Scientific Perspectivism

by Ronald N. Giere

Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn theorized forty years ago. Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world.

Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years, Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2006

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does scientific knowledge describe the world as it really is, independent of human existence, or is it merely another type of social activity in which scientists reach a consensus on what to say about the world? The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is one of the most profound in philosophy of science.

Here, Giere argues that, while the realist camp has an advantage, the anti-realists (the focus here is on the social constructivists who see science as a social activity rather than producer of objective truths) have a point. Science does seem to be the best game in town for figuring out the natural world, but there's a larger element of historical and cultural contingency than a hardliner might want to acknowledge.

Giere sets out to show how "objective realists" -- those in the vein of Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who see science as providing universal and timeless truths about an objective world -- are as mistaken as those who treat science as an exclusively arbitrary construct. Working within the framework of naturalism, which he defines as a skepticism towards a priori knowledge*, Giere argues that we have little reason to accept either position.

Instead, he seeks a middle ground. Accepting that empirical sciences are the only way to the less-incorrect understanding of reality (if only for good methodological reasons rather than Truths), Giere suggests that knowledge of the world is neither entirely objective or entirely constructed, but is rather perspectival, derived from the interaction between a human brain and certain aspects of the world.

The analogy of color vision stands in as the key metaphor, as Giere argues there are no objective colors in the world. It is the facts about the human visual system, about light, and about certain physical properties of objects that all come together to create the properties we call "color". Giere extends the metaphor to scientific instrumentation and, from there, to scientific theorizing in broadest scope. Since our scientific theories apply not to the world itself but to our models of particular physical phenomena, Giere argues that our scientific knowledge is best treated as perspectival, with each model providing an essential, useful, but essentially incomplete description of some specific facet of reality.

Nevertheless, and despite the seeming step into relativism, he suggests that there is an "intersubjective objectivity" to such things: we can expect that human observers will largely agree upon what is being observed provided they share the same or similar vantage point. For Giere, this scientific perspectivism isn't just a good-enough compromise; there is no possibility of a God's eye "absolute objectivist" position. Perspectival knowledge is the only possible knowledge. Knowing the world means adopting as many of these perspectives as we can.

The final chapter is a discussion of "distributed cognition". Giere discusses the relationship between humans and our tools -- inclusive of writing and language itself, as well as mathematical and diagrammatic or visual modes of reasoning -- and how the boundary between an individual, on the one hand, and the system formed but human-instrument interactions, on the other, is not as clear as we might often think. Instrumentation and the "group efforts" of research programs mean that cognition itself "smears out" into more abstract information-processing networks. This, too, has an effect on how we relate to knowledge, and it means we must ask ourselves exactly who (or what) is doing the problem-solving. The very idea of cognitivist accounts, which treat thought as computation, is called into question with the realization that human brains are pattern-matchers which may only mimic some features of symbol-manipulation.

All in all this was a fascinating book, surprisingly full of thought-provoking insights despite its short length. It was surprisingly accessible, with no exceptional amounts of jargon or technical language (and what is there is carefully explained). This book should be required reading for anyone who believes (on a priori grounds no less!) that science is the final arbiter of reality or capital-T Truth.

* One implication being that claims to objective knowledge of the world are just as fruitless for objective realists as for any theologian; science cannot "observe its own correctness" in that sense. Naturalistic epistemologies must deal with the problem of non-empirical sources of knowledge: the notion of a causal order or regularity to reality; that reality is only "one way", and that this existence is accessible to us; and that our criteria for judging theories (simplicity, elegance, consilience, etc.) are actually meaningful and not simply products of our own preferences. The "no miracles" argument to science's historical successes is a powerful argument in favor of these assumptions, but it is by no means iron-clad, and has (in my opinion) little to say about science's role in establishing metaphysical truths (as compared to methodological guidelines, heuristics, and expectations, as is Giere's preference in this book).

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 4 chapters defend "scientific perspectivism" against "objectivism", which is something like naive realism about theories. He does this by pointing out that observations made by actual scientists are always relative to a certain perspective, and then argues that theories are also similarly perspective dependent. For him, the way both theorizing and observations are understood are as relations between 4 elements: an agent uses a model to represent an aspect of the world for a certain purpose (to me the obvious weakness is what happens when the "world" isn't independently accessible, and so the question of what the model is representing can be raised against this approach).

Then in chapter 5, he goes on a tangent where he argues that scientific practise should be understood as "distributed cognition" with the system including both agents and instruments together producing cognitive output.

This is such a fantastic book because Giere is doing the kind of philosophy of science I regard as best - one where he pays close attention to scientific practice and practices abstinence regarding any extra-scientific constructs (both formal and informal). Instead it's an accessible, insightful, and even fun exploration of how maps are used (to show how representation doesn't necessarily have to reduce to language), examples from astronomy and neuroscience (including pictures), and a look at the actual human visual system. Definitely one of my favourite books this year!

[Matthew Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perspectivism is a very powerful philosophical view, and Giere sets it out in a new and interesting way. The comparison to color is interesting but a little tedious. The big payoff is in the chapter of Scientific Theorizing. Fairly accessible, and a little light, but worthwhile.

[Tom Menke]

interesting perspective portrayed