Theory Change, Ancient Axiomatics, and Galileo's Methodology by J. Hintikka; D.

Gruender;
E. Agazzi
Review by: Edith Dudley Sylla
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp. 525-527
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/187503 .
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BOOK REVIEWS

525

exceptions, and even the authors most insensitive or hostile toward criticisms leading to
restraints on research are at least valuable in illustrating how potent remains the image of
science as the disinterested pursuit of truth with its complete internal logic of progress.
David A. Bantz, University of Illinois, Urbana.
J. HJNTIKKA,D. GRUENDER,AND E. AGAZZI(Eds.). TheoryChange, AncientAxiomatics,
and Galileo'sMethodology.Proceedings of the 1978 Pisa Conference on the History and
Philosophy of Science. Vol. I (Synthese Library, vol. 145). Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel
(1981), x + 348 pp. $50.00.
This is the first of two volumes resulting from the Second International Conference on
the History and Philosophy of Science organized by the Joint Commission of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science. Among the major goals of the conference, two were to explore the possibilities for cooperation between historians and philosophers of science and to have a variety of approachesand geographical areas represented,
especially Eastern Europe. Although promising topics were chosen for the pursuit of these
entirely laudable goals, the results, as far as can be judged by this volume, were only
moderately successful.
Of the three sessions covered in this volume, the first focused on the Sneed-Stegmiiller
rational reconstruction of Thomas Kuhn's views. It opens with a 45-page paper by Ilkka
Niiniluoto entitled "The Growth of Theories: Comments on the Structuralist Approach."
After a brief historiographic introduction, the bulk of this paper consists of a formal logistic
presentation of a version of the Sneed-StegmiAllerview along with suggested modifications
or improvements. This paper is nicely complemented by a nonformalistic paper by Vadim
Sadovsky putting the Sneed-Stegmuller philosophical project into a larger context with
respect to the goals of philosophy of science during the last half-century and providing a
flow chart to show how the Sneed-Stegmiiller approach fits within these wider trends.
There is also a commentary and reply by Joseph Sneed. The second independent paper of
the first section is by Zev Bechler, entitled "What Have They Done to Kuhn? An Ideological Introduction in Chiaroscuro (but No Footnotes)." The main point of this paper (the
sloppiness of which is not really compensated for by its cuteness) is that most recent philosophy of science has consisted of covert apologetics for science. The section is completed
by a brief comment by Robert Butts on Bechler's paper and by a 6-page paper by B. G.
Yudin entitled, "The Sociological and the Methodological in the Study of Changes in
Science." Although this last paper appears to be motivated by reasonable ideas, it should
never have been published without editing for clarity.
Making the Sneed-Stegmuller approach to the philosophy of science particularly appropriate as a focus for the conference was the claim that it is the first formal model for
scientific change that "has gained any support from a leading exponent of the historical
approach." Niiniluoto quotes Thomas Kuhn as saying in 1975 that "to a far greater extent
and also far more naturally than any previous mode of formalization, Sneed's lends itself
to the reconstruction of theory dynamics." On this basis Niiniluoto expresses the hope that
"the diverse approaches within the philosophy of science can not only complement but
also co-operate with each other." In their respective papers Sadovsky and Sneed also address themselves to the possibility of fruitful relations between formal and "content intuitive" accounts of the structure and development of scientific theories. In a sense the
Sneed-Stegmuller approach may be seen both as an attempt to give a formal rational reconstruction of Kuhn's views and as an attempt to reconstitute the "Received View" of
the philosophy of science in a way that takes into account the ideas of Kuhn, Lakatos,
Laudan, and others. It will be interesting to see whether such attempts can serve to bring
together diverse trends within the philosophy of science. As Vadim Sadovsky points out,
however, although the new formalist philosophies of science attempt to take note of the
importance of the individuals and scientific communities holding various scientific views,
they have little to say about the dynamics of changing people's minds from holding one
theory to holding another or about factors other than the more narrowly rational ones that
may affect such decisions (pp. 56-59). As long as the philosophy of science (and even
the Sneed-Stegmiiller approach itself) remains in constant flux, few historians of science

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BOOKREVIEWS

are likely to be willing to fashion their historical work in the form of testing one or another
version of one or another philosophy of science against the facts of their particular part of
the history of science. To do so would seem to doom one's historical work to almost instant
obsolescence.
The second major section of the book, focusing on Arpad Szab6's theory of the Eleatic
origin of the axiomatic method of Greek mathematics, is dominated by Wilbur Knorr's
paper, "On the Early History of Axiomatics: The Interaction of Mathematics and Philosophy in Greek Antiquity." Knorr rejects Szab6's view that pre-Euclidean mathematicians
accepted a formal deductive methodology as a direct response to the example of the Eleatics Parmenides and Zeno, and he argues that the deductive procedures evident in fifthcentury work can be understood as having arisen for reasons intrinsic to mathematical
study. Any influence of the Eleatics, according to Knorr, occurred only later, after a revival
of interest in their work at the fourth-century Academy, and even still remained superficial
affecting only the form of presentation of mathematical results already obtained. By the
third century, Knorr argues, an interest in the subtleties of the foundations of geometry
tended to stifle further mathematical creativity.
The two other papers originally scheduled for this session are much shorter. In "Concerning the Ancient Greek Ideal of Theoretical Thought," M. V. Popovich provides evidence that the Greek ideal of theoretical knowledge is derived from the notion of thought
as a process of construction and attempts to work out the effects of this approach as opposed to the modern notion of thought as logical calculation. In "Limitations of the Axiomatic Method in Ancient Greek Mathematical Sciences," Patrick Suppes examines Euclid's Optics, Archimedes' On the Equilibriumof Planes, and Ptolemy's Almagest in support
of his thesis that the role of axiomatic method within ancient Greek mathematical sciences
has been exaggerated. The section is rounded out by six other short papers or commentaries. Karel Berka in "Was There an Eleatic Background to Pre-Euclidean Mathematics?"
argues independently against Szab6's view. Jaako Hintikka, in "Aristotelian Axiomatics
and Geometrical Axiomatics," argues that Szab6's presentation pays too little attention to
Aristotle's undeniably influential views on demonstrative science. Filippo Franciosi provides a direct commentary on Knorr's paper to which Knorr replies. In an interesting note,
"On Axiomatic and Genetic Construction of Mathematical Theories," S. S. Demidov argues that mathematicians often resort to axiomatic presentation of a theory when they find
themselves unable to provide an intuitively more satisfying genetic construction. This occurred in Greek mathematics when difficulties were encountered associated with the structure of a continuum as a set of points. Finally F. A. Medvedev, in "On the Role of Axiomatic Method in the Development of Ancient Mathematics," questions whether the
introduction of the axiomatic method by the Greeks was as great an achievement as seems
generally to be thought.
Although Arpad Szabo himself was one of the scheduled commentators, nothing by him
is included in this volume. Ironically, then, given the conference's goal to explore areas
of collaboration between historians and philosophers of science, the majority of the papers
in this section tend to come to a negative conclusion, discounting the importance of philosophical influences within Greek mathematics and even arguing that axiomatic method
in Greek mathematics had a superficial or limited role or a retarding effect. In some cases
the arguments used appear to reflect not so much the historical evidence (which, indeed,
is quite skimpy for the early period) as the author's view that it would be unfortunate if
the autonomy of mathematics were put into jeopardy by the intrusion of philosophical
considerations. A clearer distinction should have been made between efforts to achieve
deductive rigor and efforts to rest deduction upon unexceptionable axiomatic foundations.
In the third and last section of the book, focusing on the shift in the interpretation of
Galileo from Koyre to Drake, the two most original and substantive papers are that of A.
C. Crombie on "Philosophical Presumptions and Shifting Interpretations of Galileo," and
that of Winifred Wisan, entitled "Galileo and the Emergence of a New Scientific Style."
Additional longer papers are those of Maurice Clavelin, "Galileo et la Mecanisation du
Systeme du Monde," (which is elegant, but seems not to say much that is new) and V.
S. Kirsanov and L. A. Markova, "Creative Work as an Object of Theoretical Understanding." Shorter papers include B. Kuznetsov, "Galileo and the Post-Renaissance," David

BOOK REVIEWS

527

Gruender, "Galileo and the Methods of Science," and N. Jardine, "Philosophy of Science
and the Art of Historical Interpretation."
Of these papers, Crombie's is notable for the breadth and depth of context which it
provides for Galileo's work, ranging from a description of Renaissance concepts of virtu,
as the active intellectual power to command any situation, to a catalogue of several of the
many different types of scientific method promoted in late medieval and early modem
Europe. Both Crombie and Wisan attempt to characterize Galileo's contribution to science
in terms of a scientific style or strategy. Going into the matter of Galileo's style in greater
detail than Crombie (who, however, has in preparation a book to be entitled Styles of
Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition), Wisan attempts to show how Galileo's
style emerged gradually between the time of his De motu antiquiora and his Discorsi,
evolving from a discursive style, not unlike his predecessors such as Benedetti, to an
axiomatic and geometric style. Particularly interesting to a Westerner in Kirsanov and
Markova's paper is the first section in which they give a rather subtle, Marxist analysis of
the conditions of scientific creativity, contrasting, for instance, cooperative labor, where
the individual is responsible only for a small part of the product produced (in this case
scientific results) and universal labor, where the individual creates the entire product. Although Marx himself categorized "every scientific labor, every discovery, every invention"
as universal labor (p. 289), there are obviously times and places where much of the science
done (particularly if it is "normal science" in Kuhn's terminology) has more the character
of cooperative labor.
This volume is not an exact reproduction of what happened at the conference. Not all
of the individuals originally scheduled to give papers at the conference were able to attend,
but some of these non-attendees contributed papers to the proceedings. Some of the scheduled papers have been revised, some of the commentaries have been recast into independent essay form, and other originally unscheduled papers have been included. In the revisions of the papers an effort has been made to eliminate duplication and to provide crossreferences to similar discussions elsewhere in the two volumes. In general, however, the
editing has not gone far enough. European contributors whose English was shaky deserved
to be provided with editing of their papers for idiomatic style and vocabulary. This would
not have been easy (any editor would have had to be in close contact with the author to
determine what the author meant to say when this is not at all apparent), but a hard-nosed
decision should have been made to eliminate those papers that could not be brought up to
some minimum linguistic level. In several cases it is a shame that apparently very interesting ideas have been obscured by faulty English. In other cases authors have been allowed to publish their papers in slipshod form. One paper has inadequate parenthetical
references that refer to a completely disordered bibliography. Several papers mention the
views of authors for whom they give no references. An effort to track down one of these
authorsrevealed errors in the index. I assume that this conference made desirable progress
toward meeting its stated goals insofar as this applies to those invited to participate. If
these useful results were to be spread to a wider audience through formal publication (this
volume is physically very attractive), more attention should have been devoted to the details of preparing the papers for publication. Edith Dudley Sylla, North Carolina State
University.