Crisis in modern epistemology (Possible ways out) Part 2

The crisis of the descriptive function of science, the crisis of physicalism

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An explanation is considered the main and most essential aspect of scientific knowledge. Therefore, explanation occupies one of the central places in the philosophical studies of science.

In classical physics, the idea of explanation and description presupposes the characterization of an object "in itself", without indicating the means of its investigation. And already in quantum-relativistic physics, as a necessary condition for the objectivity of explanation and description, the requirement is put forward to clearly fix the features of the means of observation that interact with the object (the classical way of explanation and description can be presented as idealization, the rational aspects of which are generalized within the framework of the new approach). The ideals and norms of evidence and substantiation of knowledge have changed.

In contrast to classical models, the substantiation of theories in quantum-relativistic physics presupposes explication in the presentation of the theory of the operational basis of the introduced system of concepts (the observability principle) and the clarification of the connections between the new and previous theories (the correspondence principle).

Radical shifts in the understanding of the world and the procedures for its study were accompanied by the formation of new philosophical foundations of science. The idea of the historical variability of scientific knowledge, the relative truth of the ontological principles developed in science was combined with new ideas about the activity of the subject of cognition. It was considered no longer as distanced from the studied world, but as being inside it, determined by it.

There is an understanding of the fact that nature's answers to questions are determined not only by the structure of nature itself but also by the method of posing questions, which depends on the historical development of the means and methods of cognitive activity. On this basis, a new understanding of the categories of truth, objectivity, fact, theory, explanation, etc. grew up. The "ontological subsystem" of the philosophical foundations of science also radically changed.

The explanation is the reduction of the unknown to the known, the unfamiliar to the familiar. In the general case, all classical physics, due to some visualization of mechanical processes, is easily perceived from this point of view; the only exception is gravity.

Modern physics is no longer so easily amenable to classical methods of explanation since neither relativistic physics nor quantum mechanics seem to reduce the unfamiliar to the familiar anymore. At the foundation of relativistic physics lies already the geometry of Riemann, while our perception is based on the geometry of Euclid. This means that the basic concepts of modern physics are already difficult to imagine.

In the case of quantum mechanics, the situation is even more problematic. It is impossible to imagine a quantum either as a particle or as a wave. Neither the Schr?dinger equation nor the Heisenberg matrix representation is descriptive. The most famous and empirically validated theories do not admit models in the sense of traditional concepts of explanation.

Successfully confirmed empirically theories turn out to be almost always false, and most often because they contain terms that do not refer to real objects, laws or processes. How can one believe that the explanations of a successful theory are correct when it is entirely possible that the objects it accepts do not actually exist? K. Popper's falsification is based on the crisis of explanation of classical physics and, accordingly, on the crisis of verification.

The meaning of physicalism is that, firstly, the researcher assigns an ontological authority to physics - this discipline acts as an authority regarding what is in the world, and its laws are assumed to be true in relation to all objects in space and time; secondly, physics is credited with epistemological authority: physics is the standard for obtaining objective knowledge about the world.

Most 19th century philosophers believed that Newtonian physics gave a true picture of the world. They saw in it a clear image of reality, in which everything is reduced to the position and impulses of material atoms (a mechanism). Provided that the positions and impulses of bodily particles available at a given moment are known, it was considered possible to precisely calculate from this, according to mechanical laws, all the past and future development of the world (Laplace determinism). The principles were considered absolutely true. In addition, physics was the oldest of the natural sciences, it proved its effectiveness in technology, while other branches of knowledge that developed later, in the 19th century, and above all history, did not yet show themselves.

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, this physicalist picture of the world was in great doubt - much that was previously considered absolutely reliable is now called into question.

Now there is no doubt that matter is not something simple, but, on the contrary, extremely complex, and its scientific comprehension is associated with considerable difficulties. It turns out that the position and momentum of a real particle cannot be calculated in any way, and, in any case, determinism in its Laplace form has become unacceptable. Does this mean that determinism is generally outdated, or can it be recognized in some other form, is an open question for the greatest physicists. The development of the theory of relativity and quantum theory, as well as other discoveries in physics, have called into question much that was believed to be true.

These revolutions in physics had a twofold effect on philosophy. The fact that physicists themselves no longer have a consensus on the extent to which it is possible to preserve mechanism and determinism deprives mechanism and determinism of the right to invoke the authority of physics. However, another consequence of the crisis in physics is even more important.

This crisis clearly showed that physicalist concepts and positions cannot be adopted by philosophy without special analysis, and physicalist conclusions cannot, from the point of view of philosophy, be regarded as a priori effective.

The development of mathematics at the end of the 19th century also led to a crisis that turned out to be no less profound and fraught with consequences than the crisis of physics. Among the many new discoveries in the field of mathematics, philosophy was particularly influenced by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries and the creation of set theory by G. Cantor (1845-1918).

Something that was previously taken without hesitation as simple premises of mathematics is actually not so reliable at all. At the end of the 19th century, "paradoxes" were discovered in set theory - contradictions that arose from obvious and simple premises and correct inferences. This was seen as a shock to the very foundations of mathematics.

In close connection with this crisis is a new revival of formal logic - in the form of so-called logistics, symbolic, or otherwise, mathematical logic. Thanks to logical and mathematical research, many old problems of philosophy again became relevant, so, in particular, the problems of the excluded third, the obviousness of axioms, philosophical grammar, and mainly the problem of universals.