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Coordination and Measurement: What We Get Wrong about What Reichenbach Got Right

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
European Studies in Philosophy of Science 5: 49-60.
Publication year: 2017

In his Scientific Representation (2008), van Fraassen argues that measuring is a form of representation. In fact, every measurement pinpoints its target in accordance with specific operational rules within an already-constructed theoretical space, in which certain conceptual interconnections can be represented. Reichenbach’s 1920 account of coordination is particularly interesting in this connection. Even though recent reassessments of this account do not do full justice to some important elements lying behind it, they do have the merit of focusing on a different aspect of his early work that traditional interpretations of relativized a priori principles have unfortunately neglected in favour of a more “structural” role for coordination. In Reichenbach’s early work, however, the idea of coordination was employed not only to indicate theory-specific fundamental principles such as the ones suggested in the literature on conventional principles in science, but also to refer to more “basic” assumptions. In Reichenbach, these principles are preconditions both of the individuation of physical magnitudes and of their measurement, and, as such, they are necessary to approach the world in the first instance. This paper aims to reassess Reichenbach’s approach to coordination and to the representation of physical quantities in light of recent literature on measurement and scientific representation.

Contextualism, Psychological Science, and the Question of Ontology

Journal paper
James D. Herbert, Flavia Padovani
Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science 4(4): 225-230
Publication year: 2017

There has recently been a renewed interest in philosophy among some psychologists, particularly those working within the modern behavior analytic framework known as contextual behavioral science. Functional contextualism (FC) has emerged as an alternative to the dominant mechanistic view – generally associated with epistemological realism—within psychology. The most controversial feature of FC has been its so-called “a-ontological” stance, in which it is argued that any statements about even the mere existence of a reality independent of human sensation are meaningless. We argue that FC in fact requires the assumption of the existence of such a “reality,” which we term an “independent, textured substratum,” if it is to serve as an orienting function for psychological science. Moreover, wholesale rejection of any reference to any ontological dimension is itself incommensurate with the analytic goals of FC in that it unnecessarily alienates scientists who might otherwise find value in the sensitivities of FC.

Reichenbach on Causality in 1923: Scientific Inference, Coordination, and Confirmation

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 53: 3-11
Publication year: 2015

In The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (1920b), Reichenbach developed an original account of cognition as coordination of formal structures to empirical ones. One of the most salient features of this account is that it is explicitly not a top-down type of coordination, and in fact it is crucially “directed” by the empirical side. Reichenbach called this feature “the mutuality of coordination” but, in that work, did not elaborate sufficiently on how this is supposed to work. In a paper that he wrote less than two years afterwards (but that he published only in 1932), “The Principle of Causality and the Possibility of its Empirical Confirmation” (1923/1932), he described what seems to be a model for this idea, now within an analysis of causality that results in an account of scientific inference. Recent reassessments of his early proposal do not seem to capture the extent of Reichenbach’s original worries. The present paper analyses Reichenbach’s early account and suggests a new way to look at his early work. According to it, we perform measurements, individuate parameters, collect and analyse data, by using a “constructive” approach, such as the one with which we formulate and test hypotheses, which paradigmatically requires some simplicity assumptions. Reichenbach’s attempt to account for all these aspects in 1923 was obviously limited and naive in many ways, but it shows that, in his view, there were multiple ways in which the idea of “constitution” is embodied in scientific practice.

Objectivity in Science: New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies

Edited Book
Flavia Padovani, Alan Richardson, Jonathan Y. Tsou
Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Vol. 310.
Publication year: 2015

Objectivity in Science: Introduction

Book Chapter
Jonathan Y. Tsou, Alan Richardson, Flavia Padovani
In: Objectivity in Science: New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies, F. Padovani, A.W. Richardson and J.Y. Tsou (Eds.). Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Vol. 310. Springer, pp. 1-15.
Publication year: 2015

Measurement, Coordination, and the Relativized A Priori

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52: 123-128.
Publication year: 2015

The problem of measurement is a central issue in the epistemology and methodology of the physical sciences. In recent literature on scientific representation, large emphasis has been put on the “constitutive role” played by measurement procedures as forms of representation. Despite its importance, this issue hardly finds any mention in writings on constitutive principles, viz. in Michael Friedman׳s account of relativized a priori principles. This issue, instead, was at the heart of Reichenbach׳s analysis of coordinating principles that has inspired Friedman׳s interpretation. This paper suggests that these procedures should have a part in an account of constitutive principles of science, and that they could be interpreted following the intuition originally present (but ultimately not fully developed) in Reichenbach׳s early work.

Breaking the Ontology Taboo: Reply to Monestès and Villatte

Journal paper
James D. Herbert, Flavia Padovani
Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science 4(4): 235-236.
Publication year: 2015

Monestès and Villatte take issue with our contention that, contra strong claims of “a-ontology” associated with functional contextualism, science requires the assumption of a world, independent of our theories of it, with its own specific character. However, their primary criticism confounds the goals of science and associated criteria to evaluate those goals on the one hand with the forces that shape the behavior of the phenomena of interest on the other. We clarify this and other issues, and stand by our criticisms of stronger versions of a-ontology.

Genidentity and Topology of Time: Kurt Lewin and Hans Reichenbach.

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 273: 97-122.
Publication year: 2013

Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective, by Bas C. van Fraassen

Book Review
Flavia Padovani
Science & Education 21 (8): 1199-1204.
Publication year: 2012

The Concept of Probability in the Mathematical Representation of Reality, by Hans Reichenbach, translated and edited by F. Eberhardt and C. Glymour

Book Review
Flavia Padovani
HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (2): 344-347.
Publication year: 2011

Relativizing the Relativized A Priori: Reichenbach’s Axioms of Coordination Divided

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
Synthese 181 (1): 41-62.
Publication year: 2011

In recent years, Reichenbach’s 1920 conception of the principles of coordination has attracted increased attention after Michael Friedman’s attempt to revive Reichenbach’s idea of a “relativized a priori”. This paper follows the origin and development of this idea in the framework of Reichenbach’s distinction between the axioms of coordination and the axioms of connection. It suggests a further differentiation among the coordinating axioms and accordingly proposes a different account of Reichenbach’s “relativized a priori”.

Statistical or Dynamical Lawfulness? Reichenbach and Schlick on the Laws of Nature

Book Chapter
Flavia Padovani
In Moritz Schlick. Ursprünge und Entwicklungen seines Denkens (Schlickiana Bd. 5. F.O. Engler and M. Iven (Eds.). Berlin: Parerga Verlag, pp. 225-255.
Publication year: 2010

Reichenbach’s doctoral thesis aimed at an account of the principles of probability and causality in Kantian terms. Yet, the position he assigned to probability appeared from the outset to be at odds with a Kantian deterministic framework. His defence of the frequency (objective) interpretation of probability, moreover, made him oppose the other quite popular view on probability, the logical (epistemic) interpretation of von Kries. Soon after, despite his early criticism of the neo-Kantians’ analysis of general relativity, Schlick published a paper on the meaning of the causal principle that seemed to Reichenbach like a return to Kant. Schlick’s interpretation was moreover inspired by Kries’s Spielraumtheorie. In their works on these topics, both Schlick and Reichenbach provided a different reading of Planck’s 1914 famous distinction between statistical and dynamical lawfulness. This paper intends to reconstruct their different positions until their 1931 public disagreement in the pages of Die Naturwissenschaften, following its origin in the different way they reacted to some of Kries’s insights, on the one hand, and according to the different emphasis they put on Planck’s distinction, on the other.

Collected Works of Charles François Sturm

Edited Book
Jean-Claude Pont, Flavia Padovani
Basel: Birkäuser.
Publication year: 2009

Pour comprendre le XIXe: Histoire et philosophie des sciences à la fin du siècle

Edited Book
Jean-Claude Pont, Flavia Padovani, Laurent Freland, Lilia Slavinskaia
Firenze: Olschki.
Publication year: 2007

Louis Rougier: vie et œuvre d’un philosophe engagé. Témoignages et écrits politiques

Edited Book
Jean-Claude Pont, Flavia Padovani
Philosophia Scientiæ, Cahier special 7, Éditions Kimé.
Publication year: 2007

Louis Rougier: vie et œuvre d’un philosophe engagé

Edited Book
Jean-Claude Pont, Flavia Padovani
Philosophia Scientiæ 10 (2), Éditions Kimé.
Publication year: 2006

Laws of Nature, Modal Realism and Realist Lawlessness.

Book Chapter
Flavia Padovani
In: John Heil. Symposium on His Ontological Point of View, M. Esfeld (Ed.). Frankfurt a.M.: Ontos-Verlag, pp. 172-187.
Publication year: 2006

One of the most interesting aspects of Heil (2003) consists in the rejection of the traditional opposition between dispositional and categorical properties, parallel to a no-level view of reality. I argue that, from an epistemological perspective, this demands a definite stance on the real meaning and role that laws of nature play in this account. Unfortunately, this issue is not treated by the author in due detail. I will show that an adherence to a “mixed” categorical-dispositional interpretation of properties is incapable of adequately reflecting the business of science, unless some additional explanation is provided of how scientific law statements tell us something about the real world.

La correspondance entre Reichenbach et Rougier des années trente: Une ‘collaboration amicale’, entre empirisme logique et exil

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
Philosophia Scientiae 10 (2): 223-250.
Publication year: 2006

La relatività tra filosofia e fisica nei primi anni Venti: Cassirer e Reichenbach

Journal paper
Flavia Padovani
Scholion 3: 82-125.
Publication year: 2004