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The relationship between philosophers and scientists in Japan.

We have to mention something about the relationship between philosophers of science and scientists in Japan. As I have briefly indicated, the movement of logical empiricism was developed by cooperation of scientists and philosophers. To make sure, let me mention the names of scientists in the Vienna Circle: Hans Hahn (mathematician), Philipp Frank (physicist), Otto Neurath (economist), Kurt Goedel (mathematician), and sometimes Karl Menger (economist) was associated with the Circle. And Moritz Schlick, the founder, was trained as a physicist under Max Planck (one of the founders of quantum theory), and Schlick occupied the chair of the Philosophy of Inductive Sciences in the University of Vienna-----the same chair Mach and Boltzmann occupied before him.

Now, how was the situation in Japan in this respect? It seems that similar things happened in Japan too. Nobushige Sawada (the former president of Philosophy of Science Society Japan) witnesses that a series of philosophical symposia were held in 50's, and mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers gathered in order to discuss common themes. However, a famous physicist disliked "old fashioned" philosophers who came from Kyoto and uttered unintelligible words*; and this physicist consulted younger philosophers (including Sawada) with better understanding of science, and proposed to make another group for discussion, which lasted, eventually, for well over ten years, until the physicist died. Such activities as this prepared the ground for establishing a professional association for philosophy of science in Japan.

*Until the end of the war, Kyoto University was regarded as the center for philosophy in Japan, because two of the most influential philosophers studied and taught there: Kitaro Nishida and Hajime Tanabe. Their disciples are often called the "Kyoto School"; and their terminology is awfully difficult. We can easily imagine that many scientists, especially physicists who work with precise mathematical concepts, would despise such terminology. Some members of the Kyoto School were expelled from the public job after the war, because of their "cooperative behavior" to the military government before and during the war.

Also, it should be mentioned that several young scholars with scientific training turned to philosophy; for instance, Shozo Omori (1921-1997), Saburo Ichii (1922-1989), or Hidekichi Nakamura (1922-1986). Most of them became a very active advocate of philosophy of science in Japan, at least when they were relatively young. Omori was one of the founders of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Tokyo (Komaba), and raised many philosophers. Ichii published the Japanese translation of Reichenbach's book The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (original 1951, translation 1954) which impressed young readers (myself, for example); he was also influenced by Popper, and directed his interests to social problems too. And Nakamura, who was a mathematician and turned to philosophy, was unique in that he tried to unify the Marxist philosophy and the logical empiricism (unsuccessfully, in my opinion). And I should add here that Natsuhiko Yoshida (1928-; his father is a famous mathematician) published the Japanese translation of A.J.Ayer's renowned book Language, Truth, and Logic (revised ed., 1946)*; this translation appeared in 1955, and contributed to Japanese people's understanding of logical empiricism, although the translation was not as clear and readable as the original.

*A.J.Ayer (1910-1989) was a British advocate of logical empiricism. His book (1st ed.) appeared when he was 26 years old and it was influential among young philosophers in Britain.

Why we have TWO associations for philosophy of science.

However, here, I have to tell you a strange story. An association for philosophy of science was in fact founded in 1954, and the famous physicist Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981)----the Japan's first winner of Nobel Prize----contributed to this event. However, the title of this association does not have the Japanese word for philosophy; its name sounds something like this: "Association for Foundational Studies for Science". And to make things worse, the English translation of its name is: "Japan Association for Philosophy of Science (JAPS)"! What's the matter, what happened? Why this strange discrepancy between the Japanese title and its English translation? Yukawa is largely responsible for this.

When scientists and philosophers gathered and discussed in order to establish this association, Yukawa argued against adopting the word "tetsugaku"----Japanese equivalent of "philosophy"----, and his reason was something like this: "Most scientists do not like that word so that it is disadvantageous for attracting many scientists as members; so we should adopt a more roundabout expression." Here, I am again almost quoting Sawada's witness. You have to notice that Yukawa was, and still is, a national hero for Japanese people*. Besides, Yukawa's view does seem to represent the majority of scientists, because a similar thing happened even very recently: The History and Philosophy of Science of Hokkaido University, which was founded several years ago, belongs to physics department there. And officially, it cannot use the word "philosophy" in its title! Maybe there are some bureaucratic reasons besides physicists' opinions, but you can see how the word "philosophy" is officially excluded from scientific world in Japan.

*Yukawa received Nobel Prize in 1949 for his theory (and the prediction of the existence of new particle "meson") presented in his 1935 paper, and this event greatly encouraged Japanese people who were depressed after the war.

I am speaking about these incidents not because I wish to condemn Yukawa and other physicists, but because these incidents may suggest you that the gulf between Japanese philosophers and scientists may have been far greater than the corresponding gulf between western philosophers and scientists. People in Meiji era eagerly introduced many things from Europe and America. And as regards philosophy, German Idealism turned out to be the favorite among Japanese academic students, despite the fact that various trends of philosophy were studied and translated into Japanese.

Many philosophy professors of Japanese Imperial Universities (there were seven of them before the world war II) went to Germany; and even today, there are far more Kantian scholars, for instance, than scholars affiliated with other names. And, generally speaking, students of German Idealism pay little attention to science or they are even antagonistic against scinence (despite the fact that Kant himself was a great philosopher of science too); whereas most students with scientific training just recoil at the awfully abstruse terminology of German Idealism and related philosophy (I am sepaking of my own experience!). Philosophy is guilty by association! The fact that we do philosophy with translated words (often coind words) makes the situation even worse! Such intellectual climate may provide some explanation for the preceding incidents.

But of course there are a few exceptions. There is a Japanese precursor of history and philosophy of science among the disciples of Nishida. That person is Torataro Shimomura (1902-1996); he was also one of the founders of the association we are talking about.

I dwelled on this too much. Let's go back to our story. Anyway, Japan Association for Philosophy of Science thus started in 1954; but that was not the end of the story. Many philosophers were frustrated. There were two groups, one with the name "American Philosophy Group", the other with the name "Logic of Science Group"; and they decided to meet annually with the title "The Meeting for Philosophy of Science", and its first meeting was held in 1957. And these meetings led, eventually, to founding another association, with the literal title of "Philosophy of Science" (in Japanese) in 1967; that is the Philosophy of Science Society Japan (PSSJ)*. Thus we now have two associations for philosophy of science, which is quite unusual in the world. And the funniest part of the story is that there are very few scientist members in PSSJ! And, according to my opinion, there are still very few members who really do philosophy of science; you must remember that analytic philosophy, linguistic philosophy, or empiricist philosophy are not necessarily a kind of philosophy of science. This somehow reflects the present state of philosophy of science in Japan, but I think this is quite contrary to the spirit of the Logical Empiricism.

*The relevant historical records are published from PSSJ: Thirty Years of Philosophy of Science Society Japan, 1997, as a companion to Vol.30 of the Journal.

Be that as it may, members of PSSJ (almost all are also members of JAPS) produced a significant work: Kagaku-jidai-no-Tetugaku (Philosophy in the Age of Science) 3 Vols, edited by Jun'ichi Aomi and others, published by Baifuukan, 1964. This work is interdisciplinary and exhibits a glimpse of the spirit of logical empiricism. For instance, one of the editors, Jun'ichi Aomi (1924-) was a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Tokyo; he studied Gustav Radbruch----German philosopoher of law----and many other German authors, but he was also quite sympathetic to the analytic traditions of Anglo-American philosophy, and became one of the leading figures of Russell studies in Japan. This sort of open-mindedness is quite rare in Japan.

Anyway, despite this highlight, the trend of logical empiricism rapidly faded away in Japan, because there arised in America a new trend of philosophy of science around 1960, and younger philosophers in Japan became busy introducing this new trend, instead of digesting the legacy of logical empiricism which was quite tough----A sad pattern repeated again and again since Meiji in Japanese academic world, in the field of humanities! I will talk about this new trend later.

[to be continued.....]

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(c) Soshichi Uchii. March 26, 1998; last modified April 19, 2006.

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