‘The events of the physical world are language-free. Human language is necessary for our apprehension and description of events beyond the h u m a n ’ . xhis statement clearly embodies the dualist conception of language: it involves a disjunction of language and world and is also a specification of primary functions for language (namely, apprehension and description). The dualist conception has been expressed in a variety of ways, and some of that variety was evident in the previous sections on Popper and Kuhn.
Gillian Beer, author of the statement just quoted, proceeds to qualify the statement in a way that reveals the extent to which her conception of language differs from Popper’s and Kuhn’s: ‘Yet at the same time language is anthropocentric, persistently drawing the human back to the centre of m e a n i n g ’ . ^ 2 2 Whereas at first her remark would have appeared as yet another statement of the thesis that language conveys ‘descriptions’ of a mind-independent world, with the qualification it becomes apparent that language for Beer always reflects human interest in ‘events beyond the human’. The disjunction of language and world is preserved, but the function of language is to achieve more than mere description.
Most philosophers of science, both realists and anti-realists, share Beer’s view that ‘the events of the physical world’ are language-free. In Part 2 I argue that the ‘events’ of the physical world are not language-free if what are referred to are physical facts that
scientists identify and try to comprehend (viz., ‘events’ that are the subject matter of
science). For the remainder of Part 1 I confine myself to a survey of the various expressions that the dualist conception of language has received outside of the works of Popper and Kuhn. I hope in this way to show that dualism in one form or another has
"^Ibid., p. 300. >20lbid., p. 315.
*^*Beer, ‘Problems o f description in the language of discovery’, p. 41.
held an important place in meta-scientific discourse generally. Its presence as an assumption, although widespread, has never been justified or defended, and has often led to unclear views in the philosophy of science. Its refutation and replacement with a new conception of language becomes all the more urgent as the extent of its influence is appreciated.
1.3.1
The apparently mutually exclusive metaphysical categories of ‘language’ and ‘world’ are fundamental to the philosophies of Popper and Kuhn. Some philosophers (supportive of idealism) have wanted to jettison the notion of ‘world’, while others (supportive of hard-nosed empiricism) have sought to diminish the importance of ‘language’. Both groups, however, have merely expounded extreme cases of dualism. The abandonment of the world in favour of language, and the repudiation of language in favour of the world, set the outer limits for philosophical views that the dualist conception can underpin. So, for example, at one extreme, Susanne Langer asserts that ‘the fact is that our primary world of reality is a verbal one’.^^s And Roger Jones, in his book Physics as metaphor^ argues that it is the language of science which — like poetry — creates the physical world. He claims to offer:
an idealistic réévaluation of the physical world. I reject the myth of reality as external to the human mind, and I acknowledge consciousness as a source of the cosmos. It’s mind that we see reflected in matter. Physical science is a metaphor within which the scientist, like the poet, creates and extends meaning and value in the quest for understanding and purpose.
At the other extreme, language, far from being the sole source of the physical world and reality, is at best a very poor means of understanding what is really there. Maurice Merleau-Ponty took himself to be speaking on the behalf of many when he declared that ‘we all secretly venerate the ideal of a language which in the last analysis would deliver us from language by delivering us to things’. In the history of science some familiar expressions of scepticism about language date from the first half of the nineteenth century (as do lesser known and more pernicious e x p r e s s i o n s ) ,^^6 although even earlier examples are easily found: I think it fitter to alter a terme of art than reject a new
•^^Langer, Philosophy in a new key, p. 126. '^'‘Jones, Physics as metaphor, p. ix.
' ^Merleau-Ponty, The prose o f the world, p. 4.
*2^For the most extreme expressions o f pro-observation, pro-fact, anti-theory, and anti-language
sentiments see the views of surgeons such as P.-J.-G. Cabanis, as discussed in Ackerknecht’s Medicine
truth’, declared Robert B o y l e .^2 7 Thomas Sprat, early advocate of the Royal Society, diagnosed a general perversion of language and misapplication of rhetoric in s c i e n c e . ^ 2 8 Francis Bacon attacked language for merely perpetuating age-old categories untested by reference to r e a l i t y . ^ 2 9 The chemist Antoine Lavoisier often advised that ‘we must trust nothing but facts’, insofar as they are revealed to us by experiment and observation. In every instance, he believed, we should submit our reasoning to facts, not words.
One of the most vocal advocates of facts was yet another chemist, Michael Faraday, whom a modem biographer sees as the perpetrator of a ‘cult of facts’. I n a letter to Whewell in 1834, Faraday drew a distinction between facts and the medium of language, asserting that the latter distorted the f o r m e r . ^^2 Facts and only facts, he believed, are the basic signs of nature, and as signs they can, in principle, be read straight off nature. In practice, however, an artefactual human language is neces sary. Faraday hoped for a purification of ideas and words, in order that (in Geoffrey Cantor’s words) ‘the link between experiment and language [is rendered] complete and facts could be expressed and communicated without distortion by the linguistic medium’.
Most contemporary expressions of dualism, explicit or implicit, are not the extreme formulations of the kind enunciated by the likes of Jones and Faraday: they are not normally part of an argument or wish to dispense with language or the world. Contemporary expressions are, moreover, mostly encountered as assumptions (the ‘monism’ of Jones and Faraday is so self-conscious that it can hardly be called an assumption). For example, the anti-positivist Michael Polanyi bases his analysis of
’^^Cited in Crosland, Historical studies in the language o f chemistry, p. 114, n. 179. •28See Vickers, ‘The Royal Society and English prose style’, p. 6.
’^^Ibid., p. 12. Bacon disliked definition ‘since the definitions themselves consist of words, and those words beget others: so that it is necessary to recur to individual instances...’ (ibid., my emphasis). ^^Quoted in Hackmann, ‘The relationship between concepts and instrument design’, p. 211.
'^‘Cantor, Michael Faraday, p. 201.
'^^The letter is quoted in ibid., p. 215. >” lbid., p. 200.
'^Ibid., p. 214; see also Schaffer, ‘The history and geography o f the intellectual world’, pp. 226-230. For a modem parallel see Quine: ‘Science, though it seeks traits of reality independent of language, can neither get on without language nor aspire to linguistic neutrality. To some degree, nevertheless, the scientist can enhance objectivity and diminish the interference o f language, by his very choice of language’ ( ‘The scope and language of science’, p. 7, my emphasis).
scientific concept acquisition on the dualist conception: language is ‘words’, he assumes, and through training words are associated with ‘things’. The following passage, echoing some of Kuhn’s c l a i ms , h i g h l i g h t s the ‘passive’ role that language is accorded in many dualist accounts:
Think of a medical student attending a course in the X-ray diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. He watches in a darkened room shadowy traces on a fluorescent screen placed against a patient’s chest, and hears the radiologist commenting to his assistants, in technical language, on the significant features of these shadows. At first the student is completely puzzled ... Then as he goes on listening for a few weeks, looking carefully at ever new pictures of different cases, a tentative understanding will dawn on him ... And eventually, if he perseveres intelligently, a rich panorama of significant details will be revealed to him ... He still sees only a fraction of what the experts can see, but the pictures are definitely making sense now and so do most of the comments made on them ... Thus, at the very moment when he has learned the language of pulmonary radiology, the student will also have learned to understand pulmonary radiograms. The two can only happen together... by discovering a conception which comprises a joint understanding of both the words and the things.
The disjointed realms of words and objects are brought together in scientific intuition. Polanyi’s scientist, free from a positivistic preoccupation with the rationality of scientific procedures, is constrained nonetheless by the language/world duality.
Rom Harré employs the metaphysics of dualism to express his realist position that the aim of science is to reveal the ultimate structure of the world. An assumed disjunction of theoretical ‘terms’ and natural ‘things’ enables him to answer a larger question about the true aim of science:
Science is actually interested in discovering the structure and inner constitution of natural things and their relations in the cosmos, in virtue of which phenomena display the regularities and irregularities they do. The use of theoretical terms is precisely the best way of achieving science’s real aim, for they are just what lead to existential hypotheses about the unobserved.
Assuming, as Harré does, that it is clear what is meant by ‘natural things’ and ‘theoretical terms’, and how they are to be differentiated, the aim of science is to use the terms to access the things, In other words, in the course of specifying the aim of science, and differentiating between terms and things, Harré also indicates a particular
function for language. Joseph Margolis, in a similar vein, writes that ‘the use of
language [assists] the discernment of the real structures of the world’.
'^^See p. 46, above.
'^^Polanyi, Personal knowledge, p. 101.
'^^Harré, The principles o f scientific thinking, p. 21; cf. p. 66. '^*See, ibid., p. 260.
Metaphysical assumptions about the function of language in science almost always follow upon the disjunction of language and world. They are not insights resulting from actual investigations of how language functions in science, or from any empirical investigation of scientific practice. Assumed functions are purely philosophical or a
priori products, resulting from a perceived need to specify a relationship between the
realms of language and world. Popper, as I mentioned, believes that the primary function of language in science is the construction of statements that may then be tested against experience. It is a belief that arises from within Popper’s philosophy — it is not, and does not purport to be, an observed fact of scientific practice, even though subsequently it is treated as if it were a correct description of what scientists do.
Bruce Gregory, an idealist, asserts that ‘implicit in the way we use language is the notion that language points to a world beyond itself.^"*® But is that notion really
implicit in the way we use language? The suggested function of language as a pointer to another world should, of course, be treated cautiously in the absence of supporting arguments. Conceivably the suggested function is a fabrication, appearing genuine to Gregory only as a result of his acceptance of the disjunction of language and world. Implicit there, in that disjunction, it could be said, and not in anything ‘we’ do, is a function for language. The function which Gregory calls implicit need be little more than an a priori projection onto language. When the linguist/philosopher Jay Rosen berg asks, ‘how is it possible for language to represent the world?’, his spontaneous answer, to which he is at the same time firmly committed, demonstrates the close connection between language-function and the language/world disjunction: 'The
question posits two structures — one linguistic and one extra-linguistic’.^"^^ Grover
Maxwell posits a ‘framework’, which amounts to much the same thing:
in order to understand considerations concerning the existence of any kind of entities one must understand the meanings of the linguistic expressions (sentences and terms) referring to them — and that such expressions have no meaning unless they are given a place in a linguistic framework which 'talks about the world*.^*'^
•'^Gregory, Inventing reality, p. 195; cf. pp. 22 and 200. Similarly, Bloor writes that our everyday understanding of truth is in terms of correspondence: when we talk of truth we suppose that ‘some belief, judgement or affirmation corresponds to reality and that it captures and portrays how things
stand in the world’ {Knowledge and social imagery, p. 32).
'^'Rosenberg, Linguistic representation, p. 95, emphasis added. Cf. Quine, The scope and language
o f science’, p. 3.
'^^Maxwell, ‘The ontological status of theoretical entities’, p. 22, my emphasis. Quine asks: ‘What does it mean to assume external objects? ... If we turn our attention to the words, then what had been a
Although the primary metaphysical function variously assigned to language in science is not at the core of dualism (see p. 10), an assignment of such a function follows almost as a matter of necessity from the disjunction of language and world (or else they would remain disjointed). In Part 2 I argue that the empirical study of scientific language-use refutes the view that there is a metaphysical bridging function for language in science. That is to say, it is from an examination of actual language
Junction that I proceed to the refutation of the core dualist disjunction.
The function usually assigned to language in philosophy of science is either referential or representational (usually in the sense of descriptive). ‘The [scientific] text is a linguistic object that takes on the overriding task of the representation of nature’, writes the anti-realist Charles Bazerman. In Popper’s work, an ‘aboutness’ function of one kind or another is frequently in evidence (‘it is interesting to analyse ... the function of language ... as an instrum ent... [for] we use ... language in order to talk about the world’) .i^ The aboutness at the heart of both representation and reference harmonises nicely with the assumption that language and the subject matter of science are disjointed. The connections are relatively clear in the following remarks by the realist Ronald Giere:
My general view is that scientific theories should be regarded as continuous with the representations studied in the cognitive sciences ... Scientific theories are more often described using written words or mathematical symbols than are the mental models of the lay person. But fundamentally they are the same sort of thing ... the only feature of representations I wish to remark is that they are just that — representations ... they are like internal maps of the external
world.
In Giere’s view, in other words, scientific theories (words and symbols) are a special kind of language that functions to represent the world. The language/world disjunction in this case is upheld by reference to an image of the body: language inhabits the mind inside — world the space outside. Although Giere presents his view as merely an extension of an alleged guiding assumption of cognitive science (namely, ‘that humans ... have internal representations of the environment’^^^), in reality it involves an
question of assuming objects becomes a question of verbal reference to objects ... We refer by using words, and these we learn through more or less devious association with stimulations o f our sensory receptors' {Theories and things, p. 2).
•'‘^Bazerman, Shaping written knowledge, p. 220.
'“^^Popper, Conjectures and refutations, p. 63. ’^^Giere, ‘The cognitive study of science’, p. 143. "^Ibid.
assumption of his own. This is evident in Giere’s presentation of his key notion of a ‘model’. On this account (designed to circumvent direct language-world correspon dence and reminiscent of Plato’s tactic), there is ‘no direct relationship between sets of statements and the real world. The relationship is indirect through the intermediary of a theoretical model’. H e r e the familiar disjunction of language and world has little to do with the existence of internal representations, which Giere calls the guiding assumption of cognitive science. Dualism is not an entailment of that assumption. It is an entailment of Giere’s own assumption, namely that language is dissociated from the world and functions to refer to elements of an (internal) model of the world.
Some philosophers have suggested that specific conditioning during childhood determines the primarily representative or referential function of language in science. Quine supposes that the perceived disjunction of language and world follows naturally upon the learning of a language. Scientists have merely come to develop a more robust understanding of that disjunction:
At the very beginning of one’s learning of language ... words are learned in relation to such likenesses and contrasts as are already appreciated without benefit of words. No wonder we attribute those likenesses and contrasts to real stuff, and think of language as a superimposed apparatus for talking about the real ... The notion of reality independent of language is carried over by the scientist from his earliest impressions.’'^
But while Quine supposes that we think of language as an apparatus superimposed upon reality, Paul Feyerabend, who also depends on generalisations about childhood learning, denies that we ordinarily think that way. In the following instance Feyer abend refers to what he calls ‘natural interpretations’. He has in mind statements such as, ‘the stone is falhng straight down’:
There are not two acts — one, noticing a phenomenon; the other, expressing it with the help of the appropriate statement — but only one ... We may, of course, abstractly subdivide this process into parts ... But under normal circumstances such a division does not occur; describing a familiar situation is,
•'’^Giere, Explaining science, p. 82. See also Fig. 3.8 on p. 83 and other expressions of the language/ world disjunction on pp. 19, 75, 80, and 93.
’'’*Quine, ‘The scope and language of science’, pp. 4-5. Quine insists that notions like ‘reality’ and ‘evidence’ are intelligible to us, and have been derived from the testimony of our senses: ‘We cannot significantly question the reality of the external world, or deny that there is evidence of external objects in the testimony of our senses; for, to do so is simply to dissociate the terms ‘reahty’ and ‘evidence’