Gerhard Schurz - Frames as Means of Reconstructing the Dynamics of Scientific TheoriesChen/Barker (2000) and Chen (2003) have shown that frames are an excellent tool for investigating the theoretical taxonomy and ontology of scientific theories. The proje

Chen/Barker (2000) and Chen (2003) have shown that frames are an excellent tool for investigating the theoretical taxonomy and ontology of scientific theories. The project which is presented in this talk follows up on Chen’s analysis by concentrating on Laudan’s thesis of pessimistic meta-induction. Laudan’s thesis is a counter-argument to Putnam’s well known no-miracle-argument (Putnam 1978, 18f). The latter says that without the assumption that the theoretical concepts of theories designate real though unobservable constituents of the world, the empirical success of scientific theories would be a sheer miracle. Laudan (1981) counters Putnam’s claim with a seemingly equally strong argument: in the factual history of science, theories judged to be empirically successful have repeatedly been overthrown by theories with radically different conceptual structures (and corresponding ‘ontologies’). Laudan concludes that on simple inductive grounds it is therefore unreasonable to expect that our currently accepted theories will escape this fate. We should rather expect that the conceptual structure and stipulated ‘ontology’ of our present theories are likewise far away from the ‘real world’ and will be radically overthrown in the future.   A main goal of the project presented in this talk will be to investigate the question ‘Which nodes of a frame underlying a scientific theory can be regarded to possess realistic reference, and which have merely an instrumental value?’ As a method for answering this question, I suggest the study of possibility of correspondence relations between scientific theories and their underlying frames. At hand of the widely discussed example of the phlogiston and the oxygen theory of combustion ? which are usually regarded as being incommensurable theories ? I will show that there exists a certain correspondence between the concepts of phlogistication and de-phlogistication and certain concepts of modern oxygen theory. Although the central node of the frame of phlogiston theory (phlogiston) does not have reference, two more special nodes of this frame, phlogistication and de-phlogistication, can be assigned an indirect reference via their correspondence relation to two central nodes of the frame of generalized oxygen theory (electron acceptance and donation). This structural correspondence explains the phlogiston theory’s empirical success in spite of the referential failure of its central conceptual node ‘phlogiston’. I will reconstruct this correspondence relation as a partial isomorphism between the frame of phlogiston- and that of oxygen theory. I will argue that my results imply, at least partially, a refutation of Laudan’s pessimistic meta-induction. In the final part I will discuss logical generalizations of my proposal.

References

Chen, X., und Barker, P. (2000): Continuity through Revolutions: A Frame-Based Account of Conceptual Change, Philosophy ofScience 67, 208-223.

Chen, X. (2003): Object and Event Concepts. A Cognitive Mechanism of Incommensurability, Philosophy of Science70. 962-974.

Laudan, L. (1981): A Confutation of Convergent Realism, Philosophy of Science 48, 19-48.

Putnam, H. (1978): Meaning and the Moral Sciences, Routledge Kegan Paul, London.