Inventing Temperature

by Hasok Chang

  Less demanding of resources but mentally more daring would be new theoretical developments. For example, in "Theoretical Temperature without Thermodynamics?" in chapter 4, I made a brief suggestion on how a theoretical concept of temperature might be defined on the basis of the phenomenalistic physics of gases, without relying on thermodynamics or any other highly abstract theories. Less specifically, in my article on the apparent radiation of cold I registered a view that Rumford's theory of calorific-frigorific radiation would be worth developing further, just to see how far we could take it (Chang 2002, 164). Similarly, in a forthcoming article (Chang and Leonelli) on the debates on the nature of radiation, I make an allowance that there may be useful potential in reviving for further development the pluralistic theory postulating different sets of rays responsible for the illuminating, heating, and chemical effects of radiation. These are very tentative

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  suggestions, and not necessarily very plausible lines of inquiry, but I mention them in order to illustrate the kind of developments that may be possible when complementary science reaches its maturity.

  The realm of theoretical development is where the complementary scientist is likely to face the greatest degree of objection or incomprehension. If an idea proposed in complementary science does not conform to the currently orthodox view of the directions in which productive new developments are likely to come, specialists will dismiss it out of hand as wrong, implausible, or worthless in some unspecified way. But complementary science is inherently a pluralistic enterprise. Although there may be some past systems of knowledge that are quite beyond the horizon of meaningful revival because they have become so disconnected from even everyday beliefs of the modern world, there is no unthinking dismissal of theoretical possibilities in complementary science. If we look back at a decision made by past scientists and there seems to be room for reasonable doubt, that is a plausible indication that what was rejected in that decision may be worth reviving. When the complementary scientist picks up a rejected research program to explore its further potential, or suggests a novel research program, that is also not done with the crank's conviction that his particular heresy represents the only truth. And if specialists should ever choose to adopt an idea originating from complementary science, they may want to adopt it as the undisputed truth; however, that would still not change the fact that complementary science itself is not in the truth business.

  Relations to Other Modes of Historical and Philosophical Study of Science

  There are many modes of study that take place under the rubric of the history of science or the philosophy of science. My goal has been to articulate the complementary mode of HPS, not to deny the importance of other modes by any means. Conversely, the complementary mode must not be rejected simply because its aims are different from those adopted in other modes.

  In this connection I have one immediate worry. To many historians of science, what I am proposing here will seem terribly retrograde. In recent decades many exciting works in the fields of history and sociology of science have given us valuable accounts of the sciences as social, economic, political, and cultural phenomena. HPS as I am proposing here may seem too internalistic, to the exclusion of the insights that can be gained from looking at the contexts in which science has developed and functioned. The important distinction to be stressed, however, is that HPS in its complementary mode is not about science. Its aims are continuous with the aims of science itself, although the specific questions that it addresses are precisely those not addressed by current science; that is why I call it complementary science. HPS in its complementary mode is not meant to be an incomplete sort of history that ignores the social dimension; it is ultimately a different kind of enterprise altogether from the social history of science. One might even say it is not history at all, because history does not in the first instance seek to further our

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  understanding of nature, while complementary science does. I cannot emphasize too strongly that I do not intend to deny the essential importance of understanding science as a social phenomenon, but I also believe that the complementary function of HPS is a distinct and meaningful one.

  If we grant that the complementary mode of HPS is legitimate and useful, it will be helpful to clarify its character further by comparing and contrasting it with some other modes of HPS that bear some similarity to it.

  Sociology of scientific knowledge. Perhaps curiously, complementary science has one important aspect in common with the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK): the questioning of accepted beliefs in science. The reinvestigation of familiar facts can be seen as a process of opening Bruno Latour's (1987) "black box" and revealing the character of "science in action." But there is a clear difference between the intended outcomes of such questioning in SSK and in complementary science. SSK deflates the special authority of science as a whole by reducing the justification of scientific beliefs to social causes. In contrast, the aim of skepticism and anti-dogmatism in complementary science is the further enhancement of particular aspects of scientific knowledge. In some cases work in complementary science may show some past scientific judgments to have been epistemically unfounded, but that is different from SSK's methodological refusal to recognize a distinction between epistemically well founded and unfounded beliefs.8

  Internal history. From the concrete studies I have offered, it will be obvious that much of what I regard as the past achievement of HPS in its complementary mode comes from the tradition of the internal history of science. Is complementary science simply a continuation of that tradition, in which one tries to uncover and understand scientific knowledge faithfully as it existed in the past? There is one important reason why it is not. If we pursue internal history for its own sake, our ultimate aim must be the discovery of some objective historical truth, about what past scientists believed and how they thought. This is not the final aim of complementary science, which only makes use of the internal history of science in order to increase and refine our current knowledge. One significant difference stemming from this divergence of aims is that complementary science does not shrink from making normative epistemic evaluations of the quality of past science, which would be anathema to the "new" internal history of science.9 Still, complementary science is by no means committed to Whiggism, since the judgments made by the historian-philosopher can very easily diverge from the judgments made by the current specialist scientists.

  Methodology. Complementary science is also distinct from the search for "the scientific method," namely the most effective, reliable, or rational method of gaining

  8. David Bloor (1991, 7) states this point unequivocally, as one of the main tenets of the strong program in the sociology of scientific knowledge: "It would be impartial with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure. Both sides of these dichotomies will require explanation." Moreover, "the same types of cause would explain, say, true and false beliefs."

  9. I am referring to the anti-Whiggish type of internal history that Kuhn once designated as the "new internal historiography" of science ([1968] 1977, 110).

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  knowledge about nature. This may sound puzzling, considering that a good deal of the discussion in my concrete studies was very much about scientific methodology, and all of chapter 5 was devoted to it. Studies in complementary science can and do involve questions about the methods of acquiring knowledge, but there is a significant difference of focus to be noted. The attitude toward methodology taken in complementary science is much like most practicing scientists' attitude toward it: methodology is not the primary or final goal of inquiry. What we call good methods are those methods that have produced useful or correct results; this judgment of goodness comes retrospectively, not prospectively. In other words, methodological insights are to be gained as by-products of answering substantive scientific questions; when we ask a question about nature, how we find an answer is part of the answer. In complementa
ry science we do not set down general methodological rules for science to follow. We only recognize good rules by seeing them in action, as successful strategies perhaps worth trying elsewhere, too.

  Naturalistic epistemology. Finally, complementary science must be distinguished from a strong trend in current philosophy of science, which is to give a characterization of science as a particular kind of epistemic activity, without a commitment to normative implications (see Kornblith 1985). This trend probably arises at least partly in reaction to the apparent futility of trying to dictate methodology to scientists. The "naturalistic" impulse is to an extent congenial to complementary science because it provides a strong motivation for an integrated HPS. But what naturalistic epistemology fosters is HPS in the descriptive mode, which takes science primarily as a naturally existing object of description. In contrast, for HPS in the complementary mode, the ultimate object of study is nature, not science.

  A Continuation of Science by Other Means

  In closing, I would like to return briefly to the relation between specialist science and complementary science. One big question that I have not discussed sufficiently so far is whether complementary science is an enterprise that is critical of orthodox specialist science, and more broadly, what normative dimensions there are to the complementary function of HPS. This is a difficult question to answer unequivocally, and I think the subtlety of the issue can be captured as follows: complementary science is critical but not prescriptive in relation to specialist science.

  There are two different dimensions to the critical stance that complementary science can take toward specialist science. First, when complementary science identifies scientific questions that are excluded by specialist science, it is difficult to avoid the implication that we would like to have those questions answered. That is already a value judgment on science, namely that it does not address certain questions we consider important or interesting. However, at least in a large number of cases, this judgment also comes with the mitigating recognition that there are good reasons for specialist science to neglect those questions. That recognition prevents the step from judgment to prescription. The primary aim of complementary science is not to tell specialist science what to do, but to do what specialist science is presently unable to do. It is a shadow discipline, whose

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  boundaries change exactly so as to encompass whatever gets excluded in specialist science.10

  The second dimension of the critical stance is more controversial, as I have discussed in "The Character of Knowledge Generated by Complementary Science." On examining certain discarded elements of past science, we may reach a judgment that their rejection was either for imperfect reasons or for reasons that are no longer valid. Such a judgment would activate the most creative aspect of complementary science. If we decide that there are avenues of knowledge that were closed off for poor reasons, then we can try exploring them again. At that point complementary science would start creating parallel traditions of scientific research that diverge from the dominant traditions that have developed in specialist science. It is important to note that even such a step falls short of a repudiation of current specialist science. Since we do not know in advance whether and to what degree the complementary traditions might be successful, the act of creating them does not imply any presumption that it will lead to superior results to what the specialists have achieved since closing off the avenues that we seek to reopen. (All of this is not to deny that there are possible situations that would call for a prescriptive mode of HPS, in which we question whether science is being conducted properly, and propose external intervention if the answer is negative.)

  Complementary science could trigger a decisive transformation in the nature of our scientific knowledge. Alongside the expanding and diversifying store of current specialist knowledge, we can create a growing complementary body of knowledge that combines a reclamation of past science, a renewed judgment on past and present science, and an exploration of alternatives. This knowledge would by its nature tend to be accessible to non-specialists. It would also be helpful or at least interesting to the current specialists, as it would show them the reasons behind the acceptance of fundamental items of scientific knowledge. It may interfere with their work insofar as it erodes blind faith in the fundamentals, but I believe that would actually be a beneficial effect overall. The most curious and exciting effect of all may be on education. Complementary science could become a mainstay of science education, serving the needs of general education as well as preparation for specialist training.11 That would be a most far-reaching step, enabling the educated public to participate once again in building the knowledge of our universe.

  10. That is not to say that those boundaries are completely sharp. The boundaries of complementary science will be fuzzy, to the extent that the boundaries of science are fuzzy. But the existence of gray areas does not invalidate the distinction altogether. Also, someone who is primarily a specialist scientist may well engage in some complementary scientific work and vice versa; that is no stranger than a scientist exploring the artistic dimensions of scientific work.

  11. The importance of the history and philosophy of science to "liberal" science education has been argued by many authors, as documented thoroughly by Michael Matthews (1994). For me the chief inspiration comes from the vision behind James Bryant Conant's general education program at Harvard, and its extension by Gerald Holton and his associates (see the introduction to Conant 1957, and Holton 1952).

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  Glossary of Scientific, Historical, and Philosophical Terms

  Items marked with an asterisk (*) are terms that I have coined myself or to which I have given nonstandard meanings; the rest are standard terms or terms introduced by other authors as specified.

  Absolute temperature. When William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) crafted the concept of absolute temperature starting from 1848, his main intention was to make a temperature concept that did not refer to the properties of any particular material substances. In modern usage this meaning is conflated with the sense of counting up from the absolute zero, which indicates the complete absence of heat. The latter was in fact an earlier concept, advocated for example by Guillaume Amontons and William Irvine. Cf. Amontons temperature; Irvinism.

  Absolute zero. See absolute temperature, Amontons temperature.

  *Abstraction. The omission of certain properties in the description of an object. Abstraction is not to be confused with idealization.

  Adiabatic gas law. The law describing the behavior of a gas expanding or contracting without any exchange of heat with the external environment. The standard expression is pvγ = constant, where γ is the ratio between the specific heat of the gas at constant pressure and the specific heat at constant volume.

  Adiabatic phenomena. Phenomena occurring to a system that is thermally isolated from its environment. Best known were adiabatic heating and cooling, in which a gas is heated by compression without any heat being added to it and cooled by expansion without any heat being taken away from it. These phenomena are now commonly considered as striking demonstrations of the interconversion of heat and mechanical energy, but that interpretation was only proposed by James Joule around 1850. One of the most convincing explanations of adiabatic phenomena before Joule was that given by John Dalton, which was based on Irvinist caloric theory.

  *Amontons temperature. Air-thermometer temperature counted from the absolute zero. The idea is due to Guillaume Amontons who, by extrapolation of the known trend of gases to lose pressure gradually by cooling, predicted that at a certain point the pressure value would hit zero, and understood such presumed disappearance of pressure as an indication of a complete absence of heat. Therefore, in the Amontons scale the zero-pressure point is recognized as the absolute zero of temperature.

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  Atomic heat. See Dulong and Petit's law.

  Auxiliary hypothesis. An additional hypothesis that is used to enable the deduction of an obs
ervable consequence from the main hypothesis that one aims to test. When the main hypothesis is apparently falsified by empirical observations, one can always defend it by shifting the blame on to auxiliary hypotheses. Cf. holism.

  Boiling point. The temperature at which a liquid boils. In the context of thermometry, an unspecified "boiling point" usually refers to the boiling point of water. Although the boiling point of a pure liquid under fixed pressure is now commonly assumed to be constant, that was widely known not to be the case during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.