After Physics by Albert David Z

Author:Albert, David Z.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

4

The Technique of Significables

A proposed complete scientific theory of the world counts as empirically adequate if it makes the right predictions about everything observable.

Putting things that way, however, suggests that in order to settle the question of whether or not some particular proposed complete scientific theory of the world is empirically adequate, we must first (among other things) settle the question of what the observable features of the world are. And that isn’t right. It’s a sufficient condition of the empirical adequacy of any complete scientific account of the world (as a matter of fact) that it make the right predictions, under all physically possible circumstances, about the positions of golf balls. And (by the same token) it is a sufficient condition of the experimental indistinguishability of any two proposed complete scientific accounts of the world, that they both make the same predictions, under all physically possible circumstances, about the positions of golf balls.

The argument runs like this: Suppose that there is some complete scientific account of the world that makes the right predictions, under all physically possible circumstances, about the positions of golf balls. And suppose that this account is in accord with our everyday prescientific empirical experience of golf balls—suppose (more particularly) that this account endorses our conviction that we can observe the positions of golf balls, and that we can put golf balls more or less where we want them. And suppose that this account makes the wrong predictions, under some physically possible circumstances, about certain observable features of the world other than the positions of golf balls. And suppose that we were to measure the values of those other observables, under those circumstances. And suppose that we were to record the outcomes of those measurements in the macroscopic configurations of golf balls. In that case, the account in question would have to get the predictions about the golf balls wrong too. And that (of course) precisely contradicts the hypothesis with which we started out.

In worlds like ours, then, every observable feature of nature either is a configuration of golf balls, or can be encoded as, can be correlated with, a configuration of golf balls. And so—in worlds like ours—a thoroughgoing empirical adequacy vis-à-vis the positions of golf balls is necessarily also a thoroughgoing empirical adequacy simpliciter.

Or it is (rather) subject to the following disclaimer:

The above argument takes it for granted that we can observe the positions of golf balls, and that we can put them where we want them, under all physically possible circumstances. And that can’t possibly quite be true. What (for example) about precisely those circumstances in which golf balls are absent, or those human brain states in which the very sight of a golf ball immediately results in paralyzing horror or disgust, or those cultural or societal circumstances in which the manipulation of golf balls amounts to a mortal sin? Surely a proposed complete fundamental scientific account of the world might get everything right, under all physically possible circumstances, about the positions of

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