the final analysis, might be the ultimate model for metaphysics, both methodologically and within a strict definition of “model”. Science could indeed be a model for metaphysics in many different ways: it might give metaphysics its structure or its methods; it could constitute a point of reference with variable normative contents; but science might also provide metaphysics with schemas and with rational paradigms, hence forming a kind of “metaphysical image”, itself a set of images for metaphysics.
Delphine BELLIS and Etienne BRUN-ROVET
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