Science and metaphysics: A methodological investigation (Christian Frans van Fraassen, Ernan McMullin).

摘要

Traditionally, knowledge of nature as it really is belonged to the realm of metaphysics. With the rise of empirical sciences in the seventeenth century, and Logical Positivism in the twentieth century, metaphysics as an a priori knowledge had gradually lost its credibility, to be replaced by the sciences. Recently, however, there are ideas of constructing metaphysics that is somehow grounded on science (e.g. experimental metaphysics, metaphysical naturalism, and certain forms of constructive theology as discussed in recent science and religion discourse). The main question addressed in this dissertation concerns the possibility of such metaphysics.; Science can be relevant to metaphysics only if one believes it to have significant things to say about the world; in other words, only if one holds some form of scientific realism. In this dissertation the author argues for the metaphysical ambiguity of scientific theories. This claim can be divided into two sub-claims: (1) That a modest version of scientific realism can be defended, which justifies the belief that scientific theories speak about the world, but (2) what precisely the world is like as presented by the theories is not fully-determined. A metaphysical system can be constructed only through the process of interpretation, in which the function of the theories is more in the direction of putting constraints on possible metaphysical interpretation of them. Another related conclusion is that some theories are more readily interpretable compared to others.; In the final part of the dissertation an illustration is given, which is drawn from recent discourse on science and theology. This illustration of an attempt to ground a (philosophical) theology on science shows how the above conclusions apply to this case.