Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives
Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives
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超出我们的理解：科学、历史和意想不到的替代方案问题
DOI：
10.5860/choice.44-3808
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发表时间：
2006
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
P. Stanford
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
P. Stanford
现代科学理论令人难以置信的成就使我们大多数人接受了科学实在论：我们最好的理论至少为我们提供了对世界上难以接近的部分（如基因、原子和大爆炸）的大致准确的描述。斯坦福大学在《超越我们的理解》一书中指出，对科学研究历史的仔细关注会对这一观点提出挑战，而这一观点在当代关于科学事业本质的辩论中并未得到很好的体现。斯坦福认为，科学探究的历史记录的特点是他所说的“未设想的替代方案问题”。过去的科学家通常甚至无法构想出他们自己的理论和理论研究路线的替代方案，这些替代方案既被当时可用的证据充分证实，又足够严肃，最终被后来的科学界所接受。斯坦福大学对查尔斯·达尔文、弗朗西斯·高尔顿和奥古斯特·韦斯曼依次提出的 19 世纪中后期遗传和世代理论进行了详细研究，支持了这一主张。他接着指出，这种历史模式强烈表明，对于我们目前尚未构想的最佳理论，存在同样得到充分证实和科学严肃的替代方案。此外，这一挑战比那些根植于所谓的悲观归纳法或证据不足的理论的挑战更为严重，部分原因是现有的现实主义对后一挑战的回应并不能缓解未设想的替代方案本身的问题。斯坦福大学的结论是，如果我们承认我们最好的科学理论是实现我们实际目标的强大概念工具，但放弃了它们所提供的对我们周围世界的描述因此可能或近似真实的观点，那么对现代理论科学的巨大成功大厦的积极描述仍然对我们开放。
The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record of scientific inquiry, Stanford suggests, is characterized by what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives. Past scientists have routinely failed even to conceive of alternatives to their own theories and lines of theoretical investigation, alternatives that were both well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and sufficiently serious as to be ultimately accepted by later scientific communities. Stanford supports this claim with a detailed investigation of the mid-to-late 19th century theories of inheritance and generation proposed in turn by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. He goes on to argue that this historical pattern strongly suggests that there are equally well-confirmed and scientifically serious alternatives to our own best theories that remain currently unconceived. Moreover, this challenge is more serious than those rooted in either the so-called pessimistic induction or the underdetermination of theories by evidence, in part because existing realist responses to these latter challenges offer no relief from the problem of unconceived alternatives itself. Stanford concludes by investigating what positive account of the spectacularly successful edifice of modern theoretical science remains open to us if we accept that our best scientific theories are powerful conceptual tools for accomplishing our practical goals, but abandon the view that the descriptions of the world around us that they offer are therefore even probably or approximately true.