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6. The Viewpoint of No One in Particular
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115 6 ARTHUR FINE The Viewpoint of No One in Particular “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”1 My title is drawn from the little book (Space, Time and Gravitation) written in 1920 by the physicist Arthur Eddington.2 I am grateful to Thomas Ryckman, who has been working on Eddington, for bringing him and his delightful book to my attention. I hope that Eddington’s “point of view of no-one in particular” may call to mind some more recent notions: Thomas Nagel’s “view from nowhere,”3 or Bernard Williams “absolute conception ,”4 expressions that are supposed to single out the domain of natural science. It is these conceptions, especially as they relate to the issue of objectivity , that I want to talk about here today. 1. EDDINGTON But first Eddington. Arthur Eddington was the leader of the British expedition of 1919 that verified the first dramatic prediction of Einstein’s theory, the bending of light rays around the sun. He was also an outstanding theoretical physicist. His book is a lovely treatment of the general theory of relativity and of the program for a unified field theory where, finally, Eddington 116 Arthur Fine believes, we fully achieve the point of view of no one in particular. According to Eddington we come to this view in stages. We first eliminate individual standpoints by taking into account the various spatial positions from which an object can be observed or described. This results in an instantaneous threedimensional Newtonian worldview. It is truly a view from nowhere-in-particular . Eddington describes it as the viewpoint of a superobserver, where one “sees” things from all locations all at once. (Putnam would call this a “God’s eye” point of view, the perspective he associates with metaphysical realism and warns us against.5 ) After positions are accounted for, the next step is to take account of motion—all conceivable motion. We accomplish this by integrating time with space. The result is the four-dimensional manifold of relativity. Finally, and speculatively, Eddington suggests we also take into account the gauge or magnitude involved in our observations or descriptions. This is a step he attributes to Herman Weyl in Weyl’s (1918) field theory that unifies electromagnetism with gravity. In Weyl’s construction that unification depends critically on transformations of gauge. Although many now consider Weyl’s efforts at unification mistaken, as Einstein did at the time, Weyl’s ideas are also recognized as important heuristically in opening the path to contemporary quantum gauge field theory. Eddington, however, regards Weyl’s work as the culmination of the program we have been tracking, that of defining physical reality as the synthesis of all possible physical aspects of things: their position, their motion, and their magnitude. Anticipating Williams and Nagel, Eddington acknowledges that more personal points of view may be needed to describe “ultimate reality.” But they are not required, he thinks, for the real world of physics. 2. THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE AND THE ABSOLUTE CONCEPTION Nagel’s view from nowhere and Williams’s absolute conception seek to mark out a point of view, or a way of knowing, that is distinctive of the natural sciences, and appropriate there, but a way not to be imported to other areas, especially not when we turn to thinking about people and their lives. Nor when we think philosophically either. The idea seems to be that science involves a special mode of thought, a distinctively scientific way of thinking about the world. This is an idea that may appeal to those who want to see science as something especially valuable and privileged. It may also appeal to those who want to see science restrained and limited in its claims. Actually, Nagel and Williams share both desires. They see science as a good thing, in its place, and they see their way of marking out science as a win-win strategy, one that does not undervalue science but that does not overvalue it either. Here are some of the elements that go into that strategy. [34.229.223.223] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 06:00 GMT) The Viewpoint of No One in Particular 117 The style of thought that leads to a viewpoint of no one in particular combines the impersonal with the unbiased. Impersonal goes with nonperspectival, perhaps detached and disinterested. Unbiased goes with impartial and neutral. The style could also be abstract or disengaged. No doubt Sherlock Holmes employed this...