Jed Buchwald on Isaac Newton, Scientific Progress, and the Philosophy of Science

This episode features Jed Buchwald, a professor of history and philosopher of science at Caltech, who delves into the nature of scientific progress, challenging conventional views, particularly those of Thomas Kuhn. Buchwald, a former research assistant to Kuhn, discusses how science advances not merely through paradigm shifts driven by anomalies, but often by the opportunity to deploy novel experimental and mathematical structures that enable scientists to "do new stuff" and generate new phenomena. He illustrates this with the historical shift from Newton's particle theory of light to the wave theory, arguing that the latter prevailed because it offered new avenues for experimental and mathematical exploration, rather than simply explaining phenomena Newton's theory couldn't.

The conversation further explores the role of individual geniuses versus collaborative efforts in scientific discovery, acknowledging the centrality of figures like Galileo and Newton while emphasizing the broader context and the contributions of others like Christiaan Huygens. Buchwald also touches upon the long-standing dream of a "theory of everything," tracing its origins to alchemists' manipulative probing of nature rather than mere observation. He expresses skepticism about the ultimate attainability of a complete understanding of reality, aligning with a non-realist philosophical stance, suggesting that human access to nature's inner workings is always mediated by our perceptual systems and instruments.

Buchwald highlights the importance of "manipulative experimentation" as the essence of scientific inquiry, where scientists actively interfere with nature to uncover its secrets, then convince others that these findings are not mere artifacts. He uses Newton's prism experiments as a prime example of brilliant, hands-on experimentation combined with mathematical insight, where Newton's unique approach allowed him to overcome measurement inaccuracies and arrive at profound conclusions about the nature of light. This historical example underscores the blend of theoretical prowess and practical skill that characterized significant scientific advancements through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Finally, the discussion ventures into the philosophical implications of scientific understanding, including the nature of reality, perception, and consciousness. Buchwald identifies as a materialist, believing consciousness arises from specific organizational structures of material elements, but acknowledges the profound difficulty in moving from brain activity to subjective experience. He concludes by emphasizing that the fundamental drive behind scientific endeavor is a deep human curiosity and a longing to understand, even as the ultimate limits of that understanding remain a subject of ongoing philosophical and scientific debate.

"the science progress via paradigm shifts and uh revolutions as philosopher thomas kuhn said or does it progress gradually"

"I do think there is a common structure that formulates both theoretical and experimental practices and historians nowadays of science like to refer to scientific work as what scientists practice it's uh almost craftsmen like"

"it's not so much that the prevailing view can't crack something as that it doesn't give you the opportunity to do new stuff"

"you can actually make it work but you can't generate anything new out of it"

"I don't think that the changes happen quite so neatly if you will in reaction to um novel experimental observations making much more complex than that"

"I find it difficult to believe that had galileo not existed that eventually someone like huygens for instance given the context of the times what was floating around in the belief structure concerning the nature of the world and so on the developments in mathematics and whatnot that sooner or later whether it would have been exactly the same or not I cannot say but would things have evolved yes"

"I'm not fundamentally a realist that is to say I think our access to the inner workings of nature is inevitably mediated by what we can do with the materials and factors around us"

"we assume and have assumed for a long time... that if I take a little device which is really complicatedly made out of all kinds of things and I put a piece of some material in it and I monkey around with it and do all kinds of unnatural things to it... and I find out how it behaves and whatnot and then I try and make an argument about how that really applies even in the natural world without any artificial structures and so on that's not a belief that was widely held by pretty much anyone until sometime maybe in the 1500s and when it was first held it was held by people we now call alchemists"

"it's very difficult to get beyond the constructs that our perceptual system is leading us to when we make apparatus and devices and so on we're still making things the results of which are the outputs of which we process perceptually in various ways"

"I'm a materialist in the deepest sense of the term I don't think there is anything out there except material structures which interact in various ways"

"the basic elements of what makes up a scientist in the end is that curiosity that longing to understand"

"he's the only one I know of doing anything like that at the time"