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From: Hans Ehrbar
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118 A Realist Theory of Science
...
6. EXPLANATION IN OPEN SYSTEMS
The fact that closed systems are a presupposition of the
actualist account of science is reflected (a) in the
absence of a theory of their establishment and (b) in the
absence of a clear contrast between *pure* and *applied*
phases of scientific activity or, perhaps better, between
*science* and its *uses*. It is with the second that I
will be concerned here. Now consistency with our
conception of the objects of science as the mechanisms that
produce phenomena, not the phenomena they produce (which
must now be seen as both complex and differentiated), means
that we must carefully distinguish between two moments of
the scientific enterprize (interpreted broadly): the moment
of *theory*, in which closed systems are artificially
established as a means of access to the enduring and
continually active causal structures of the world; and the
moment of its open-systemic *applications*, where the results
of theory are used to explain, predict, construct and
diagnose the phenomena of the world. Actualism cannot
sustain this distinction; or, if we confront it with it,
show how the practical application of our knowledge is
possible in open systems. This depends upon precisely the
same ontological distinction as is necessary to sustain the
intelligibility of experimental activity, namely that
between causal laws and the patterns of phenomena, the
mechanisms of nature and the events they
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 119
generate, the domains of the real and the actual. In
this way actualism's assumption of an undifferentiated
reality is mirrored in the assumption of an
undifferentiated science.
It is because of this ontological distinction that
theory is never disconfirmed by the contrary behaviour of
the uncontrolled world, where all our predictions may be
defeated. Meteorology provides an instructive example
here. We can have very little confidence in the ex ante
predictions of weather forecasters, because of the
instability of the phenomena with which they have to
deal. But we can place a great deal of rational
confidence in their ex post explanations. For the
law-like statements they use to retrodict the antecedent
events and states by means of which they both explain
what actually happened and excuse their forecasts of it
are not meteorological laws. So that meteorology is in
this sense not a theoretical science. Rather, mentioning
general physical variables, they are physical laws which
have been confirmed quite independently of their use to
explain and predict the weather. Thus meteorology, like
engineering, stands to physics and chemistry as an
applied to a pure science, using the
experimentally-established results of the latter. (I am
not ruling out the possibility that there may be
irreducibly meteorological principles.)
Now it is characteristic of open systems that two or
more mechanisms, perhaps of radically different kinds,
combine to produce effects; so that because we do not
know ex ante which mechanisms will actually be at work
(and perhaps have no knowledge of their mode of
articulation) events are not deductively predictable.
Most events in open systems must thus be regarded as
`conjunctures'. It is only because of this that it makes
sense to talk of a stray bullet or an unhappy childhood
affecting `the course of history'. And it is only in
virtue of this that laboratory closures can come to be
established. The importance of experimental activity in
natural science, conceived as a specific kind of
conjunctural occurrence, allows us to stress that the
predicates `natural', `social', `human', `physical',
`chemical', `aerodynamical', `biological', `economic',
etc. ought not to be regarded as differentiating distinct
kinds of events, but as differentiating distinct kinds of
*mechanisms*. For in the generation of an open-systemic
event several of these predicates may be simultaneously
applicable.
120 A Realist Theory of Science
The skills of an applied and a pure scientist are
characteristically different. The applied scientist must
be adept at analysing a situation as a whole, of thinking
at several different levels at once, recognizing clues,
piecing together diverse bits of information and
assessing the likely outcomes of various courses of
action. The pure scientist, on the other hand,
deliberately excludes, whereas the applied scientist
seeks always to accommodate, the effects of intervening
levels of reality. Though he is unafraid of flights of
daring (always risky for the practical man), he holds
fast to his chosen objects of inquiry. The applied
scientist is an instrumentalist and a conservative, the
pure scientist a realist and (at the highest level) a
revolutionary. Keynes had the rare gift among economists
of knowing both how to make money and how money is
made.51
I said in section 1 that the activities of explanation,
prediction and the identification of causes not only do
not presuppose a closure, but they do not necessarily
involve, though they may make use of laws. There are two
points here. First, there is a difference in general
between scientific and lay explanations. That this is so
is entailed by one of the most obvious features of
science, namely the prolonged period of scientific
education and training a novice must normally undergo
before he is considered capable of `scientific
explanation'. This has a rationale in the real
stratification of the world and a real effort, which is
science needed to penetrate it. Needless to say,
however, that stratification cannot justify any
particular institutionalized form or any social division
e.g. between scientists and non-scientists (the educator
and the educated) arising from the latter. Secondly what
primarily distinguishes scientific from lay explanations
of events is not their structure but the *concepts* that
figure in them. Thus the role played by laws in the
scientific explanation of events, a role which is played
via the invocation of the concept of the mechanism at
work in the generation of the event, which is the
function of the citation of the law (and which will be
discussed further in the next chapter), is paralleled in
lay explanations by other kinds of normic statements such
as platitudes, truisms, assumptions of rationality or
more crudely or vaguely formulated law-like statements.
Moreover, there is a case, which I am now going to
examine in some detail, in which
51 See R. F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 121
both scientific and lay explanations have exactly the
same form and in which they do not involve normic
statements at all. This is the transitive verb model to
which I have already alluded in section 3 above.
`Why is the door open?' - `Because Tania pushed it
open'. The door is open because Tania pushed it [open]'
is a paradigm causal explanation, accomplished without
reference to laws, by the redescription of the
explanandum event in terms of its cause. It is
informative - there are other reasons why the door might
be open. But it is also logically necessary; i.e. the
explanation is deductive - if Tania pushed the door open,
it must be open. In this `Tania pushed the door open'
differs from `Tania pushed the door hard'. `Tania pushed
the door hard' may explain why the door is open but it
does so only contingently. On the other hand `Tania
observed the door open' cannot explain why the door is
open because there is no conceivable way in which
observing can bring about a change in the object
concerned (viz. the state of the door). Now the role of
the verb `push' in `Tania pushed the door open' is to
link the A-sequence and the B-sequence in Diagram 2.1 by
supplying an interpretation of the latter, so that the
door's movement can be seen as the result of a continuous
action sequence. Note that though `Tania moved up to the
door and then the door moved away' is a true description
it does not mean the same as `Tania pushed the door
open.'
A Sequence T ----->--+
|
Door
|
B Sequence +--------->----
Diagram 2.1
Now transitive verbs such as `pushing', `pulling',
`knocking', `twisting', `binding', `squeezing',
`holding', `forcing', `driving', `turning',
`stimulating', `producing', `generating', `bringing
about', `making', etc. lie at the root of our notion of
cause.52 When something is cited as a cause it is being
viewed as that element, paradigmatically an agent, in the
total situation then
52 Cf. H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honore, Causation in the
Law, Chap. 2, Sect. 2.
122 A Realist Theory of Science
prevailing which, from the point of view of the
cause-ascriber, `so tipped the balance of events as to
produce the known outcome'.53 Now the importance of the
transitive verb model is that it accounts for both the
large number of ordinary causal explanations which are
deductive (or become so with the addition of a suitable
objective complement, perhaps tacitly understood) and the
basic interactions of classical mechanics; i.e. the fact
that action-by-contact was not itself felt to be in need
of explanation. In neither case is there reference to
laws or any other general statements. `Juanita made Xara
push the door open', `The mixture made him sick', `He
drove his wife to despair', `The sergeant forced him to
pull the trigger', `The elephant crashed into the
juggernaut', `The first billiard ball smacked into the
second', `The irate positivist knocked his ink bottle
over', `The psychoanalyst suggested he open the window'
these are the primaeval explanation forms. It has been
suggested that it is the fact that something is subject
to human manipulation or control that accounts for our
identification of it as the cause.54 But apart from
obvious counter-examples, it is clear that we could only
know ourselves as causal agents in a world of other
causal agents and that our notion of cause takes in the
possibility of a world without men. It is because men
are agents, not because `other agents' have affinities
with men, that the concept of cause would still find
application in such a world.
Now if most events in open systems are conjunctures,
i.e. are to be explained as the results of a multiplicity
of causes, to the extent that basic causal explanations
are involved, one would expect a modification of the
transitive verb model to be necessary, corresponding and
similar to that which required a restatement of the
nomological model in normic form. This is so. For if a
single influence was responsible for the outcome the
event could be seen, as in Diagram 2.1, as the simple
pure linear displacement of its cause (and deducibility
would be preserved). To the extent however that more
than one factor is at work the event will have to be seen
as a kind of `condensation' or `distillation' of its
component causes. I now want to illustrate this by
looking at a fairly typical piece
53 M. Scriven, `Causes, Connections and Conditions in
History', Philosophical Analysis and History,
ed. W. H. Dray, p. 248.
54 D. Gasking, `Causation and Recipes', Mind 1955, pp. 479-87.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 123
of historical narrative. This will also enable me to
identify some more general characteristics of explanation
in open systems. In the piece of narrative that follows I
underline obviously causal notions.
This *pressure* from the Labour Party, with its great
*influence* on the industrial workers, combined with the
attitude of President Wilson himself, slowly *propelled*
Lloyd George in the *direction* of the formulation of war
aims. *Hindered* as he was by the obligation of earlier
agreements with the European allies, he *ensured* that his
declaration, *made* on the 5th January 1918, was only in
the vaguest terms. It was, however, not incompatible
with the much more specific Fourteen Points enunciated
independently by the American President a few days later,
and appealed by the German Government as a basis for
peace negotiations at the time of the armistice in
November.'55
The first thing to notice about this piece of
historical narrative is its decentralized focus, allowing
the emergence, in a series of redescriptions of the event
concerned, of a picture of the conjuncture or balance of
forces in which it occurred and in terms of which it is
explained. The event is in fact known under three
different descriptions: E_a, Lloyd George's formulation
of his war aims; E_b, his *vague* formulation of these war
aims; and E_c, his vague yet *compatible* (with the
Fourteen Points) formulation of these war aims.
Secondly, the indispensable role that causal notions play
in both indicating the key variables which brought about
the event and in rendering intelligible their efficacy
can be seen. Why did Lloyd George formulate his war
aims? Because of pressure from the Labour Party and from
President Wilson. Here we imagine the event as if it
were a simple displacement. But now the simple
displacement is modified by the effect of another factor,
viz, his previous obligations, and so Lloyd George
formulates his war aims vaguely. The event becomes a
condensation of the different explanatory linkages.
Thirdly, each of these individual linkages could in
principle be located within some interpretative schema or
theoretical structure. But it is simple displacements,
transitively understood, and the role that causal notions
play in them that explains the peculiar efficacy of what
Dray has called `continuous series'.56 Finally, the
non-unified ontology of the
55 H. Pelling, Modern Britain 1885-1955, p. 77.
65 W. H. Dray, Laws and Explanation in History, pp. 66ff.
124 A Realist Theory of Science
explanation should be noted. The industrial proletariat
and President Wilson's attitude co-exist within the same
explanation. The pattern of the explanation is illustrated
in Diagram 2.2.
A possible misunderstanding must be avoided and a
possible puzzle allayed. The physical action causal
notions used in the explanation of such an event are of
course employed metaphorically. Lloyd George is not
literally propelled. In this way they
Labour Party
|\
| \
v \
Workers \
\
\
\
\
\
\
v
E_a <--
^ \ --
/ \ --
/ \ --
/ \ --
President < E_b <------- Obligations to Allies
Wilson \ /
\ /
\ /
v v
E_c
Diagram 2.2
stand in for what some would say are trivial, though I
would prefer to say are (as yet) inadequately understood,
processes. Now this differs from the kind of criticism
that I directed against the action-by-contact paradigm
when I argued in section 3 that though it may provide the
source of our concept of causality, it cannot provide an
adequate model for the understanding of ultimate physical
actions. For doors do really get pushed open and it is
perfectly legitimate to talk in this way. What is
illegitimate is to regard corpuscles as acting like
doors. (For if the door was a corpuscle it could not
retain its shape - it would have to be bent to be
`opened'.) A puzzle may arise about precisely what event
is being explained in our simple historical explanation,
when the same event is referred to under three different
descriptions. But the puzzle dissolves when it is
realized that the phrase `the event which occurred (in
s_i at t_j)' is essentially syncategorematic; that is to
say that it refers only on the basis of some prior
description of the event concerned. And it is precisely
the function of the notion of an event to generate
redescriptions of events as specified under their
original descriptions in their explanation. In this way
it also acts as a possible signpost into the language of
theory.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 125
I have taken a simple historical explanation because
it illustrates some more general features of explanation
in open systems. The pattern of explanation, even where
well-developed scientific theory can be brought to bear
on an event, is substantially the same. In general as a
complex event it will require a degree of what might be
called `causal analysis', i.e. the resolution of the
event into its components (as in the case above). These
components will then require theoretical redescription,
so that the theories of the various kinds of mechanism at
work in the generation of the event can be brought to
bear on the event's explanation. The next step will
consist in retrodiction from redescribed component events
or states to the antecedent events or states of affairs
that could have produced them. To the extent that for
each determinate effect there is a plurality of possible
causes retrodiction alone cannot be decisive. And so it
will need to be supplemented by independent evidence for
the antecedents until we have eliminated from the total
set of possible causes all but the one which, together
with the other factors at work, actually produced the
effect on the occasion in question. The four stages in
the explanation of an open-systemic event may therefore
be summarized as follows: (i) causal *analysis* (or
resolution) of the event; (ii) theoretical *redescription*
of the component causes; (iii) *retrodiction* via normic
statements to possible causes of the components; (iv)
*elimination* of alternative causes.
Now it is particularly important to beware of the
supposition that if we have achieved such a complete
explanation of an event (normally of course we will only
be interested in one or two of the influences at work)
this would put us in a position whereby we could have
predicted it. For the different levels that mesh
together in the generation of an event need not, and will
not normally, be typologically locatable within the
structures of a single theory. In general the normic
statements of several distinct sciences, speaking perhaps
of radically different kinds of generative mechanism, may
be involved in the explanation of the event. This does
not reflect any failure of science, but the complexity of
things and the multiplicity of forms of determination
found in the world. The idea that a complete explanation
of an event entails a potential prediction of it depends
upon the possibility of the reduction of the various
sciences to a single
126 A Realist Theory of Science
level and a complete description of all the individuals
at that level; i.e. it depends upon the idea of an
antecedent closure. Now it is not that this represents
an unreasonable ideal for science; but rather that it
constitutes a conjecture about the nature of the world
which is in fact false and which, if acted upon, could
have the most deleterious effects on science. If science
is to be possible the world must be open; it is men that
experimentally close it. And they do so to find out
about structures, not to record patterns of events.
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