Samuel Schindler- publications

 
  • "Rehabilitating Theory. The Refusal of the bottom-up construction of Scientific Phenomena", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Volume 38, Issue 1, March 2007, pp. 160-184 (full paper @ Studies or here )
    • In this paper I inquire into Bogen and Woodward’s (1988) data/phenomena distinction, which in a similar way to Cartwright’s construal of the model of superconductivity (1995)—although in a different domain—argues for a ‘bottom-up’ construction of phenomena from data without the involvement of theory. I criticise Bogen and Woodward’s account by analysing their melting point of lead example in depth, which is usually cited in the literature to illustrate the data/phenomenon distinction. Yet, the main focus of this paper lies on Matthias Kaiser’s (1995) case study of the plate tectonic revolution, the most extensive case study that has been put forth to support the bottom-up construction of phenomena. On the basis of new historical evidence, which has been overlooked not only by Kaiser but also by the entire historical literature on the plate tectonic revolution, I demonstrate that phenomena are not constructed from the bottom-up but rather, admittedly counter-intuitively, from the top-down.  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • "Use-novel predictions and the Periodic Table", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Volume 39, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 265-269, (full paper @ Studies or here)
    • In this paper I comment on a recent paper by [Scerri, E., & Worrall, J. (2001). Prediction and the periodic table. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 32, 407–452.] about the role temporally novel and usenovel predictions played in the acceptance of Mendeleev’s periodic table after the proposal of the latter in 1869. Scerri and Worrall allege that whereas temporally novel predictions—despite Brush’s earlier claim to the contrary—did not carry any special epistemic weight, use-novel predictions did indeed contribute to the acceptance of the table. Although I agree with their first claim, I disagree with their second. In order to spell out my disagreement, I not only revisit Scerri and Worrall’s interpretation of crucial historical evidence they have cited in support of the ‘heuristic account’ of use-novel predictions, but I also criticise thelatter on general grounds.
  • "Model, Theory and Evidence in the Discovery of the DNA Structure", The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 59, December 2008, pp. 619–658 (download at BJPS or here)
    • In this paper, I discuss the discovery of the DNA structure by Francis Crick and James Watson, which has provoked a large historical literature but has yet not found entry into philosophical debates. I want to redress this imbalance. In contrast to the available historical literature, a strong emphasis will be placed upon analysing the roles played by theory, model, and evidence and the relationship between them. In particular, I am going to discuss not only Crick and Watson’s well-known model and Franklin’s x-ray diffraction pictures (the evidence) but also the less well known theory of helical diffraction, which was absolutely crucial to Crick and Watson’s discovery. The insights into this groundbreaking historical episode will have consequences for the ‘new’ received view of scientific models and their function and relationship to theory and world. The received view, dominated by works by Cartwright and Morgan and Morrison ([1999]), rather than trying to put forth a ‘theory of models’, is interested in questions to do with (i) the function of models in scientific practice and (ii) the construction of models. In regard to (i), the received view locates the model (as an idealized, simplified version of the real system under investigation) between theory and the world and sees the model as allowing the application of the former to the latter. As to (ii) Cartwright has argued for a phenomenologically driven view and Morgan and Morrison ([1999]) for the ‘autonomy’ of models in the construction process: models are determined neither by theory nor by the world. The present case study of the discovery of the DNA structure strongly challenges both (i) and (ii). In contrast to claim (i) of the received view, it was not Crick and Watson’s model but rather the helical diffraction theory which served a mediating purpose between the model and the x-ray diffraction pictures. In particular, Cartwright’s take on (ii) is refuted by a comparison of Franklin’s bottom-up approach with Crick andWatson’s top-down approach in constructing the model. The former led to difficulties, which only a strong confidence in the structure incorporated in the model could circumvent.
  • ‘Bogen and Woodward’s data/phenomena distinction, forms of theory-ladenness, and the reliability of data’, forthcoming in Synthese (special issue), download at Synthese or here.
    • Some twenty years ago, Bogen and Woodward argued for a distinction between (observable) data and (unobservable) phenomena and claimed that the latter are inferred from the former. They also provocatively claimed that higher level theories do not explain and/or predict observable data but rather unobservable phenomena (contra the likes of van Fraassen). But if that is the case, they argued, theory-ladenness cannot occur. The purpose of this paper is to challenge Bogen and Woodward on the latter point. It appears not to be descriptive of actual scientific practice. This at least is suggested by the discovery of the zebra pattern of magnetic anomalies, which has been quoted in support for Bogen and Woodward’s view (cf. Kaiser 1995), and which I reconsider here. I argue that a case can be made for an even stronger form of theory-ladenness: data are ignored if they appear to be irrelevant from a particular theoretical perspective (TLI). In the other case I discuss (discovery of weak neutral currents) and which has been heavily employed by Bogen and Woodward for supporting their account, I claim that theories can even sometimes give reasons for belief in the reality of certain phenomena if data are insufficient in this respect (TLE). Neither TLI nor TLE can be accommodated within Bogen and Woodward’s account.
  • Book review of Thinking about Causes: From Greek Philosophy to Modern
    Physics, Peter K. Machamer, Gereon Wolters (eds.), University of Pittsburgh
    Press, 2007;     Metascience (download here or at Metascience)

Under review / preprints

  • "Discerning a signal from noise. The discovery of weak neutral currents reconsidered", (download)
    • In this paper I try to shed some light on how one discerns a physical effect or phenomenon from experimental background ‘noise’. To this end I revisit the discovery of Weak Neutral Currents (WNC), which has been right at the centre of discussion of some of the most influential available literature on this issue. Bogen and Woodward (1988) have claimed that the phenomenon of WNC was inferred from the data without higher level physical theory explaining this phenomenon (here: the Weinberg-Salam model of electroweak interactions) being involved in this process. Mayo (1994, 1996), in a similar vein, holds that the discovery of WNC was made on the basis of some piecemeal statistical techniques—again without the Salam-Weinberg model (predicting and explaining WNC) being involved in the process. Both Bogen & Woodward and Mayo have tried to back up their claims by referring to the historical work about the discovery of WNC by Galison (1983, 1987). Galison’s presentation of the historical facts, which can be described as realist, has however been challenged by Pickering (1984, 1988, 1989), who has drawn sociological-relativist conclusions from this historical case. Pickering’s conclusions, in turn, have recently come under attack by Miller and Bullock (1994), who delivered a defence of Galison’s realist account. In this paper I consider all of these historical studies in order to evaluate the philosophical claims that have been made on the basis of them. I conclude that—contrary to Bogen & Woodward (1988) and Mayo (1994)—statistical methods and other experimental inference procedures from the “bottom-up” (i.e. from the data to the phenomena) were insufficient for discerning WNC from their background noise. I also challenge Galison’s notion of the “end of experiments” and shall take the wind out of the sail of Miller and Bullock’s attack on some of Pickering’s claims, whilst rejecting Pickering’s sociological-relativist conclusions. Instead, I claim that an epistemic warrant from the ‘top down’ in the form of a theoretical postulate of the Weinberg-Salam model was necessary for “ending the experiments”, i.e. for the acceptance of WNC as a genuine phenomenon in the scientific community.
  • "What is an experimental error? Hertz's cathode ray experiments reconsidered", (download)
    • As many philosophers of science have pointed out, the reliability of the phenomena we test our theories against is pivotal (Bogen and Woodward, Galison, Mayo, Franklin). If our experimental evidence is ‘in error’, the rationality of our testing procedures is cast into doubt. Among the few philosophers who have dedicated their work to experimental errors, Deborah Mayo’s and Giora Hon’s work deserves special attention. Whereas Mayo defends a statistical notion of errors, Hon has argued for an ‘epistemological’ one. Neither of those conceptions, as I shall argue in this paper, provides a satisfactory account of the experimental error Heinrich Hertz committed in his cathode ray experiments, whose replication ultimately led to the discovery of electrons by J.J. Thomson. I shall claim that Hertz’s ‘error’ resulted not from his clumsiness or the unavailability of sufficiently good vacuum pumps, but rather from his lack of knowledge about the gaseous ionisation effect that distorted his experimental findings about the electromagnetic properties of cathode rays. This has disturbing consequences. In a Pessimistic-Meta-Induction-like analogy, Hertz’s error implies that all our current experiments are subject to the ‘charge from error’ given that phenomena we will discover in the future might figure as intervening effects in precisely those experiments, rendering ‘erroneous’ in retrospect. The conclusions reached in this paper about Hertz’s ‘error’ also impinge on the three types of evidential relationships Achinstein (2002) has developed: only the type of evidential relationship which is sensitive to its epistemic context can be deemed to be appropriate for describing Hertz’s experiments.