The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis [Paperback]

William A. Wallace (Author)

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As the new millennium approaches, our scientific knowledge of the universe surpasses that of any previous age. Yet, paradoxically, the philosophy of science movement is now in disarray. The collapse of logical empiricism and the rise of historicism and social constructivism have effectively left all of the sciences without an epistemology. The claims of realism have become increasingly difficult to justify, and, for many, the only alternatives are probabilism, pragmatism, and relativism. But the case is not hopeless. According to William A.Wallace, a return to a realist concept of nature is plausible and, indeed, much needed. Human beings have a natural ability to understand the world in which they live. They can transcend the limitations of sense and spontaneously grasp the natures of things. Many have suggested this understanding requires advanced logic and mathematics. Wallace believes that nature can more readily be understood with the aid of simple modeling techniques. Through an ingenious use of iconic and epistemic models, Wallace guides the reader through the fundamentals of natural philosophy, explaining how the universe is populated with entities endowed with different natures--inorganic, plant, animal, and human. Much of this knowledge is intuitive, already in people's minds from experience, education, and exposure to the media. Wallace builds on this foundation, making judicious use of cognitive science to provide a model of the human mind that illuminates not only the philosophy of nature but also the logic, psychology, and epistemology that are prerequisite to it. With this background, Wallace sketches a history of the philosophy of science and how it has functioned traditionally as a type of probable reasoning. His concern is to go beyond probability and lay bare the epistemic dimension of science to show how it can arrive at truth and certitude in the various areas it investigates. He completes his study with eight case studies of certified scientific growth, the controversies to which they gave rise, and the methods by which they ultimately were resolved. The Modeling of Nature provides an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of natural philosophy, psychology, logic, and epistemology.

William A. Wallace has taught philosophy of science at the University of Maryland for the past eight years, and, before that, twenty-five years at The Catholic University of America, where he also taught history of science. In addition to doctorates in philosophy and theology, he holds degrees in physics and electrical engineering. He served with distinction as a naval officer during World War II, following which he entered the Dominican Order, being ordained a priest in 1953. He is the author of sixteen books and more than three hundred scholarly articles. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Catholic University of America Press (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813208602
• ISBN-13: 978-0813208602
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent synthesis, January 16, 2002

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Scott M. Sullivan (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Paperback)

Fr Wallace has an wonderful little gem here. Reflecting his experience both as a physicist and a philospher in the tradition of Aquinas and Aristotle, Wallace demonstrates how Aristotelian philosophy of nature, that of form, prime matter, powers, etc. coalesces nicely with the current understanding of modern physics, biology, and chemistry. One need not be a science or philosophy major to follow Wallace; he does a very good job of relating scientific and philosophical concepts in a manner that makes them interesting to the layperson. Highly recommended for anyone interested in how ancient and medieval philosophy coincides with the discoveries of science and modern physics.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Expert Scientist, April 19, 2001

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Melissa Wood (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Paperback)

William Wallace presents himself and science, philosophy, physics, and astronomy very well in this book. I can only imagine how many years of research it took to find all the information. There are five main sections to the first part of the book. In part 1, the Philosophy of Nature, Wallace explains how power comes from different parts of nature. Those being vegetative, animal, human and physical. Nature itself is in the form but Wallace's main historian in chapter one is Aristoltle. The four causes of every sensible reality are matter, form, agent and end. Nature acts towards an end. In chapter 2, Modeling the inorganic, Wallacefirst tries to describe the difference between an atom and a molecule. We are elements and compounds just like every other thing is on the earth, wether inorganic or organic. All of the elements in the periodic table are composed of the same elementary particles. Cosmology tells us how th universe came to be, which started with a certain protomatter. In chapter 3, Plant and animal structures, Wallace goes on to speak of species:are actula natural kinds thgat result from processes at work in nature and are therefore manifestations of nature itself. All living organisms derive their energy from the sun, and then metabolize, and engage in the essential feature of all living things-homeostasis. Also, there are added powers when organic (living) things come into play. Reproductive power, developmental power, homeostatic power and metabolic control. Animal powers go on to include external senses, internal senses, behavioral response and motor power. Chapter 4, the Modeling of the Mind, tries to emphasize that the use of mental representations is essential to understanding cognitive processes in animals and humans. Knowing has both an objective and subjective character. Aristotle's four internal senses: the central (common sense), the imagination, estiminative sense and memory are all part of the higher human powers. Chapter 5, Human nature, describes the only two faculties that make humans different from animals. The Intelect and the will. Part two of the entire text really is the magnificent part-years of research, organizing and selection have seemingly gone into trhe generation of this text. Chapter 6, Defining the philosophy of science, names all the idea makers of science chronologically. Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Whewell, J.S. Mill, Mach, Pierce, Poincare, Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Harvey, Newton etc. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 go deeper into proving the earth is round, how ellipses are formed, motion parallax and many other astonomical measures. Wallace truly proves that he is a philosopher of science-debating, cutting up, agreeing with the many different thinkers our time has allowed. How much longer canthe earth take all of this?

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All empiriological scientists should read this., November 30, 2009

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A. Aversa - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Paperback)

This book contains an excellent balance of history and philosophy of science. It and Dr. Wolfgang Smith's The Quantum Enigma make an excellent set of resources that every modern empiriological scientist should read in order to understand how to do science within a solid philosophical framework.

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The Thomist 61 (1997): 625-40


ON WILLIAM A. WALLACE, O.P., THE MODELING OF NATURE(1)

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., and Eric A. Reitan, O.P.

St. Louis University

St. Louis, Missouri

After half a century of logical reconstructionist philosophy of science, the academic iconoclast Paul Feyerabend declared in 1970 that the philosophy of science was "a discipline with a great past." In this masterful volume, after a lifetime of research, teaching, and writing in the history of science, philosophy, and theology, William A. Wallace shows that the philosophy of science may indeed be a discipline with a future---as long as it remains in contact with the actual historical episodes of real scientific achievement. By his many studies on the scientific methodology of Galileo(2) and its origins and by his important two-volume work, Causality and Scientific Explanation,(3) Wallace had laid the foundation for the present clearly written, eminently readable, and well-documented volume, in which he presents and defends a realistic philosophy of nature and natural science. Basing his presentation on empirical common sense, a realist view of nature and causality, and on critically accepted scientific achievements, Wallace shows how a natural philosophy that does not presuppose but rather grounds a metaphysics, in concert with a realist interpretation of scientific methodology and scientific discovery, has in fact served as the foundation for the unique cumulative growth of scientific knowledge throughout the history of Western civilization.

Wallace divides his book into two main parts. In the first (chaps. 1-5) he discusses the fundamental concepts of the natural sciences, including physics, chemistry, biology, and human psychology. In the second part (chaps. 6-10), using actual successful episodes from the history of science, he shows how a realistic scientific epistemology enables the human mind to acquire true scientific understanding of natural realities in terms of their real causes and natural properties. The first part is essentially a contemporary version of the first few books of Aristotle's Physics and De Anima, rewritten in light of modern scientific advances, with the aid of "modeling techniques."

Using the models (diagrams and schemas) that he has developed in major articles over the years, Wallace elucidates the Aristotelian concepts of "physical substance," "form," "matter," "nature," and cause" in order to present a holistic understanding of the physical realities that serve as the basis for both our common everyday experience and our sophisticated scientific theories. After a general discussion of "nature," "form," and "matter" (chap. 1), Wallace considers atoms and molecules and their compounds, as well as the processes of radioactive decay and chemical interaction, and even the distant realities of stars and planets in his discussion of the inorganic (chap. 2). Building on his discussion of the inorganic, Wallace considers living things---plants and animals---in chapter 3, where he discusses the vital operations of metabolism and homeostasis, morphological development and growth, as well as DNA replication, and the animal activities of sensation and desire. In the next two chapters, he turns to a consideration of knowledge and human nature. Using some of the insights of contemporary cognitive science, along with recent researches involving Periplaneta computatrix (a computer-simulated "insect"), as well as traditional concepts of sensation, perception, and intellection, the external and internal senses, and intentionality, Wallace presents an up-to-date version of an essentially Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of cognition (chap. 4). Then, by bringing together the principal concepts and insights of the first four chapters, he discusses the character of the human person and human nature, showing how the inorganic elements and the life functions of vegetative and sensory powers serve as the foundation in human nature for the emotional, appetitive, intellectual, and volitional activities of the human person (chap. 5). Though grounded in the actualization of "proto-matter" by a "natural form" (the human soul) that is "essentially immaterial," the human being cannot ultimately be explained in terms of physical principles alone. This leads us, according to Wallace, from the empirical considerations of natural philosophy to the brink of metaphysics, without presupposing it.

In the second part of the book, Wallace argues that the physical realities we investigate and the concepts we derive from them are more fruitfully engaged by a realist methodology of science, based on the distinctions between formal and material logic, and between dialectical and demonstrative reasoning, than they are by the essentially mathematical and symbolic logic and so-called empirical concepts of the logical reconstructionist and neoempiricist philosophy of science of the twentieth century, which have never freed themselves from Kant's epistemology.

Using historical examples of significant scientific contributions, Wallace shows how eminent scientists used dialectical reasoning, based on sense experience, experiment, and measurement, to prepare the way for actual scientific demonstrations that greatly enhanced our understanding of phenomena as diverse as rainbows, planetary motions, circulation of the blood, and the structure of DNA. He begins this part of his book with an updated version (chap. 6) of his important article "Defining the Philosophy of Science,"(4) in which he surveys briefly the history of the development of the discipline of the philosophy of science from its modern roots in the thought of Descartes, Hume, and Kant, through its nineteenth-century developments at the hands of Whewell and Mill, to the rise of logical reconstructionism (the "orthodox" or "received view") and the more recent critical assessments of Popper and Kuhn.

After evaluating several Thomist interpretations of the philosophy of science, Wallace offers his own view, that the "Philosophy of science is a specialization or sub-discipline within the philosophy of nature," and as such does not differ formally and essentially from modern science itself nor from natural philosophy as understood within the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition. The philosophy of science is a critical reflection on and analysis of the methods actually used by investigators of nature, whether natural philosophers or scientists, who have advanced our scientific knowledge of the world through valid insights and cogent arguments concerning physical phenomena, their causes, and their properties.

In order to articulate and defend this view of the philosophy of science, Wallace first discusses the probable and dialectical argumentation of the natural sciences (chap. 7). Critical of Hume's notion of causation and probability, and aware of the limitations of the hypothetico-deductive method, Wallace shows how physical concepts (observable, metrical, and theoretical) combined with mathematical concepts, can be applied dialectically to "topics," or problems of cause-effect, antecedent-consequent, and similarity-dissimilarity, in order to arrive at reasonable principles or at least probable hypotheses from which a causal explanation of natural phenomena might be drawn. Often, he shows, these dialectical probings have historically led the way to more penetrating scientific analysis of those same realities, ultimately enabling us to understand the causes of those realities and demonstrate their essential properties.

Next Wallace considers this demonstrative argumentation as it is expressed in scientific syllogisms founded on indemonstrable first principles, arrived at through critical reflection and analysis of the data of our experience (chap. 8). He explains the "material" or content logic of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, addressing problems of definition, supposition, foreknowledge, and causal connection, all of which are necessary for "scientific knowledge" in the full sense of necessary knowledge through causes. The "certitude" in question is not Cartesian mathematical clarity, nor metaphysical necessity, but that proper to physical knowledge, namely the necessity of causal laws that apply in pluribus, based on the factual certitudes of observation. Thus we have arrived at certitude not only that the earth is a spheroid, but why it is such according to the laws of gravitation and mechanics. Using such examples from his earlier, pioneering studies of the Aristotelian roots of Galileo's science, Wallace provides examples of this logic in action (logica utens as contrasted to logica docens, logical theory), showing how the search for causes---used and defended by Galileo, Newton, and the other founders of modern science---must be adapted to the subject matter at hand and its causes and attributes being investigated, and how this differs radically from the merely formal character of contemporary symbolic logic.

Wallace also shows how models and analogies can be used in the formulation of the "demonstrative regress" promoted by the seventeenth-century Paduan Aristotelian Jacopo Zabarella, in order to lead us from knowledge of observed effects to some understanding of the causes responsible for them. According to this method of demonstrative regress scientific reasoning proceeds from observed effect to... Read more ›