Review - The Metaphysics of Science

Dilworth's main aim is to propose and defend a metaphysics of science based on three ontological principles, uniformity of nature, substance, and causality. Dilworth does not call these ontological entities of modern science, i.e. post-Galilean mainstream Western science; rather they are the ontological presuppositions of the epistemic practice of modern science. Dilworth considers these the "core" rather than "foundational" principle, avoiding thereby questions about foundations and coherence in the epistemology of science.

The core principles of causation is given a non-supernaturalist but not necessarily physicalist interpretation at one point (p. 57) but it is unclear what non-physicalist interpretations Dilworth think the principles imply, as I discuss below. These core principles are relatively a priori and not necessarily true. They are assumed to be true though they might not be true (p. 71).

The core principles are the basis for "refined" principles that are the ontological presuppositions of particular disciplines. Thus, physics has energy as a core refined principle; chemistry has matter and economics has the economy as refined principles. The practitioners of particular disciplines assume their refined principles make up a hierarchy, so that sociologists are justified in thinking of 'society' as a substance. The extent of this justification is not entirely clear.

Change in substances according to regular patterns make up the facts discovered by empirical research, according to Dilworth. If a social scientist is justified in thinking of their discipline as investigating change in a substance, then a social scientist discovers social facts. But when considering the case of economics, Dilworth asserts that economic facts are quantitative expressions of non-quantitative data, so that economic facts are "stylized facts" (p. 135).

 

Economic change is distinguished further from the change in physics because economic facts change by means of intentional or final causation while physical facts change only by means of efficient causations. While I find Dilworth's account of the scientific basis of social science interesting I have the sense that he has named the difference between change and causation in social sciences and physical sciences rather than explaining why both are scientific in anything but a nominal sense. To call economic facts "stylized" connotes that their factual status is a courtesy or manner of speaking 
This book has valuable things to say about the discovery of empirical laws as the regularities of in the date and the function of scientific theory as attempts to explain the discovered regularities by means of a model. Empirical laws involve measurable regularities and can be detected by multiple observers in controlled experiments. Theories serve a different function and satisfy a different intellectual question. The goal of modern science, per Dilworth, is to identify actually operating causes of change underlying phenomenal appearances of change. Theories are models that depict causes when causes are unavailable to measurement and observation (p. 102). Scientific explanation consists in "showing by means of a theory how the empirical laws or regularities of a discipline are but the manifestation of the discipline's principles on a deeper level." Theories explain laws by "depicting" states of affairs that (a) can be conceived as underlying them" and (b) obey the contiguity [principle] and other principles of the discipline" (p. 109). Theories then are models that cannot themselves be tested but can suggest further experimental tests.

 

~ more... ~