Diachronic identity, Greek & modern views

0:00 The strongest form of identifying means of statement and definition of verification. What applies to concepts rather than central propositions. For this very reason, philosophers of science usually focus on what operationalism has to uncommonly verifications approaches of logical empiricists and rarely evoke space and time to clarify their differences. Karl Templer, for example, in his logical appraisal of operationalism, indicates that, quote, Operationism, in its fundamental tenet, is closely akin to logical empiricism. Both schools of Tao have put much emphasis on definite experiential meaning for import as a necessary condition of objectively significant discourse. And both have made strong efforts to establish explicit criteria of experimental significance. Of course, commentators, as we saw, mentioned their most obvious difference on the atom of cognitive significance. While operationalism holds empirical meaning as a characteristic of concepts, which eventually penetrate to statements, verificationism holds this kind of meaning as initially a characteristic of statements. There are different ways to formulate verificationist theory of meaning. The core of these thesis is that, quote, socially, statement only has a specified meaning if it makes some testable difference whether it is true or false. This, of course, only tells us when a statement is cognitively meaningful, and does not tell what its meaning exactly is. It should be noted that for verificationists, each statement only signifies what is verified, and absolutely nothing behind this. In short, the meaning of each statement is completely exhausted by its method of verification. This is what Schlich calls the identity of meaning and verification. On the other hand, according to Persick Richmond, who originally put forward the idea of operationalism, the very first lesson of our experiences with relativity at the time, quote, is merely an intensification and emphasis of the lesson which all past experience has also taught, namely, that when experience is pushed into new domains, we must be prepared for new facts of an entirely different character from those of our former experience.

2:30 end of quote. This lesson finds its place in operational character of scientific concepts. It is the task of experimental sciences to discover if concepts correspond to anything in nature. This leads Breachman to conclude that we only know what we mean by a concept when we know how that concept can be measured. In general, we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations the immediate striking consequence of operationalist view is that if we change the operations by which we measure a concept we have really changed the meaning of the concept bridgeman writes in details about the concept of length we start with objects of our commonest experiences such as length of the table or height of the door the simplest way to measure these choose a measuring rod, lay it on the object so that one end of X coincides with one end of the object, mark on the object the position of the other end of the rod, then move the rod along a straight line extension of its previous position for the second time and repeat this process as often as we can and call the length the total number of times the rod was applied. It is apparent that even for the simplest procedure, some precautions should be taken into account. The temperature of the rod should be identical with standard temperature, whatever it means, and gravitational distortion of the rod should What is important for Breachman here is that the concept of length measured by a rod according to the above mentioned procedure has a factual character. But imagine that we want to measure the length of a large object, let's say the length of the Amsterdam airport. The using a rod procedure would not help and probably would not give an accurate result. The most common way in this case is using a surveyor's theodolite. This involves extending over the surface of the land a system of coordinates starting from a baseline measure with a tape in the conventional way, sawing on distance points from the extremities of the line and measuring angles.

5:00 In changing the procedures, we have incorporated new presuppositions. We assume that the beam of light travels in a straight line. We assume that the geometry of light beams is effigient. None of these assumptions was necessary in the procedure of measuring the latent of an object using a standard raw. What is important for our discussion is that when we move into the domain of rasterial measurements, of length undergoes a very essential change, namely it looks optical. Strictly speaking, length when measured in this way by light beams should be called by another name, since the operations are different. There is only a practical justification for retaining the same name, and that is, within our present experimental limits, no significant difference between the results of the two sorts of operations has been detected. The same conclusions are true for any concept. When the set of measuring operations changes, the meaning of concept changes. Therefore, when we start using a digital watch instead of a sound shot to measure time, we start using a new concept. The results of the different procedures are most of the time equal, but this equality is an empirical matter which cannot be deduced a prior. This means that we should always be ready to obtain different measurements when a new method is introduced. It is my purpose here to show that the results can be actually different and to conclude along with Breachman that it is only a matter of practical convenience to keep one name for these different concepts. Imagine that we are measuring the duration of an object, of the re-fall of an object. For the sake of simplicity, imagine that it takes one grain of sand for that object to hit the ground when we are using a sand pot and one electric pot when we are using a digital one. Now imagine that we go to the moon and we drop the object from the same height. Surely we observe more than one electric pulse before the object hits the moon's surface.

7:30 However, it takes exactly, again, one grain of sand on the moon if you measure it with the same sand cloud. Actually, if we take the sand cloud to the moon. if one wants to formulate a theory based on these observations one gets different theories about the comparison between the duration of a pre-fall from a particular height on the air and on the moon sand time and digital time are then should be conceived as two different concepts one is related to gravity one is independent of gravity operationalism puts emphasis on the uniqueness of the set of operations as we saw in previous sections if you submit to operationalism We must demand that the set of operations equivalent to any concept be a unique set, for otherwise there are possibilities of ambiguity in practical application which we cannot admit. We saw that according to Breachman, what makes us use the same name for a concept measured by different operations is that these different sets of operations usually give similar results. However, what Breachman wants to show is that this is only a contingent fact and cannot be concluded a trial. We should always be prepared to get different results when we change our operations. We now come back to the very first question of this data. Is the set of meaningful statements according to the reputationist criterion is equal to the set of meaningful statements according to operationalist criterion? According to the standard view, these two sets are indeed equal. it is usually argued that although Bridgman starts with concept which is a different starting point from logical empiricists, when he moves to questions and wants to clarify his position on their meaningfulness he adopts a view very similar to verifications. However I think a set of meaningful statements according to operationalist criterion is a subset of meaningful statements according to verifications that is to say we can find statements which verificationists would say that they are meaningful and the operationists would not Imagine that we measure the length between two atoms in a crystal structure using complicated methods and computations. And we measure the length of a table using a simple method with a detailed help from a standard draw. According to logical positivists, then, the statement, the length of the table is 10 to the power of 100 times bigger than the distance between two atoms in a crystal structure, is a very viable, hence a meaningful statement.

10:00 It simply means that if you perform the two sets of measuring procedures, we get two numbers where one is 10 to the power of 100 times bigger than we are. So, the statement logical positivists seem to believe contains two physical measurements and one mathematical division. It is a meaningful statement which at worst might be false. However, on the other hand, since the set of measuring operations are different, for an operationalist, the statement in question involves a category mistake. It is like saying that the length of this table is ten times bigger than its mass. Even if the mathematical relation between the two numbers is indeed ten to the power of hundred, nothing will change. In physics, we can only compare similar concepts. Operationalism entails that concepts that belong to different scientific theories, or that are measured differently, are not necessarily identical. And therefore it implies that statements such as the length of object O1 as measured by method M1 is twice the length of object O2 as measured by method M2 may involve a category mistake. There is another major difference between verificationism and operationalism. According to Verificationism, the empirical significance of a statement can be decided a priori, and the result would not change over time. A meaningless statement never becomes meaningful. As Jan Hacking indicates, philosophers of science for a long time regarded science as a mummy, something which does not change through the time. One should keep in mind that verificationism is not only a criterion for meaningfulness, but also a theory of meaning. It not only states when statements are meaningful, but also states what this meaning exactly is. So, for logical empiricists, at least in their early period of war, the meaning of a particular statement is determined once forever. According to standard reading of the philosophy of Vienna Circle, a statement about the synchronicity of two events has the same meaning within different physical theories, such as Aristotelian physics, Newtonian mechanics, and Einstein's relativity theory. However, today we know that the theory-relatedness of observation and meaning is a famous objection against this time-theory-independent view. Consider this famous example. The size of the whole universe has been doubled since midnight. If by length we mean broad length, then the statement is not verifiable in principle. However, it does not guarantee that scientific theories never would find a way to confirm or disconfirm it in other ways.

12:30 If everything else remains unchanged, namely the speed of light, then it takes 16 minutes, instead of 8, for the light of the sun to reach the end. So, there are other operations to verify what the statement has claimed. However, we should keep in mind that the meaning of length would not remain the same. So, while according to logical positivists, the meaning of the statement, the size of the whole universe has been doubled since midnight, is either meaningful or meaningless, no matter when we are talking about it. For operationalists, its meaningfulness and meaning may modify through the time and based on new scientific discoveries. Thus, contrary to the received view, operationalism should be assimilated to verifications. Consider, for instance, the fact that often scientists discover that more than one quantity is designated by what was until then seen as a single concept. By tying concept to methods of measurement, operationalism accommodates well this kind of data. Different concepts associated with different methods of measurement were involved throughout the whole process. Today we know that also, and especially in science, nothing is safe. This means that physicists, quote from Bridgman, recognize no a priori principles which determine or limit the possibility of new experience. Determined only by experience. End of quote and end of my presentation. Question about this practical equivalence of concepts according to operationism. I find that hard for what that could mean in operationism. You said, okay, then the numbers are the same, but this could be a coincident. And what could it practically mean that those numbers are the same if the concepts are different? So, like, you know, actually we have, as we saw, we have cases in which the numbers are not the same. Well, of course, that's also the case.

15:00 The result, that we have similar results, is only a contingent fact, so this is what operationalism We have chosen different operations and we deal with different concepts, we get similar results. But you know, as I tried to show, this is not guaranteed. Sometimes you get different results when you change your operation. I think people always have different results of measurements because they are not fully exact. So in scientific practice it's just the other way around. Most scientists think that if you can measure something through very different ways, then this concept is more solid. Sorry. This is also the practice of scientists. You know, actually, Bridgman himself is a physicist, so I think he is well aware of this objection, because as you see, we are clarifying the concepts of physics in this way, which is completely true and the consequence of this thing. But I think we cannot do anything else. you know, like you should be ready to get new results. Experience is determined by experience. I think this is... I think this is totally in accordance with physicalist view, which says everything starts with In an operation list, you find a meta operation for comparing the result of different experiments. I mean, I could measure the height of this building by the pressure of the air, by shooting a light beam, by just a measuring rod. But does such a meta-operation, so there's this possibility of comparing two different results and having the same number not imply that you have a third experiment and then you postulate that one. Can you imagine a situation in which two results are compared without a third experiment?

17:30 When you fix the meaning of the concept in this method of measurement, then you should be ready to accept that the meaning of the concept has been changed when you change the set of operations. So basically you are dealing with different concepts, like when you measure the height of this building using a light beam or measuring rod, you are dealing with two concepts which are as far as time and mass. They are totally different. According to operationalism, you cannot. According to verification, you can. You use the two methods of measurement and then you use some mathematical procedures and the statement is very viable somehow. But according to operationalism, you cannot compare two different concepts. But then, returning to my earlier question, when you would define a meta-operation and have at the background this solid notion with a measuring rod and then say, okay, when numerical values are equal... Actually, this is what Carnap has tried to show in his later words, but he shortly realized that in choosing a meta operation, we are basically conventionally choosing a standard operation, and then the convention can be modified. So I think the problem is it. Can I ask a clarification question? Can you expand on Richmond's conception of the status of concepts, actually? Scientific concepts, like time, length, and stuff like that. Right, okay, that's an example. But is there no more definitional view on what concepts actually would be? I mean, are there any things that refers to a... The atom of cognitive meanings, you know, like this is something that the atoms of cognitive meanings for him are words instead of propositions. So, like, actually he talks about two different kinds of concepts, physical concepts and mental concepts, but, you know, this is irrelevant to our topic.

20:00 His position on the meaning of concept is that the atom of cognitive meaningfulness are words. Words which can also be operations, effective procedures and so on. So I was just trying to see why I would draw the line between something which is a concept. So it's in a way a Gaudium principle to which you apply certain kinds of meanings and... This is the way he starts his main argument. We only know the meaning of a concept if we can find something in nature corresponding to it. So the absolute time, according to Newton, for example, for him doesn't have any meaning because we cannot find something like that in nature. Absolute synchronicity, absolute time, stuff like that because according to the relativity theory, we cannot measure. Not some smell of circularity in that, because the way you set up your experiment presupposes already something with respect to the properties of the system that you are going to measure, and then afterwards you define actually the physical properties of the system you investigate, or eventually even another system, but there are already some presupposed ideas about what the system could be, could be in quantum mechanics becomes very explicit because there you have the preparation procedure that goes before you can't even perform any measurement that makes sense. And I think that there the idea that words are to be linked to physical realities, it's not only from the linguistic but even from the practical and methodological point of if you're disputable, I would like to refer to this also itself called operational approach where they work with sets of questions. And these questions determine equivalent classes. And these equivalent classes, so sets of questions on which you answer will be yes or no. Will the temperature of this, I don't know what, be within the interval from there to there, Yes or no. So you can reformulate every experimental question in the yes or no question, and you can make it into logical, in an apparatus which you can work on a logical level, and you can determine equivalence classes of questions which you can equate to properties of a system.

22:30 And then you have a much more sound and much less simplistic basis to work on and you can start to determine what preparation procedures are in a conceptual sense, because with words indicating physical properties, physical realities, I don't see how you can do it. You would have as many physical realities as there are words that indicate in some sense or another, objects or whatever. Surely, there are some problems with the operationalists. But I mean, if you then say, in the operational approach... No, like in the beginning, it is immune to some of the famous objections against radical empiricism, some and only some, not all. well it has more or less already been said it's a sort of follow-up question on the clarification of concepts so you wouldn't allow for concepts like electron because you cannot measure an electron you just can't measure it the only concepts that are allowed are and electrons still. Indeed. He has a bit of a... It is true because he has written his famous work before the Americans trying to make it. But, you know, it doesn't apply always to function. Mechanics, of course, also applies to, for instance, the concept of the table. I mean, I can't measure a table. Yeah, you have length of the table, you have the height of the table, you have the height of the table. Yeah, but I can't measure the table. So the table then... Actually, this is a very common view among some physicals, you know, like you are not dealing with observable entities, you are dealing with measurable properties. Yeah, and then you reconstruct the entity as a vulnerable property. Let's keep the color. We should be able to go to the next speaker. Thank you. Next we have Kenneth Hyde from Hanover University in Germany.

25:00 And the title of this lecture is Diachronic Identity, Greek Beginnings and Modern Understandings of Science. Thank you. As she told you, I'm going to tell you something about diachronic identity, Greek beginnings and modern understandings of science. This means I somehow deal with a second-order problem, so I don't deal with identity concepts within scientific theories, but I deal with the notion of a diachronic identity of Western science or science as such, namely by means of a comparison of ancient sources and their contemporary interpretations. I guess all of you might have or will have come across the way we have a view that the geographical and historical origins of Western science can be found in ancient Greece. I would never heard something like that. I guess nobody. Nonetheless, I give you some quotes on that. For example, in Schofield, one of the best-known additional commentaries on a presocratic text claimed, it was in Ionia that the first completely rationalistic attempts to describe the nature of the world took place. The Greeks are held to be the first in the history of mankind to go for a rational, scientific description of reality. This is what this claim entails. In 1997, the editor of the Rutledge History of Philosophy put this in emphatic words by saying, pre-Socratic speculations, quote, marks an unprecedented step in human thought because the thoughts of the early Greek philosophers were subjected to norms of rationality as those of their mythologizing predecessors were not, end of quote. last quote with respect to that, Jonathan Barnes, the pre-socratics invented the very idea of science and philosophy, they hit upon that special way of looking at the world, which is a scientific or rational way. This is a quotation I gave to you, because it entails

27:30 of the main features I'd like to discuss about with respect to identity. This claim is a claim on diachronic identity of science, and it implies that the pre-Socratics and the current nature, or at least the idea of science and philosophy, as Barthes said, are essentially identity-identic or an identity in any other sense. We recently, yesterday, I think somebody made a bit of a distinction between essential identity and strict identity. Strict identity would be the identity of all properties, whereas essential identity would be the identity of some fundamental or essential features, and I think it's quite obvious that with respect to the presocratic source we won't speak of strict identity with respect to all properties of their sort, but of identity in this essential sense. It implies two things, at least. First, systematically, that the pre-Socratics were, in fact, scientists. And it implies, second, and more open to historical questions, that they were the first ones. The first implication relies on specific definitions or understandings of science which must prove to be essentially identical between now and then. The second one is a claim on historical fact and is therefore open to historical corroboration or refutation. I won't deal with the second claim as much as I will with the first one. The widespread idea of an unprecedented origin of rationality in science in ancient Greece, well known as the so-called transition from myth to reason, was the object of several debates, as you can imagine, but I will only deal with one central and problematic issue concerning this claim on diachronic identity of Western science. My approach is to examine the representation of this transition with respect to the Aeonian physicoi, namely Thales, by discussing the question, what could it mean to say the pre-Socratics were the first to obey the norms of rationality, as the Rutledge editor said it, or the first scientists, as Barthes claimed.

30:00 Traditionally, Thales of Millet had held to be the first rational philosopher of nature who marks the beginning of Western philosophy of science. The most important testimony for this can be found in Aristotle's mathematics at the very beginning. Aristotle, almost 250 years after Thales, who left no writings of his own, tells us the following. Most of the earliest philosophers conceived only of material principles as underlying all things, that of which all things consist, from which they first come, and into which, on their destruction, they are ultimately resolved, of which the essence persists, although modified by its affections. This, they say, is an element and principle of existing things. Hence, they believe that nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this kind of primary entity always persists. Thales, the founder of this school of philosophy, said the permanent entity is water, which is why he was propounded that the earth floats on water. So this is the most important source for the widespread claim that philosophy and science began in ancient Greece namely with Thales. There are some other things of course which are attributed to Thales but I shall deal with this fragment mainly. According to Aristotle, Thales assumed that there is some one principle that was a persisting substance of everything else and that this substance has to be a material thing in the way Thales understood it as water. And I guess we don't believe that Thales was the first scientist because we still believe this to be true, that everything is, in an essential sense, water. But still, these assumptions

32:30 and the way they deal with them have to be the basis of the first scientific attempt to describe the nature of the world. Why is this so? The reason is obviously not that we believe in the literal scientific truths of Thaler's ideas. So, I guess it's quite And I'd like to present seven different approaches that have been made to illuminate the scientific importance of this source. So, let me repeat the question once again. And what qualifies such a belief, which we just heard from Aristotle, as first scientific thought? How can it establish the historical origin and systematic identity of science? Several partly contradictory accounts have been brought up to answer this question. I'll discuss very briefly seven of them. The first one is a metaphysical one, and it was the most widespread one until the 19th century. It came out of fashion in the meantime, but still, this interpretation said, or emphasizes an Aristotle's first assumption, that Salus believes a visible and developed and moving and changing world to be essentially one thing, in this sense water in some way. This interpretation was dominant during the Doxographic and Oesotelian tradition. It honored Salus because he was the first to speak about an everlasting substance which is underlying all objects and experiences. entails the distinctions between accidentals and substances and these kind of things. For example, Hegel, who was a modern defender of this reading, believed that the assumption of unity of beings was a true basis of science and philosophy. To Hegel, Thales made the right assumption or asked the right question. as sufficiency was an overly empirical concept of the unifying metaphysical entity. The ontological status of the real world has to be ideal, as it was claimed later on by Plato.

35:00 Similarly, the still reprinted historian Hopleton, this is where his quote is from, sees Taylor's relevance in his one-at-all question. Quote, In any case, the importance of this early thinker lies in the fact that he raises the question, what is the ultimate nature of the world, and not in the answer he actually gave to that question. So, Sayles was first cited because he raised such a question and asked for an ultimate nature of the world. To establish a diachronic identity, I mean, I won't emphasize on that in time, but to establish a diachronic identity, one needs to say that modern science in some sense goes for the same goal. Otherwise, this couldn't be the essential thing which established diachronic identity between us and them. notion of water, in fact, implies the idea of an ultimate nature of the world. Therefore, he is important, at least to Crockleton, no matter how he understood his nature. But why and to what extent it is scientific to believe in such a metaphysical concept of universal reducibility to one substance? Such a concept is, moreover, beyond empirical tests and knowledge. It cannot serve the proper basis of science. It is just a bold and dogmatic claim whose on faith. Such a constant concept is beyond empirical tests and knowledge. It cannot serve the proper basis of science. It is just a bold and dogmatic claim whose justification depends on faith, like similar to a myth. So I think it might be right that Sayles did something like that, but this won't establish a diachronic identity to modern Western science. Indeed, some other scholars have, because it has to be something, it is metaphysical and has to believe in it, and in fact, several other people emphasized on a new faith, a new conviction regarding the status of the world to be the basis of Greek rationalism and science. Very close to metaphysical concepts, Gartry, a famous historian on philosophy,

37:30 supposed, quote, philosophy and science start with both confession of faith that not caprice but an inherent orderliness analyzes the phenomena and the explanation of nature is to be solved within nature itself, this sentence continues. They saw the world as something ordered and intelligible, its history following an explicable course and its different parts arranged in some comprehensible system. Is this worldview scientifically reliable on the one hand, and is it original on the other hand? Is this the first time in the history that someone believed in the orderliness underlying or obvious chaos. The concept of an ordered cosmos and a comprehensible system will hardly make any difference to traditional mythical accounts of the cosmos because the myth does provide its followers with an ordered world as well as philosophy or science does. The significant difference between a mythical and scientific worldview is not the very idea of an underlying order as such, but it lies in the second sentence, which is skipped here because it's important for the next interpretation, but it relies on the second confession of faith that the explanation of nature has to be sought within a demystified world without active gods. So if we say failure is something important and new because we lead in an orderly way the this won't make an important difference to other modes of thought and could therefore not establish a claim on a first and diachronic continuity. The next one is the most successful and probably most promising candidate. And that the idea of an ancient Greek discovery of nature establishes a new mode to argue for this diachronic identity. But this is the element of the naturalistic metaphysics as well, and it relies on implicit equivocation between scientific and naturalistic concepts, which can be found in formulations like, I will quote Jonathan Barnes,

40:00 Sansa was explained scientifically in naturalistic terms. So naturalistic and scientifically is equivocated here. The intellectual power of a new naturalistic or rational worldview makes a new thing in ancient Greece. The equation of naturalistic was reasonable or scientific is not as self-evident as it appears to be, namely not to be ancient Greece. This is especially important because the ancient Greeks were not satisfied with a conception which can only explain how things happened, but can never explain why things happened, especially unlucky things happened to certain people. But still, it is altogether clear and uncontestable that a materialistic account of the structure or origin of the cosmos is more religious than a moral... Sorry. Sorry. I'd like to raise the question against this naturalistic worldview, although it's quite convincing, but still has its metrophysical implicit implications, implications and therefore open to questions like the one I quote from Drew Hyland. Is it altogether clear and uncontestable that the materialistic account of the structure or origin of the cosmos is more rational than a religious one? Must not this be defended rationally? And we suspect that this question, one thing becomes hopefully clear, These first three answers to the question what qualifies a new mode of thought as scientific are insights. So these three things are new insights and the Greeks are favoured because they discovered something new. whereas the following ideas rely on a certain method of generating knowledge. So, whereas the first three things try to establish diachronic identity via some important new insights,

42:30 The last ones put more emphasis on certain methods, which is insofar quite obvious, because modern philosophers of science are looking for certain scientific methods in order to describe what science is, and not with respect to certain knowledge claims which scientists tend to vote for true. Okay. The first one, or number four, is the idea of induction. People like Bernard or Kirk or several others said that the Greeks were the first, who did start from observation, and that their concepts, for example, to explain earthquakes, are based on observation. I think I need to hurry, is it? If you still want to, it's a question. Okay, okay. I think this one can be dealt with quite fast, because on the one hand, the pre-secretists did not care as much for observation and experiment. Several scholars showed that quite convincingly, that they didn't perform experiments and that they weren't font of observation and on the other hand with respect to the problem of induction and other things with respect to the idea that science is based on experience this notion of science became questionable in itself so it might not work as a as a criterion to describe the newness of this mobile thought in ancient greek this is why sir karl popper of the very different story myth that all science starts from observation and believes the opposite to be true. Science as well as philosophy starts with bold, intuitive conjectures, most often counter-observational ones and proceeds in a tense to refute them. I guess you all know this concept of conjectures of reputation. Popper brought up and he applied that to ancient sources with several problems on the one hand, which is not that relevant, because Popper was obviously not as open-minded as his theory itself would ask people to be, but we know that the pre-Socratic philosophers,

45:00 or at least Plato, said about that, that they weren't open-minded, that they didn't offer their positions to a critical debate, but even if they did so, and even if a sailor said, okay, the unifying entity is water, and the next one says, no, the unifying entity has to be something unmaterial, and therefore I declare to be a parent, as Annex Amanda does, this wouldn't be a row of conjectures and reputations, because all of these conjectures metaphysical hypotheses and could therefore not be refuted by empirical tests or something like that. So it doesn't fit Popper's concept. The other one is pretty simple, probably. Jonathan Barnes says, Salus was only Krugin himself, an embryonic scientist. He saw that his assumption of material unity was eminently simple, and because of its simplicity, he it is as a hypothesis. I guess this is a simple explanation as well, because on the one hand we can find similarly simple explanations of natural events and other kinds of explanations, like mythical ones, for example, so it doesn't make a distinguishing specific difference to other modes of thought, and on the other hand it's a prejudice towards simplicity. It somehow implies that simple explanations are better than unsimple or less simple explanations, and that implies the prejudice that the world has more in common with simple explanations than it does with complicated ones. The last one was brought up from Nicholas Rescher, and it is an application of hypothetical deductivism on an explanation of earthquakes but I think I will skip that and will give you a brief conclusion and sales concept of an underlying material substance that has its basis for the first completely rationalistic or scientific attempts to describe the structure of the world although it is counterintuitive impossible to be tested valid for the earlier poets, not even in a hypothetical sense. Moreover, several attempts

47:30 to justify oligarchic philosophy contradict each other. So the most established diachronic identities do contradict each other. Following Hegel, philosophy does not care for the world of appearances, whereas Popper believes exactly something different the case. Okay, you see, I think you understand what point I'm going to make. As long as the question, what is the thing called science, is less unsolved, as long as the actual psychronic identity of science is unknown to us, people will disagree with respect to the Greek achievement and will therefore not be able to establish a notion of diachronic identity from historical origins to current date. Thank you. It's starting a couple of minutes late, so let's take some time for questions. I've got two questions. The first one is very short. You concentrate in your paper on Thaler saying water is the substance of everything, and Hansi is called the first scientist, or then makes him a scientist. I would argue the statement, everything is water, makes him a philosopher, but his observations on the stars and his prediction of the first solar eclipse, that makes him perhaps a scientist. And then, on a more fundamental level, I would ask, if your whole paper supposes that there is some sort of an essence of science, which you didn't define, or perhaps at the end, your end remarks probably suggest that there isn't such an essence of science, Because I would think you could say the same things about Galileo or Newton or any other of the big scientists or great scientists and you would come to the same conclusion that we can't establish a diagraphic identity with our concept of science and the concept of science in those days. Yeah, okay, let's start with the second one because this appears more easy to me because, yes, I got the impression that the methods, for example, Galileo used and that the methods and that the results he did come to are in fact different from the ways we do that today. So, yeah, I think that with respect to the history of science, we must admit that there is, at least if you have a more or less strict idea of what science means and what its essence is, then you, yeah, I think with respect to the history of science, it is not possible to apply that to all of its historical appearances.

50:00 So, yeah, I think with respect to Galilee, for example, although I'm not a specialist in that, but with respect to ancient stuff, it's different. So science is probably more kind of dealing with problems under different conditions and with different questions and different methods. So there might be family resemblances between science all over the history, and even family resemblances between the things sailors did and the things we do today, and differences with respect to those resemblances, with respect to mythological thought, but no diachronic identity. And the first question, yes, a lot of, I mean, this claim was made by others as well. For example, several said, Payless was only the first philosopher, not even a scientist at all. And I would say with respect to his explanation of earthquakes or his foretelling, no, yeah, probably even more foretelling of the solar eclipse and make them scientists. I didn't go into that because of the limited amount of sources I could discuss, but with respect to his prediction of solar eclipse, there was a huge debate as well. If he did that on serious scientific reasons or if he just made a very, very bold conjecture on unreliable Babylonian numerical informations about eclipses which had taken place earlier. And most agree that he got his prediction right by more or less luck. And I don't think that we would accept somebody as a scientist who gets his right by luck.

52:30 I'm not really sure, but I think, I mean, okay, I did it the easy way around. I took ancient origins and I took modern interpretations of that thing to establish or defend the notion of diachronic identity seriously. One needs to follow the continuity if there is one. One needs to show throughout the history from, I mean, throughout this 2,500 years of tradition, that there is something which is more or less a thing. And I didn't do that. So, with respect to that, I just took T1 and T2 and compared them and compared the notions of historians or scientists and what they said about T1. And I said they're contradictory and they're not convincing. So, yeah, this might miss, but I'm afraid it's more or less impossible to do that. And still, I got the impression that if you look how it transforms and how other traditions make their input to this kind of process, the overemphasis of ancient origins might melt away with respect to if you take the whole continuity into account. I have a very fundamental problem with all this approach. I don't say it's not interesting but since no study of what archaic mentality as such is taken into account, You use a number of words, or your authors on which you base, use a number of words and concepts, simply assuming, just as a star, before they even develop their argument, simply assuming that you are invariant through time, from the Greeks to now. And they assume in the first place that the structure of our conscious interaction with the world is to some extent invariant, that we can just take our way of dealing with the world and project it back. But the point is that we have very good reasons to not believe that, but then you have to study another, and then there is a whole range of other studies that deal with the sources. I will just take the example of the everything is water, which is ascribed to Thales. In the Greek sentence, there is no is, there is panton hudor, and there is very good reasons

55:00 to not think that there should be an is, it's an analogy, everything is water. Just as Heraclitus says, everything is fire. It's a kind of, it's not a metaphor, it's an analogy, it is pointing to something and say, look what happens there, you can see it, it is the same happening, the same reality as you can see there. And that's why the pre-Socratic sin itself would not have felt themselves contradicting, because it is not an essence, fire is the essence. No, no, water is the essence. No, fire as water, you can eventually say that. And there is indeed the conclusion of Anaximander, who then says, the apyron, makes a kind of synthesis, but not a synthesis of essences. That's the first thing. And the second thing, the concept of nature also is something, the physis, which indeed the physis and the cosmos are words which are, in a more general sense, first used by the pre-Socratics. Cosmos means originally beautifully arranged, like the jewellery in a crown. And physis means something that has grown a growth a kind of organism which is indeed the totality but so it's not just n'importe quoi it has it and plato is very interesting plato remarks that yeah okay good but the point is you cannot just say just for that reason only already that you can map concepts from there to us and there okay I have no problem with that, because maybe you got me wrong, because that was exactly what I was trying to show, that these kinds of adoptions of ancient thought, and in some sense you find that already in Aristotle and his interpretation of that, what Thales might have done, or might have met, because he put that into his framework of the four causes and such. Yes, I do. So, and I don't think that Thales spoke of a material cause, I had something like that in mind. So the process of anachronistic accounts of form of thought starts even with Aristotle, and it continues, and that's what I was trying to show. All these people do have certain ideas of what science is. They say, yes, science is a critical rationalism. Others, other conceptions of science are bullshit. And therefore, the pre-Socratics were the first critical scientists. Of course, they were. And others said, no, science starts with induction. And they say, yes, and that's why we see the pre-Socratics were inductivists. And another one comes along, no, science is hypertitative deductivism.

57:30 And that's the way they apply their modern conceptions on ancient sources, and they don't see exactly what you said, that you must take into account that different people in different cultures in different times might raise very different questions within very different frameworks, and they might have very different problems, and therefore their answers are very different. in this context there are plenty of questions left but maybe you should discuss it over dinner because we weren't understanding and I would like to thank you Thank you.