The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis

Description

pt. I. Philosophy of Nature.

1. Nature: The Inner Dimension.
2. Modeling the Inorganic.
3. Plant and Animal Natures.
4. The Modeling of Mind.
5. Human Nature.

pt. II. Philosophy of Science.

1. Defining the Philosophy of Science.
2. Science as Probable Reasoning.
3. The Epistemic Dimension of Science.
4. Conceptual Studies of Scientific Growth.
5. Controversy and Resolution.

on pp. 318-20, he enumerates 10 different suppositions to use when demonstrating ex suppositione
pp. 295-6, 308 (PDF pp. 316-7, 329) are on analogical middle terms

In Galileo's description of tickling, he adopts a subjectivist, agnostic philosophy because he denies that the nature of "feather," something beyond the senses, can be known; for him, sense knowledge begins and ends in the senses.

I move my hand first over a marble statue and then over a living man. To the effect flowing from my hand, this is the same with regard to both objects and my hand [Here he assumes spatial motion is all that matters.]; it consists of the primary phenomena of motion and touch, for which we have no further names. But the live body which receives these operations feels different sensations according to the various places touched. When touched upon the soles of the feet, for example, or under the knee or armpit, it feels in addition to the common sensation of touch a sensation on which we have imposed a special name, "tickling." This sensation belongs to us and not to the hand. Anyone would make a serious error if he said that the hand, in addition to the properties of moving and touching, possessed another faculty of "tickling," as if tickling were a phenomenon that resided in the hand that tickled. A piece of paper or a feather drawn lightly over any part of our bodies performs intrinsically the same operations of moving and touching, but by touching the eye, the nose, or the upper lip it excites in us an almost intolerable titillation, even though elsewhere it is scarcely felt. This titillation belongs entirely to us and not to the feather [therefore subjectivism]; if the live and sensitive body were removed it would remain no more than a mere word. I believe that no more solid an existence belongs to many qualities which we have come to attribute to physical bodies-tastes, odors, colors, and many more.

—Galileo, Il Saggiatore pg. 275

As interesting as Gailileo's description of tickling may be, he is wrong. Here is why:

Those who hold for the subjectivity of sensible qualities maintain that such qualities have no existence independently of the sensing subject, and on this ground effectively deny the very existence of objective intentions for such qualities. They find convincing Galileo's example of the movement of a feather across the skin to explain the tickle. So they introduce a distinction between primary qualities such as movement and secondary qualities such as the sensed tickle, and hold that the primary qualities have objective existence whereas secondary qualities do not. As a result they populate the universe with particles in motion and attempt to explain all sensations by the various kinds of movement these particles undergo, meanwhile denuding the objective world of sensible qualities in their traditional understanding.
The source of the difficulty here is an improper grasp of the role of the mental representation in the knowledge act. To think of the concept as what is known, rather than seeing that the nature is what is known, though by means of the concept, is to cut oneself off from intellectual knowledge of the real, for one is always left wondering about any extra-mental reality to which the concept might correspond. Similarly, to think of the sensation or the percept as itself what is known, rather than seeing the sensible quality as what is known, though by means of the sensation or percept, is to be imprisoned within one's sense organs and brain. The result is a radical solipsism that prohibits individuals from ever making statements about the objects of experience, leaving them to dwell in a world of their own imaginings.
The tickle may be something sensed on the surface of the skin, but that admission surely does not permit the inference that there is no movement there, or extending the argument further to hold that there is no heat in boiling water, no color in a ruby or a rose, no sound in the cry of a bird, or no odor or taste in an onion. All of these are accidents or accidental modifications of the subjects in which they are sensed. Just as those subjects have natures (inorganic, plan or animal in kind), so accidents may be said to have natures in an analogous sense. And even if we cannot know precisely the nature of heat, of color, and so on, we can at least model those natures in terms of the modalities they introduce in the components of the substantial natures in which they exist, namely the electrons, atoms, and molecules […]

—Fr. William A. Wallace, O.P., The Modeling of Nature (pgs. 148-149)