ポパーの弟子のイムレ・ラカトシュ(Imre Lakatos, 1922?1974) は１９７０年に『History of Science and its Rational Reconstructions』と題する論文を発表しました。これに対してクーンが放った評言は激しいものでした。：
＃ What Lakatos conceives as history is not history at all but philosophy fabricating examples ＃
＜翻訳＞ ラカトシュが歴史だと思っているのは歴史なんかでは全然なくて、史的事例をでっち上げている哲学だ 。（終り）
同じ１９７０年、ラカトシュはアラン・マスグレーブと共編で『CRITICISM AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE』という論考集を出版しますが、その中で一番の長編（91-195）は「Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes」と題するラカトシュ自身の論文です。ひと昔まえ，クーン／ポパー論争華やかなりし頃、線を引き、メモを書き込んで、私もこの本を熱心に読んだものでした。昔も今も、読んでいると苦い味が口に残ります。SSR (1962)という２００頁に充たない中編モノグラフ、その著者の第一の弟子ハイルブロンが、功なり名遂げた後に、“『科学革命の構造』は穴だらけだ”と断定を下した一冊の本が、出版から数年のうちに、あれだけの大騒ぎ、苛烈な論争を巻き起こしたのは、現在の時点から冷静に振り返る者には、ほんとに不可解だとしか思えないような現象です。これをクーン現象と呼ぶことにすれば、クーン現象は、科学史論争あるいは科学哲学論争というよりも、１９６０年代という文化史的に特異な時代についての社会学的研究の対象の一部であるべきものだと私には思われます。
さて、冒頭のクーンのラカトシュ評は１９８０年に
『The Halt and the Blind: Philosophy and History of Science』というタイトルでBrit, J. Phil. Sci. 31 (1980), 181-192 に発表された書評でも繰り返されています。Colin Howson 編集の『Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to Modern Science, 1800-1905』(1976) が書評の対象で、ラカトシュがその冒頭の論文を書いています。私の関心はラカトシュとクーンの間の汚い言葉の応酬にあるのではなく、ここでのクーンの発言とSSR での彼の主張との食い違いにあります。書評の１８３頁に次の文章があります。：
＃ The historian’s problem is not simply that the facts do not speak for themselves but that unlike the scientist’s data, they speak exceedingly softly. Quiet is required if they are to be heard at all. That is a principal reason why I have myself resisted attempts to amalgamate history and philosophy of science though simultaneously urging increased interaction between the two. History done for the sake of philosophy is often scarcely history at all. ＃
＜翻訳＞ 歴史家にとっての問題は、ただ史的事実が自ずから明らかに語るわけではないだけでなく、語るにしても、科学者のデータとは違って、極端に聞き取りにくいことにあるのだ。聞き取れるとしても、それには静寂が求められる。それが、私自身一方では科学史と科学哲学の間の相互作用を強く唱えながらも、両者を合併する試みに抵抗して来た理由なのだ。哲学のためにする歴史というものはしばしば歴史とはおよそ言えない代物である。（終り）
つまり、クーンは、今は亡きラカトシュに向けて、１０年前の非難をまたまた繰り返しているのです。しかし、私は彼の次の発言の方をより重く受けとめます。：
＃ History is interpretative throughout.＃（歴史というものは、徹頭徹尾、解釈の問題だ）
ここでクーンが強調していることを分かりやすくまとめれば、「自然科学的事実ははっきりしているが、歴史的事実はそれをどう解釈するかがすべてだ」としても余り間違ってはいなでしょう。だとすると、これはSSR のクーンのスタンスと大分くい違うではありますまいか？「自然科学的事実の解釈はパラダイムに依存する」というのが彼の主張の中核ではなかったでしょうか？
ちなみに、今回取り上げた書評の正式のタイトルは
THE HALT AND THE BLIND: PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE
です。科学哲学が跛で科学史が盲ということでしょうか？レトリカルな一種の自嘲でしょうか？目の悪い人が、足は不自由だけれど目は見える人を背負って歩けば一人前になれる、という忠告でしょうか？ 諸賢のご教示をお願いします。
私の英文草稿の第６章「History and Philosophy」の第１節のはじめの３頁ほどを以下に写します。興味のある方はお読み下さい。
6.1 The Halt and the Blind
There are more than enough reasons these days for us to become hostile toward natural science. The nuclear bomb is but one embodiment of what natural science can do to humanity. This general sentiment is the fertile soil on which the Kuhnian view of science has been flourishing, and it seems to have become a sort of discernible subculture according to P. Menzies:
Many of the undergraduates I teach are attracted by the heady idea that truth is “relative to us” and reality is “dependent on our minds.” This idea is not just confined to philosophy undergraduates. A veritable army of philosophers, historians and sociologists of science has been working over the past forty years to persuade us that science itself does not deliver objective truths, but is rather an elaborate social construction that creates the reality it purports to study. (Menzies 2001, 30)
Specifically about Kuhn’s SSR, Hacking observes:
Undergraduates in a general class, not specialists, now tell me, “We can see how this was some sort of radical book once, but for us it is all kind of obvious, eh?” It has become a small educational mission to show that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is not at all obvious. (Hacking1993, 275).
The present book is designed to address primarily to those students. I have tried to show that Kuhn’s SSR is not based on firm historical facts as Kuhn claimed and that there are firm historical facts that sharply contradict the key contentions of SSR. I have also sought a hermeneutic understanding of why Kuhn wrote SSR in that particular way.
So far I have refrained from engaging in philosophical argument. It has been the basic policy of this writing. Now that I have done my best to undo undesirable influences of SSR, I wish to deviate from the basic policy and present my idea on a future direction that the philosophy of science could possibly take. This last chapter is mainly addressed to philosophy undergraduate students who have basic knowledge of philosophy.
In 1980 Kuhn published a review article entitled The Halt and the Blind: Philosophy and History of Science (Kuhn 1980), where Kuhn harshly criticized Lakatos’ way of fabricating historical facts for the sake of certain philosophical agenda. We repeat the quotation (3.10e):
What Lakatos conceives as history is not history at all but philosophy fabricating examples.
This scathing comment was actually made back in 1971 right after the publication of the second edition of SSR. The 1980 article contains another acerbic statement:
The historian’s problem is not simply that the facts do not speak for themselves but that, unlike the scientist’s data, they speak exceedingly softly. Quiet is required if they are to be heard at all. That is a principal reason why I have myself resisted attempts to amalgamate history and philosophy of science though simultaneously urging increased interaction between the two. History done for the sake of philosophy is often scarcely history at all. (Kuhn 1980, 183) (6.1a)
This is meant to blame Lakatos but the same blame may be laid on Kuhn as well. His historical narratives of the discovery of X-rays and also of nuclear fission are representative examples of “history done for the sake of philosophy.”
It is important to note, however, that the above quotation contains far more than mere criticism of Lakatos. In 1.4, I wrote that Kuhn asserted that facts in the history of science can be used legitimately to establish the true image of science. This is to say that some observational facts in the history of science are hard enough to reject one theory of science in favor of another theory: in philosophers’ jargon, certain historical facts are not theory-laden and the theory-choice can be made based on those hard facts.
An irony, or rather a striking self-contradiction, is that Kuhn categorically rejected the philosophy of science of logical positivists and advocated his philosophy of science and his basic premise was that observational facts in natural science are all theory-laden.
W. Callebaut caught this self-contradiction:
Thus, according to Kuhn (1980), what applies to scientists ?- say, that their observations are always theory-laden ?- does not or should not apply to the historian studying the scientists. (Callebout 1993, 59)
Now, however, Kuhn says in (6.1a) above that historical facts speak exceedingly softly, while scientific facts speak for themselves. That is, Kuhn now admits that scientific facts are much more solid and much less theory-laden than historical facts, thereby reversing his initial position and dismantling the most basic premise in SSR. In fact he overstates his case:
History is interpretive throughout. (Kuhn 1980, 184)
If history is interpretative through and through, can we really read a certain philosophy of science out of the history of science and claim that this one gives more correct image of science than that one? R. J. Bernstein raised the same question and stated
If observation is theory-laden, or at least influenced by the preconceptions we bring to it, as has so frequently been emphasized, so too in the study of the history of science. One will not find in the history of science whatever we seek to find. But the study of the history of science, like any form of intellectual inquiry, is far more complex and open to conflicting interpretations than has sometimes been acknowledged. Furthermore, when we turn to the specific details of the historical evidence cited by Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Popper, and others in support of their claims about the nature or image of science, we find that deep and troubling questions have been raised about the accuracy of their reading of this history. (Bernstein 1983, 74)
In spite of this insight, Bernstein chose the Kuhnian position that both history and natural science are interpretative, hermeneutic enterprises and there are no solid facts above and beyond interpretative ambiguity. Apparently he made the choice because he liked the idea, very popular among people in the humanities. Along the same line Rorty went much further as we shall see later. It is to be noted, however, that Kuhn himself did not regard the natural sciences as hermeneutic enterprises:
The natural sciences, therefore, though they may require what I have called a hermeneutic base, are not themselves hermeneutic enterprises. The human sciences, on the other hand, often are, and they may have no alternative. (Hiley 1991, 23)
藤永 茂 （２０１１年２月１２日）
＃ What Lakatos conceives as history is not history at all but philosophy fabricating examples ＃
＜翻訳＞ ラカトシュが歴史だと思っているのは歴史なんかでは全然なくて、史的事例をでっち上げている哲学だ 。（終り）
同じ１９７０年、ラカトシュはアラン・マスグレーブと共編で『CRITICISM AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE』という論考集を出版しますが、その中で一番の長編（91-195）は「Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes」と題するラカトシュ自身の論文です。ひと昔まえ，クーン／ポパー論争華やかなりし頃、線を引き、メモを書き込んで、私もこの本を熱心に読んだものでした。昔も今も、読んでいると苦い味が口に残ります。SSR (1962)という２００頁に充たない中編モノグラフ、その著者の第一の弟子ハイルブロンが、功なり名遂げた後に、“『科学革命の構造』は穴だらけだ”と断定を下した一冊の本が、出版から数年のうちに、あれだけの大騒ぎ、苛烈な論争を巻き起こしたのは、現在の時点から冷静に振り返る者には、ほんとに不可解だとしか思えないような現象です。これをクーン現象と呼ぶことにすれば、クーン現象は、科学史論争あるいは科学哲学論争というよりも、１９６０年代という文化史的に特異な時代についての社会学的研究の対象の一部であるべきものだと私には思われます。
さて、冒頭のクーンのラカトシュ評は１９８０年に
『The Halt and the Blind: Philosophy and History of Science』というタイトルでBrit, J. Phil. Sci. 31 (1980), 181-192 に発表された書評でも繰り返されています。Colin Howson 編集の『Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to Modern Science, 1800-1905』(1976) が書評の対象で、ラカトシュがその冒頭の論文を書いています。私の関心はラカトシュとクーンの間の汚い言葉の応酬にあるのではなく、ここでのクーンの発言とSSR での彼の主張との食い違いにあります。書評の１８３頁に次の文章があります。：
＃ The historian’s problem is not simply that the facts do not speak for themselves but that unlike the scientist’s data, they speak exceedingly softly. Quiet is required if they are to be heard at all. That is a principal reason why I have myself resisted attempts to amalgamate history and philosophy of science though simultaneously urging increased interaction between the two. History done for the sake of philosophy is often scarcely history at all. ＃
＜翻訳＞ 歴史家にとっての問題は、ただ史的事実が自ずから明らかに語るわけではないだけでなく、語るにしても、科学者のデータとは違って、極端に聞き取りにくいことにあるのだ。聞き取れるとしても、それには静寂が求められる。それが、私自身一方では科学史と科学哲学の間の相互作用を強く唱えながらも、両者を合併する試みに抵抗して来た理由なのだ。哲学のためにする歴史というものはしばしば歴史とはおよそ言えない代物である。（終り）
つまり、クーンは、今は亡きラカトシュに向けて、１０年前の非難をまたまた繰り返しているのです。しかし、私は彼の次の発言の方をより重く受けとめます。：
＃ History is interpretative throughout.＃（歴史というものは、徹頭徹尾、解釈の問題だ）
ここでクーンが強調していることを分かりやすくまとめれば、「自然科学的事実ははっきりしているが、歴史的事実はそれをどう解釈するかがすべてだ」としても余り間違ってはいなでしょう。だとすると、これはSSR のクーンのスタンスと大分くい違うではありますまいか？「自然科学的事実の解釈はパラダイムに依存する」というのが彼の主張の中核ではなかったでしょうか？
ちなみに、今回取り上げた書評の正式のタイトルは
THE HALT AND THE BLIND: PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE
です。科学哲学が跛で科学史が盲ということでしょうか？レトリカルな一種の自嘲でしょうか？目の悪い人が、足は不自由だけれど目は見える人を背負って歩けば一人前になれる、という忠告でしょうか？ 諸賢のご教示をお願いします。
私の英文草稿の第６章「History and Philosophy」の第１節のはじめの３頁ほどを以下に写します。興味のある方はお読み下さい。
6.1 The Halt and the Blind
There are more than enough reasons these days for us to become hostile toward natural science. The nuclear bomb is but one embodiment of what natural science can do to humanity. This general sentiment is the fertile soil on which the Kuhnian view of science has been flourishing, and it seems to have become a sort of discernible subculture according to P. Menzies:
Many of the undergraduates I teach are attracted by the heady idea that truth is “relative to us” and reality is “dependent on our minds.” This idea is not just confined to philosophy undergraduates. A veritable army of philosophers, historians and sociologists of science has been working over the past forty years to persuade us that science itself does not deliver objective truths, but is rather an elaborate social construction that creates the reality it purports to study. (Menzies 2001, 30)
Specifically about Kuhn’s SSR, Hacking observes:
Undergraduates in a general class, not specialists, now tell me, “We can see how this was some sort of radical book once, but for us it is all kind of obvious, eh?” It has become a small educational mission to show that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is not at all obvious. (Hacking1993, 275).
The present book is designed to address primarily to those students. I have tried to show that Kuhn’s SSR is not based on firm historical facts as Kuhn claimed and that there are firm historical facts that sharply contradict the key contentions of SSR. I have also sought a hermeneutic understanding of why Kuhn wrote SSR in that particular way.
So far I have refrained from engaging in philosophical argument. It has been the basic policy of this writing. Now that I have done my best to undo undesirable influences of SSR, I wish to deviate from the basic policy and present my idea on a future direction that the philosophy of science could possibly take. This last chapter is mainly addressed to philosophy undergraduate students who have basic knowledge of philosophy.
In 1980 Kuhn published a review article entitled The Halt and the Blind: Philosophy and History of Science (Kuhn 1980), where Kuhn harshly criticized Lakatos’ way of fabricating historical facts for the sake of certain philosophical agenda. We repeat the quotation (3.10e):
What Lakatos conceives as history is not history at all but philosophy fabricating examples.
This scathing comment was actually made back in 1971 right after the publication of the second edition of SSR. The 1980 article contains another acerbic statement:
The historian’s problem is not simply that the facts do not speak for themselves but that, unlike the scientist’s data, they speak exceedingly softly. Quiet is required if they are to be heard at all. That is a principal reason why I have myself resisted attempts to amalgamate history and philosophy of science though simultaneously urging increased interaction between the two. History done for the sake of philosophy is often scarcely history at all. (Kuhn 1980, 183) (6.1a)
This is meant to blame Lakatos but the same blame may be laid on Kuhn as well. His historical narratives of the discovery of X-rays and also of nuclear fission are representative examples of “history done for the sake of philosophy.”
It is important to note, however, that the above quotation contains far more than mere criticism of Lakatos. In 1.4, I wrote that Kuhn asserted that facts in the history of science can be used legitimately to establish the true image of science. This is to say that some observational facts in the history of science are hard enough to reject one theory of science in favor of another theory: in philosophers’ jargon, certain historical facts are not theory-laden and the theory-choice can be made based on those hard facts.
An irony, or rather a striking self-contradiction, is that Kuhn categorically rejected the philosophy of science of logical positivists and advocated his philosophy of science and his basic premise was that observational facts in natural science are all theory-laden.
W. Callebaut caught this self-contradiction:
Thus, according to Kuhn (1980), what applies to scientists ?- say, that their observations are always theory-laden ?- does not or should not apply to the historian studying the scientists. (Callebout 1993, 59)
Now, however, Kuhn says in (6.1a) above that historical facts speak exceedingly softly, while scientific facts speak for themselves. That is, Kuhn now admits that scientific facts are much more solid and much less theory-laden than historical facts, thereby reversing his initial position and dismantling the most basic premise in SSR. In fact he overstates his case:
History is interpretive throughout. (Kuhn 1980, 184)
If history is interpretative through and through, can we really read a certain philosophy of science out of the history of science and claim that this one gives more correct image of science than that one? R. J. Bernstein raised the same question and stated
If observation is theory-laden, or at least influenced by the preconceptions we bring to it, as has so frequently been emphasized, so too in the study of the history of science. One will not find in the history of science whatever we seek to find. But the study of the history of science, like any form of intellectual inquiry, is far more complex and open to conflicting interpretations than has sometimes been acknowledged. Furthermore, when we turn to the specific details of the historical evidence cited by Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Popper, and others in support of their claims about the nature or image of science, we find that deep and troubling questions have been raised about the accuracy of their reading of this history. (Bernstein 1983, 74)
In spite of this insight, Bernstein chose the Kuhnian position that both history and natural science are interpretative, hermeneutic enterprises and there are no solid facts above and beyond interpretative ambiguity. Apparently he made the choice because he liked the idea, very popular among people in the humanities. Along the same line Rorty went much further as we shall see later. It is to be noted, however, that Kuhn himself did not regard the natural sciences as hermeneutic enterprises:
The natural sciences, therefore, though they may require what I have called a hermeneutic base, are not themselves hermeneutic enterprises. The human sciences, on the other hand, often are, and they may have no alternative. (Hiley 1991, 23)
藤永 茂 （２０１１年２月１２日）