The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science

by John Dupré

The great dream of philosophers and scientists for millennia has been to give us a complete account of the order of things. A powerful articulation of such a dream in this century has been found in the idea of a unity of science. With this manifesto, John Dupré systematically attacks the ideal of scientific unity by showing how its underlying assumptions are at odds with the central conclusions of science itself. In its stead, the author gives us a metaphysics much more in keeping with what science tells us about the world. Elegantly written and compellingly argued, this provocative book will be important reading for all philosophers and scholars of science.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Metaphysics

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1993

Reviews

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking closely at biology, John Dupre argues that the commonsensical assumption about how science consists of different levels neatly reducing into more fine-grained levels, culminating in neat microstructures is not really supported by modern scientific disciplines. There's a lot here to support his anti-reductionist views of science including:

-How various non-scientific categorization of species according to human purposes might be useful despite not aligning with any specific scientific categorization (eg: "The various species referred to by ["cedar"] are not closely related. It is natural to suppose that the term cedar has more to do with a kind of timber than with a biological kind.")

-Even within science, there are many different legitimate ways to classify, and these don't reduce into one another well. For example, you can classify species according to morphology, evolution (ability to mate), evolutionary heritage (phylogeny), as well as more pluralistic methods. This doesn't mean that anything goes, however: "This insight should not, finally, be taken as necessitating complete tolerance of every taxonomic scheme that anyone should happen to think up. The point, rather, is to make it clearer what should be the grounds for accepting a taxonomic scheme: not that it is the right one, since there is none such; but that it serves some significant purpose better than the available alternatives."

-Some fields already deal with multiple levels of ontology. For example, to talk about the human body sometimes involves talking about macro objects like organs and how they function using ions, which are much, much smaller entities. To therefore think that this entire set-up would reduce to a description at the atomic or ionic level seems unwarranted. [Not sure if this is completely persuasive]

-There are various fields where the results are statistical and have to do with patterns observed on average. While these may reduce to individual propensities, since the statistical results are at least partially a product of the environment too, it's hard to see why they would reduce to some truth about individual essence.

-A lot of the appeal of the kind of determinism that seems to warrant reduction comes from our tendency to assume some kind of causal completeness, "the assumption that for every event there is a complete causal story to account for its occurrence". While this is intuitively compelling, examples like the statistical knowledge which doesn't seem to be reducible to causal stories about individuals makes this assumption dubious. Moreover, if causes really had to be thought of as a nexus with each interacting with others, it would be impossible for science to find anything out because there would be to many variables to have to work things out. Finally, the indeterminism from Physics and chaos theory should also make us get rid of this assumption. [I don't fully understand the second argument]

-With this gone, we can get rid of our knee-jerk assumption of determinism and embrace "promiscuous realism", where we can acknowledge many different fruitful ways to carve out the world for our purposes.

-Drawing from "Leviathan and the Air-pump" he also shows how non-scientific considerations always play a role in science, specifically in cases like economics' reliance on "household income" to think about and reduce income inequality: "Where there are background assumptions that affect, but are not determined by, the empirical content of a discipline, we should see that discipline as engaged, at least in part, in constructing a kind of order that is defined by that set of assumptions"

-For him, we don't have to get rid of thinking about ideas like gender, but open ourselves to not thinking linearly in a way that simply sures up current arrangements. Instead, by thinking holistically about the causal capacities of entities currently embedded in a certain situation, we don't just lazily use science to lazily justify current arrangements. His example here is drawn from Helen Longino's presentaiton of Gerald Edelman and Vernon Mountcastle's “group selective theory" to study gender instead of a more basic linear model.

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Overall, I can't judge whether the science used is right because I know very little about biology (I kept getting "phenotype" and "phylogenetic" mixed up). But granting that it was right, it really was a fascinating book. There were places where I thought he seemed to be attacking a strawman- I'm still not sure why someone who thought individual causes are always essential couldn't conduct standard studies just because there are very many variables to consider. And I still find it hard to give up the causal completeness model, even though I think it true that going by just the latest science, this isn't necessarily supported in all domains.

But there's a lot of great ideas here about anti-reduction and our general stance regarding science to further think about.

[Ville Kokko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of good smaller points, but I do not believe in the metaphysical foundations Dupré proposes. Dupré basically thinks that the world described at different levels has different rules in such a strong sense that everything couldn't be described in ultimate terms of physics even in principle. I think that a view of "weak" emergence where everything is describable by the same physics in principle but ONLY in principle accounts for the same observations, as well as being a more promising and satisfying hypothesis. Note that this would lead to many or most of the same practical conclusions about how science should be understood and applied as Dupré's view. For how such a view could work, see eg. The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World.

[Alexander Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good overview of some things that I had been trying to put words on, but no other source seemed to be able to! i don't know how I wrote large portions of my thesis without ever being told to read this book.

Although I disagree with some of the ways in which Dupré implies scientific structures are causally formed, much of his arguments for problems of unity of science and the way in which ontological pluralism plays a large part in scientific demarcation ring true to me in some way.

I'm impressed with this one!

[Kasper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book clearly and persuasively argues that monism and reductionism are incorrect in the context of science and scholarship. I was not particularly interested in the examples taken from biology, and I found the last few chapters of the book to be rushed. Nevertheless, the book's arguments are forceful and readable.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Watson once said "real science is physics--all the rest is social work." Dupre has done a great job attacking the idea that there is some ontologically foundational science. Very important book for those uncomfortable with the methodological individualism of economics--the queen of modern day social sciences.

[KTV]

i love this book and it's great for anyone interested in the shaky philosophical foundations on which many sweeping scientific thoughts are based.