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4. Japanese Followers of the "New" Philosophy of Science
What is "New Philosophy of Science"?
Around 1960, a number of younger philosophers of science began to question the "standard view" of science formed by the logical empiricism. There are wide variations in this trend, but such authors as Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), Paul Feyerabend (1924-), Norwood Russell Hanson (1924-1967), Stephen Toulmin, and Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) are among the most important. The most important feature of their assertions is that the dynamic and complex process of the scientific development cannot be captured by the logical empiricism; and they appealed to many historical examples in order to support their views. (In a sense, their views come closer to the Marxist philosophy such as Taketani's; but their studies on historical examples supersede a summary analysis such as Taketani's. And none of them support "dialectic logic".)
The epoch-making book in this trend was Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 2nd ed., 1970). He was primarily a histrorian of science, but in this book, he put forward the following assertions:
(1) Science is promoted by a group of scientists----a scientific community----, not by logic and observations as the logical empiricism imagined.
(2) We have to distinguish "normal science" and "scientific revolutions". The former is done cumulatively, by solving many problems set up by a common "paradigm" shared by the members of a scientific community; whereas the latter occur when that sort of "paradigm" is questioned, and an older "paradigm" is replaced by a new one; and this process is far from logical or rational.
(3) A paradigm includes not only shared scientific theories but also common methods of solving problems or norms which govern scientific activities, or in some cases, some sort of metaphysical beliefs or world-views also.
(4) Different paradigms are often "incommensurable"; that is,the supporters of different paradigms cannot understand each other. Thus which paradigm wins in science is just like a political struggle between various parties with different beliefs; the result is determined by various factors, not by logic and observation alone, through a very complex process of social dynamics.
(5) Normal science and scientific revolutions are complementary, in that the research of normal science is impossible without a shared paradigm, whereas the "anomalies" which prompt a revision of the paradigm cannot be found without accumulating the exact results of normal science.
Kuhn's view had a great impact on history of science and on philosophy of science as well. Some philosophers (such as Feyerabend) tried to extend Kuhn's view to one extreme, by saying something like "anything goes in science". Other philosophers (like Lakatos), while accepting some elements of the Kuhnian view, tried to recover rationality for science. All such attempts were called "new philosophy of science", and logical empiricism lost many supporters. However, I have to point out that in several specific fields of philosophy of science, such as the philosophy of space and time, of probability, or of quantum mechanics, the legacy of logical empiricism is still alive. Japanese followes of this "new philosophy of science" quickly introduced the new trend, without paying due attentions to the last point.
The New Philosophers of Science in Japan
The first department of history and philosophy of science in Japan was founded in the University of Tokyo at Komaba around 1970 (and that was the only department of that kind in Japan until 1993). And this department has produced many able philosophers and historians of science; but by far the most famous among them is Yoichiro Murakami (1936-). He has original works of his own, but I will here describe mainly his role as a Japanese spokesman of the "new philosophy of science". And I have to warn the reader that my evaluation in the following tends to be unfair to Murakami (and others), because of this limited perspective. (Murakami-san, Noe-san, apologies in advance!)
Murakami is one of many disciples of Shozo Omori. Omori was one of the founders of philosophy of science in Japan, but he gradually left this subject and formed his own philosophy of more esoteric kind. Instead, Murakami came to the foreground, as far as philosophy of science is concerned. First of all, Murakami, together with his students, produced a tremendous amount of Japanese translations of many authors, most of whom belong to the new generation after the logical empiricism; to mention a few, Norwood Russell Hanson, Paul Feyerabend, and Imre Lakatos (one of Popper's disciples).* You can see one of the typical patterns of Japanese scholars in the Humanities, since Meiji Era; one earns a reputation by translating famous western scholars's works.
*You may wonder why this list lacks Kuhn. The truth is, other persons translated two of Kuhn's books; (1) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Shigeru Nakayama, (2) The Copernican Revolution (1957), by Keiichi Tsuneishi. I regret to say that these translations are poor in quality! Honestly I don't like Kuhn's philosophy (if that is philosophy), but I am sorry for Kuhn for having such translators.
No one will deny that Murakami is a very talented man. He has wide interests, write well, and each of many of his books clear a certain standard which may be hard to clear for mediocre scholars. But he has not succeeded in raising the standard of philosophy of science in Japan, to the extent one may expect from the number of his books or articles, on my view. There are several reasons. He never touched on such tough subjects as the philosophy of space and time, of quantum mechanics, or of probability. Thus, although he raised many students as his collaborators, these fields are just as poor in Japan as when we began to import logical empiricism after the World War II.
My point may become clearer if we make some comparison. Take Russell Hanson, for instance. He was one of the sources of "new philosophy of science" by emphasizing the theory-ladenness of observations* on the one hand. But he was also involved in the philosophy of quantum mechanics, on the other. Philosophy of space and time, and philosophy of quantum mechanics owe a lot to Reichenbach, and in the U.S., these became a major field of philosophy of science attracting many brilliant scholars; thus although Russell Hanson criticized the "standard view", he retained important legacy of logical empiricism. It does not seem that the same holds for Murakami.
*When one observes a thing or a fact, what you see is not neutral and objective, as a naive positivist imagined; one sees through one's knowldge or prejudice, and the situation is not different in science either; a theory restricts and directs experiments and observations, and when you describe the results of observation, you have to use theoretical concepts, so that observation owes a great deal to a theory. This is the assertion of theory-ladenness.
Against this assertion, some philosophers distinguish "seeing an object" from "seeing that"; the latter may be certainly theory-laden, but the former may not be so, not at least to the same degree.
For another thing, Murakami became an expert of both philosophy of science and history of science. This may be incredible to most scholars in the U.S. or in Europe. Kuhn may have been a good historian, but he was a poor philosopher. Popper may have been a great philosopher, but he was almost nothing as a historian; and the same holds for Carnap. I am not saying that to be both philosopher and historian is a bad thing; I am merely suggesting that Jack of both trades may not contribute to raising the standard of the two disciplines. I say this because most of Murakami's students or collaborators seem to exhibit the same character; but this is my personal opinion. I wish to add that there are several good historians of science in Japan, but all such I know of are disciples of other teachers than Murakami.
Another philosopher with a high reputation is Keiichi Noe (1949-), another disciple of Omori; and he is also a spokesman of "new philosophy of science". He was graduated from physics department of Tohoku University, and studied under Omori in the University of Tokyo. When he was young, he published a translation of Ernst Mach. Later, he studied Wittgenstein, Husserl and phenomemology, and many other things. Most recently, he wrote a book on Kuhn. He is a rare philosopher who can understand both analytic philosophy and phenomenology. He also writes well, and many projects of Japanese publishers will not work without him. But with such marvelous background and reputation, is he contributing to raising the standard of philosophy of science in Japan? I must say "no". He is more diffused than Murakami.
As Murakami sometimes points out, the distinction between "ordinary philosophy and philosophy of science has become rather vague and ambiguous" recently in Japan (Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 7, No.2, 1987, p.101*). And this is not favorable for the philosophy of science in Japan. But, as I see it, these followers of "new philosophy of science" promoted that tendency; although, of course, there are other factors, such as the fact that there are very few departments of history and philosophy of science in Japan (so that if you study a limited subject of philosophy of science, you will have difficulties for finding a job! For example, I wrote a big thesis on logic and philosophy of science at the University of Michigan; but I was hired by Osaka City University, and 11 years later by Kyoto University, as a teacher of Ethics!). Whether this tendency is good or bad, we have to wait and see. But for my part, I wish to fight against this tendency.
*JAPS publishes a review article on the philosophy of science in Japan every 5 year; see Vol.5, No.2 (1977), Vol.6, No.2 (1982), Vol.7, No.2 (1987), Vol.8, No.2 (1992), and Vol.9, No.2 (1997).
[to be continued .....]
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(c) Soshichi Uchii, revised April 18, 1998; last modified April 19, 2006.
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