Neo-Humean & Mechanismic Paradigms of Inference for Physical Science: An Elaboration of the Kuhnian Thesis of the Non-Invalidy of Aristotelian Theory

About the Author

Philippos Afxentiou was born in Larnaca, Cyprus where he currently lives and has studied sciences at UCLA, USA. He has practised teaching, mostly science, in the public and private sector. His strong general epistemic attitude and will to enrich his conceptual ecology dissatisfaction with the lack of conceptual developments in physics led him to take academic routes different from his original plans and from what his background would usually prompt. Initially, he studied extensively the philosophy of science and developed a critical stance to science, both constructively and sometimes revisionist. Later, he did a postgraduate degree in law, to expand his academic horizons and study non-positivist paradigms of inquiry, where he is planning to publish his dissertation in the form of a book in collaboration with a scholar that shares similar views. This is his second book.

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Philippos Afxentiou 2024

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Preface

A basic ontological question about the nature of the causal relationship persists: Is causality different when it deals with physical phenomena (e.g., billiard balls hitting one another or planets going around stars) than when it deals with social phenomena (democratisation, business cycles, cultural change, elections) that are socially constructed?

Causality is a main part of scientific inference and the above question has an enhanced importance because of this.

In addition to this, epistemological questions such as ‘How do we figure out that X really caused Y?’ show that the problem is enveloped in the greater epistemological sphere and that its answer or at least the problem specification must first and overly concern this angle.

The most notable case so far has been the Regularity Theory which provides a metaphysical underpinning to a philosophy of science which legitimises the social sciences as readily as it does the so-called more basic sciences of physics and chemistry. It has its roots in a Neo-Humean perspective. However, in this book, I take a more innovative approach and mention this approach in the last part.

Of the methods of causal inference, the standard for establishing causality is experimental research, but even that is not without flaws. I would put it that the flows are deeper than we dare to look, and I put evidence and analysis for this. At the same time trying to answer the first (ontological) question, whether causality deals differently with physical phenomena, I try to pursue a pro argument and propose ways to enrich physical science inference so that it becomes epistemologically more operational and psychologically-linguistically more meaningful. Quite a task and the success is limited to providing some promising recipes while at the same time shedding light (and having less reservations about the success of this) to some rough myths and truths about the scientific inference across paradigms and disciplines.

However, the biggest implication of this book is that it conveys a rare recipe for unifying diverse disciplines and paradigms, through a scientific inference that would describe for example equally well social science and physical science phenomena. It leans on the social science side of inference so it is the physical science that needs to adopt more but this is secondary. The implications of such a possibility are big and also socio-economic: a common background can be found for secondary education disciplines, saving complexity and time; a common language for inter-disciplinary projects and so on.

Ingredients

The ingredients for such a project are three: Humean causation, mechanistic means to characterise and describe these causations and a refocus on inductive inference, especially in physical science. I present the first two in Part I and II and elaborate on the last on in the part of the book. There, I offer a re-purposing of the classic problem of induction in terms of arriving and using the induction method to achieve uniformity and a more knowledgeable navigating of scientific inference rather than an answer to the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood in the classical sense.

In addition, I introduce a formal (analytical, non-empirical) approach which investigates the form of correct arguments (more specifically) in physical sciences as well as modern logic insights to induction.

The structure of this book is to present some practical solutions to the problem of uniformity in science inference is Part II and then proceed to give insights into the direction of the project in a more theoretical realm in Part IV.

Aristotle, Newton and The Third Road

There is a common scientific conversation about the ‘absolute’ defeat of Aristotle at the hands of Newton. Aristotle postulated that heavy things fall, light lift but yet he failed to incorporate ships (heavy objects) not falling whereas Newton incorporated this in his new theory (based on the neutralisation of forces) and expanded the scope of a physical science theory, something remarkable indeed and created a paradigm that all have followed since.

Only Kuhn, of the recent breed of philosopher-scientists, saw Aristotle sympathetically or better grasped his contribution fully. Because Aristotle created a theory for all change. Now, social scientists insist that a theory with only application in one field or discipline is not a real theory—this is not a quest I am trying to achieve here, rather I am inquiring for a unified inference paradigm, and a theory is a more brainstorm-led endeavour although it could be the basis of this. Aristotle made a theory for changes in all areas of the sciences or a more holistic scientific theory than Newton, although it did not have the advantage of wide scope and inferring to a demanding set of criteria (precision, predictability etc.).

Is there a third road in this? Yes, there is. This is the creation or the finding of rules for uniformity in the scientific inference that spans across disciplines. What if the same paradigm of inference explains phenomena in physical, life and social sciences?

The advantages are significant. Imagine in medicine for example if an explanation for a biological phenomenon was put in the same ‘standards’ as its physical explanation and the two explanations informed each other. This is an example of the utility of this quest, although the motives of unification are several, not just the one of holistic interpretation. Certainly, this project will not touch the