Philosophy of Science Association

Philosophy of Science Association

Why Empiricism Won't Work

Author(s): James Robert Brown
Source: PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association,
Vol. 1992, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1992), pp. 271-279
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science
Association
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 Why Empiricism Won't Work1

James Robert Brown

University of Toronto

Thought experiments present an enormous challenge to empiricism. So much so

that some of us have (cheerfully) thrown in the towel and embraced good old fash-
ioned platonism. I'll try to explain why, or at least, why one brand of empiricism
won't work.

Thought experimentsprovide us with scientific understandingand theoretical ad-

vances which are sometimes quite significant, yet they do this without new empirical
input, and possibly without any empirical input at all. How is this possible? The chal-
lenge to empiricism is to give an account which is compatible with the traditionalem-
piricist principle that all knowledge is based on sensory experience. Ernst Mach (1960,
1976) thought we have "instinctiveknowledge" derived from extensive-but not yet ar-
ticulated--experience, and perhapseven innate. And this instinctive knowledge is con-
jured up when we imagine ourselves in some thought experimentalsituation. For ex-
ample, in Stevin's wonderful inclined plane thought experiment,we are asked to con-
sider what would happen to a chain drapedover a prism-like pair of inclined frictionless
planes. (Fig. l(a)) Would it slide to the left? to the right? or remain static? When the
links arejoined (Fig. 1(b)) we see immediately what the answer must be: it will remain
static. It is our instinctive knowledge that there couldn't be a perpetualmotion machine
that provides the crucial empiricist ingredientin coming to the right conclusion.

Figure l(a) Figure l(b)

PSA 1992, Volume 2, pp. 271-279

Copyright ? 1993 by the Philosophy of Science Association
272
Mach provides one empiricist approachto thoughtexperiments,Roy Sorensen
(1992) provides another. His view (which he calls naturalistand which is in some
ways Machian) is that there is a difference of degree, but not of kind, between thought
experiments and real ones. Knowledge derived from either is based on experience.
"...thoughtexperiment is experiment (albiet a limiting case of it), so that the lessons
learned about experimentationcarry over to thought experiment,and vice versa."
(Sorensen 1992, p. 3) Mach and Sorensen are not the only empiricists looking at the
issue. John Norton (1991) provides a different account, one which seems quite popu-
lar. The idea is simple. A thought experiment, says Norton, is an argument(deduc-
tive or inductive) with empirical premisses (which are sometimes suppressed), and
with a lot of strictly irrelevant but picturesque detail (which gives it the experimental
flavour). In Norton's own words,

Thought experiments are argumentswhich

(i) posit hypothetical or counterfactual states of affairs and

(ii) invoke particularsirrelevant to the generality of the conclusion. (1992, p. 129)
He provides an empiricist gloss:

Thought experiments in physics provide or purportto provide us information

about the physical world. Since they are thought experimentsratherthanphysical ex-
periments, this information does not come from the reportingof new empirical data.
Thus there is only one non-controversial source from which this informationcan
come: it is elicited from information we already have by an identifiable argument, al-
though that argumentmight not be laid out in detail in the statementof the thought
experiment. The alternative to this view is to suppose that thoughtexperiments pro-
vide some new and even mysterious route to knowledge of the physical world. (ibid.)

An illustrationseems called for. It will not only help to us to understandNorton's ac-

count, but will show its elegance, its naturalnessand its obvious appeal. Here's a very
simple example, Einstein's elevator, which shows thatlight bends in a gravitationalfield.

I
t if/"x , ,

r
/
Figure2
1. An observer in an elevator cannot distinguish between being accelerated and
being in a uniform gravitational field. (Principle of Equivalence)
2. If a light beam were to enter one side of the elevator and the elevator were
accelerating,then the light beam would appearto bend as the elevator moved up.
.'. In a gravitational field the light beam would also bend.
 273
This argumentgives us the conclusion that light bends in a gravitationalfield. And it
seems to fit the Norton pattern, a deduction from empirical premisses.

There are different versions of the elevator thought experiment. Norton recon-
structs the version that establishes the Principle of Equivalence, itself. It's worth
looking at since the argument in his example is more complex than in the very brief
illustration that I just gave; it even includes a philosophical premiss. Norton sees the
argumentas follows (1992, pp. 136-138):
1. An observer in an elevator cannot empirically distinguish between being
accelerated and being in a uniform gravitational field.
2. This situationis typical; the details of the observerin the elevator are not relevant.
3. VerificationPrinciple: States of affairs which are not observationally distinct
should not be distinguished by the theory.
.'. Being uniformly accelerated and being at rest in a uniform gravitationalfield
should not be theoretically distinguished.
.'. Principle of Equivalence: Being uniformly accelerated is identical to being at
rest in a gravitational field.

Norton calls (2) an "inductive step". I'm not sure that the kind of patternrecog-
nition that is involved here can reasonably be so characterized,but I'll let this point
pass for now. We should also note that premiss (3) is certainly not an empirical pre-
miss, even though many empiricists are happy to embrace it. However, we do arrive
at the conclusion (the Principle of Equivalence) via an argumentfrom already accept-
ed premisses, and that's Norton's main point.

Maxwell's demon is a classic thought experiment that has a quite different struc-
ture than the others discussed here. It's an example of a thought experiment playing
a mediating or illustrative role. In the 19th century James Clarke Maxwell was urging
the molecular-kinetic theory of heat (Maxwell 1871). A gas is a collection of
molecules in rapid random motion and the underlying laws which govern it, said
Maxwell, are Newton's. Temperatureis just the average kinetic energy of the
molecules; pressure is due to the molecules hitting the walls of the container;etc.
Since the numberof particles in any gas is enormously large, the treatmentmust be
statistical, and here lay Maxwell's difficulty. One of the requirementsfor a successful
statistical theory of heat is the derivation of the second law of thermodynamicswhich
says: in any change of state entropy must remain the same or increase; it cannot de-
crease. Equivalently, heat cannot pass from a cold to a hot body. But the best any sta-
tistical law of entropy can do is make the decrease of entropy very improbable. Thus,
on Maxwell's theory there is some chance (though very small) that heat would flow
from a cold body to a hot body when brought into contact, something which has never
been experienced and which is absolutely forbidden by classical thermodynamics.

The demon thought experiment was Maxwell's attemptto make the possible de-
crease of entropy in his theory not seem so obviously absurd. We are to imagine two
gases, one hot and the other cold, in separate chambers, brought together; there is a
little door between the two containers and a little intelligent being who controls the
door. Even though the average molecule in the hot gas is faster that the average in the
cold, there is a distributionof molecules at various speeds in each chamber. The
demon lets fast molecules from the cold gas into the hot chamber and slow molecules
from the hot gas into the cold chamber.

The consequence of this is to increase the average speed of the molecules in the
hot chamber and to decrease the average speed in the cold one. Of course, this just
274
means making the hot gas hotter and the cold gas colder, violating the second law of
classical thermodynamics.

~7,; , ,-o.--,
0t

Figure3
The point of the whole exercise is to show that what was unthinkableis not so un-
thinkable after all. It is, we see on reflection, not an objection to Maxwell's version
of the second law that it is statistical and allows the possibility of a decrease in en-
tropy. Maxwell's demon helps to make some of the conclusions of the theory more
plausible; it removes a barrierto its acceptance.
In one sense, Norton's account fits this example perfectly. We startwith the statis-
tical theory and we derive the probabilistic version of the second law; so we have a
deductive argument. And the demon, as Norton says, is a "particular[which is] irrele-
vant to the generality of the conclusion." In fact, the demon is utterly unnecessary;
we can derive the conclusion without invoking it at all.

However, such an analysis misses the aim of the thought experiment. The point of
Maxwell's demon is not to prove a conclusion hithertounestablished,but instead to
provide us with that elusive thing, insight and understanding. After the demon
thought experiment we see how something is possible. The mechanism of sorting fast
and slow molecules is not a physical possibility, since obviously there are no demons,
and given the makeup of the world, there couldn't be. But we now have a grasp of the
physical situation which we lacked before. Norton is right in one sense in this exam-
ple when he claims that the picturesquedetails play no role in the argument:the demon
is irrelevant to the derivation of the conclusion. But the demon is not irrelevantto the
understanding of that conclusion, and that's the thing Norton's account misses.
I realize that to talk of "understanding"is to wade into murky waters and to court
mystery mongering. There is a form of explanation in science which tries to answer
the "how possible" question. Maxwell's demon is an example. In general, narrative
explanations in history and in biology are paradigmaticof this form. The explanations
tell a story in which the events to be explained make sense. We see how things could
come about-not how they actually do or did come about. For instance, on the one
hand we have the theory of evolution and on the other we have the phenomenon of gi-
raffes with very long necks. How did this come about. The Darwinian tries to answer
 275
the "how is it possible?" question with a story about droughts,leaves on tree tops,
early species of giraffe with relatively shorternecks, and those individuals among
them with longer necks surviving at a higher rate to reproducewhile the shorter-
necked ones perished. The evolutionist isn't committed to this at all. The point of the
story is only to show that an evolutionary route does exist thatproduceslong-necked
giraffes. Similarly, Maxwell's demon thought experimentis a narrativeexplanation
which answers the "how is the decrease of entropy possible?" question by telling us a
story in which it makes clear sense. The truth of the how possible story-either
Darwin's or Maxwell's-is quite irrelevant for the purposes of understanding.(I think
truthexplains the "success of science" in a similar way. See my 1993.)

Narrativeexplanations are common in the social sciences and biology. They are
rare is physics; thought experiments like Maxwell's may be their only instances. Still,
they do play an importantrole, one which cannot be analyzed as an argumentin the
Norton mould.

In his approachto thought experiments, Norton has a two-fold advantage.

Empiricism has a long and successful history of explaining scientific activity. So it
has the upper hand in the plausibility ratings when we turn our attentionto a new field
like thought experiments. And second, Norton says that thought experiments are
often disguised, not explicit arguments. So the real claim is that they can be recon-
structed along his empiricist lines. Existence claims like this are devilishly difficult to
defeat. I doubt that an actual refutation could ever be delivered. The most I can hope
to do is make the possibility of a reconstruction look implausible. That's what I'll
now try to do starting with a look at an apparentlytangential matter.

Though we are concerned with thought experiments in the naturalsciences, much

can be learned from some remarkableexamples in mathematicswhere pictures or dia-
grams play a role. The common view of diagrams in mathematicsis this: they pro-
vide a heuristic aid, a help to the imagination when following a proof. And they are
thought of as no more than this. In particular,diagramscannot justify; they are not to
be confused with real proofs, which are formulated in words and symbols. At most il-
lustrationsplay a psychological role, and should never be used for making inferences.

The standardaccount seems right for examples such as the Pythagoreantheorem. In

Euclid's Elements the diagramwhich accompanies this theorem and its proof is merely
an aid, psychologically helpful, but not necessary for the justification of the theorem.
However, there are a few rare and remarkableexamples where somethingquite differ-
ent is going on. The following theorem is from numbertheory;it has a standardproof
(by mathematicalinduction) which uses no diagramsat all. But it can actually be
proven with a diagram. (Take a moment to study the proof, to see how it works.)

Theorem:
Theorem: +2+3+...+n=-- = --+-
1+2+3+...+n
2 2

Proof:

Figure4
276
Of course, there is lots of interpretinggoing on to make this a proof. For example, we
must consider the individual unit squaresas numbers and we must bring some back-
ground informationfrom geometry to the effect that a square with sides of length n
has area n2. But these sorts of interpretiveassumptions are no less innocuous than
those made in a typical verbal/symbolic proof.

Here's anotherexample, this time a result about infinite series.

1 1 1
Theorem: -+ +-+ 1
2 22 23

Proof: 1/23
1/24
1/22

1/22

Figure5
The usual proof of this theorem relies on standarde-5 techniques. But nothing like
that is used here. Instead, we can simply see a pattern;we can see that the inner boxes
are getting smaller,that they will eventually exhaust the unit square (without remain-
der), and so we see that their sum is equal to the whole square, hence equal to 1.
The moral I think we should draw from examples like these is simple but pro-
found: we can sometimesprove things with pictures. In spite of the fact that the num-
ber theory diagramseems to be a special case (n = 5), still we can see all generality in
it. And the proof does not work by merely suggesting the "real"proof, since in the
diagramthere is nothing which corresponds to the passage from n to n+l which is
the key step in any proof by mathematicalinduction.

Those who hesitate to accept these pictures as genuine proofs might think that the
diagramsmerely indicate the existence of a "real"proof, a proof by mathematicalin-
duction or by using E-6 techniques, respectively. Perhaps they even wish to appeal
to the well known distinction between discovery andjustification: the picture is part
of the discovery process while true justification comes only with the verbal/symbolic
proof. But consider: would a picture of an equilateral triangle make us think there is a
proof that all triangles are equilateral? No. Yet the above picture makes us be-
lieve-rationally believe-that the theorem is true and even that there is a
verbal/symbolic proof of the theorem to be found, if we were to hunt for it. The pic-
ture is evidence for the existence of a "real"proof (if we like to talk that way), and the
"real"proof is evidence for the theorem. But we have transitivity here; so the picture
is evidence for the theorem, after all.

This tangentinto the mathematicalrealm has a point. Let's see how well Norton's
empiricism does with such examples. Pretty clearly, these two examples fly in the
face of Norton's account. A standard,traditionalproof in mathematics is an argu-
ment; it's a derivation (though often quite sketchy) of the theorem from first princi-
ples. Proofs by induction or by e-6 techniques fit the bill. However, the two proofs
by diagramthat I've given here are not like this at all; there is not the hint of an argu-
ment about them. Instead, I suggest, we accept the theorem because we grasp an ab-
stract pattern. This is a kind of intellectual "perception." I favour a platonistic ac-
 277
count of what's going on similar to Gidel's view (1944, 1947) (see my 1991), but I
won't push this now; it is enough to know that the Norton proposal doesn't work in
these mathematical cases. I would even go a step furtherand say that Norton's view
of thought experiments is the analogue of the standardview of diagrams in mathemat-
ics. In both cases the picture or the visualized situation is allowed to be psychologi-
cally helpful, but plays not role in the real justification of the mathematicaltheorem
or the scientific theory; justification, according to him, can only come via an argu-
ment from premisses which have already been established.

Of course, Norton is interested in what goes on in science, not mathematics, so

there are no morals to be drawn yet. But an interesting question does obviously arise:
Do any thought experiments resemble the mathematicalcases? As you might imag-
ine, I am now going to argue: Yes.

Consider, first, my favourite example. This is Galileo's wonderful thought experi-

ment in the Discorsi to show that all bodies, regardless of their weight, fall at the
same speed (Galileo, 1974, pp. 66f). It begins by noting Aristotle's view that heavier
bodies fall faster than light ones (H > L). But what would happen if a heavy cannon
ball is attached to a light musket ball?

'47 0

Figure6

Reasoning in the Aristotelian manner leads to an absurdconclusion. On the one hand,

the light ball will slow up the heavy one (acting as a kind of drag), so the speed of the
combined system would be slower than the speed of the heavy ball falling alone (H >
H+L). One the other hand, the combined system is heavier than the heavy ball alone,
so it should fall faster (H+L > H). We now have the absurdconsequence that the
heavy ball is both faster and slower than the even heavier combined system. Thus, the
Aristotelian theory of falling bodies is destroyed.

But we are far from finished. We still want to know: which falls faster? The right
answer is now obvious. The paradox is resolved by making them equal; they all fall
at the same speed (H = L = H+L).

If we try to analyze this example from Norton's perspective we will run into trouble.
The first part of the thoughtexperimentsfits his account well. We have an argument,
startingfrom Aristotelian premisses, and ending in a contradiction;so it's a reductio ad
absudum of those premisses. This much is certainlyacceptable to any empiricist. It's
278
the second part of the though experiment that's problematicfor Norton. When we see
that H = L = H+L, we grasp it immediately. It is not based upon empiricalexperience;
in fact all our actual observations are to the contrary:heavy objects generally do fall
faster thanlight ones. And it does not follow from otherpremisses. We are intellectu-
ally primed by the discovered absurdityin Aristotle's theory. But Galileo's conclusion
does not follow from that absurdity(except in the trivial sense that anythingfollows
from a contradiction-but, clearly, that's not what is going on here).

In sum, I've tried to make a case against Norton's empiricism in two ways. First,
there are thought experiments such as Maxwell's that try to answer "how possible?"
questions and lead to scientific understanding;as explanations they are not arguments,
but narrations. Second, there are thought experiments such as Galileo's which result
in something like an immediate perception; they, too, are not arguments,but instead
are vehicles to directing our attention so that we can simply see for ourselves-and I
do mean see.

Note

1I wish to thank my co-symposiasts, David Gooding and Nancy Nersessian, and

also several of my Toronto colleagues, especially Ian Hacking, my commentator,for
their remarkson an earlier draft. I am also glad to acknowledge the financial help of
S.S.H.R.C.

References

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Godel, K. (1947), "What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?",in Benacerrafand

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 279
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