In the aforementioned chapter, Duhem contrasts two kinds of minds: the French mind and the English mind. The epitome of the French mind can be seen in the work of Descartes. According to Duhem, Descartes’s Discourse on Method demonstrates the
“strong but narrow mind”1 at its best with its emphasis on abstraction, deduction, and logic. The English mind is supposed to be the opposite of the French mind; rather than being strong and narrow, it is conceived of as “weak and broad.”2 Although Duhem briefly uses Sir Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum to demonstrate the characteristics of
1. Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. Philip P. Wiener (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 69.
2. Duhem, Aim and Structure, 57.
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the English mind, his most extensive and detailed example is not only not a scientist, he is not even an Englishman. In fact, in an ironic twist, he happens to be the French military general and tyrant, Napoleon Bonaparte. For Duhem, Napoleon is the archetype example of the English mind for three primary reasons: (1) his predilection for concrete facts and examples, (2) his antipathy of abstractions and generalizations, and (3) his emphasis on the role of visualization (or “imagination”) in thinking.
It is clear from this brief description that the two kinds of minds are intended to be polar opposites of one another. The French mind believes that knowledge begins first and foremost with “common sense” (connaissance commune) first principles. Regarding the origin of these common sense first principles Duhem writes, “As for the axioms, where do they come from: They are taken…from common knowledge; that is, every person of sound mind takes it that he is sure of their truth before studying the science whose foundations they are.3” Duhem believes that the foundational principles of all scientific theories cannot be derived from reason like the other components of any scientific theory because this would lead us into the morass of the infinite regress problem. For Duhem, the only inevitable conclusion is that the axioms must be justified in an arational way by what can loosely be called human judgment or human intuition. Continuing with the epistemology of the French mind, from these first principles the faculty of reason applies the rules of formal logic and mathematics to deduce more extensive knowledge of the world. Quoting Duhem, “Starting from these ideas, from these principles, the deductive method will unroll its syllogisms whose long chain of links, all tested, will firmly tie the
3. Pierre Duhem, as quoted in, R.N.D. Martin, Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and History in the Work of a Believing Physicist (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), 82.
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most minute consequences to the foundations of the system.”4 For the so-called French mind, scientific knowledge is largely deductive knowledge, with the exception of the intuitive first principles on which all of the preceding knowledge rests.
Nothing that was said about the analytic French mind can be applied to the mechanical English mind. In discussing Bacon’s Novum Organum Duhem dismissingly remarks, “There is no use in looking for Bacon’s method in it, for there is none.” Any modern reader will find this comment ironic given that Bacon is widely regarded as the progenitor of the so-called scientific method. Duhem would not be amused by the place Bacon has assumed in the annals of science; on the contrary he would likely be repulsed by it. While discussing the English mind’s lack of methodology, Duhem rhetorically asks, “Will these instructions teach us to conduct and arrange our experiments in accordance with fixed rules? Will these directions teach us the way to classify our observations? Not in the least.”5 While French theory-making depends on “fixed rules”
determined by logic, English theory-making “proceed[s] not so much by a consecutive line of reasoning, as by a piling-up of examples. Instead of linking up syllogisms, they accumulate facts.”6 While the English mind is primarily concerned with stockpiling concrete facts through observation and experiment, they are very much unconcerned with the axioms or first principles that provide the foundation for French theories.
Another significant difference between the two methods, especially as it pertains to models and modeling, are their divergent thoughts on the role of the imagination (or what Duhem calls elsewhere “visualization”) in the production of scientific theories. By
4. Duhem, Aim and Structure, 65.
5. Ibid., 66 6. Ibid., 67.
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visualization, Duhem is referring to the ability to create mental models in one’s mind of some scientific phenomenon. Returning to the example of Napoleon, Duhem writes, “If we read again the portrait of Napoleon…we shall recognize immediately…an
extraordinary power to hold in mind an extremely complex collection of objects, provided these are sensory objects having shape and color that the imagination can visualize”.7 We are told that though this power of visualization is celebrated in the
English mind, it is abhorred by the French. The English believe that scientific explanation is impossible without these mental models because explanation of a scientific
phenomenon comes down to discovering the internal mechanism(s) that enable it to function.8 For the English, these internal mechanisms can only be ascertained by the imagination alone. What Duhem finds especially deplorable, however, is the English’s insistence that the imagination has as much, if not more, to do with the production and development of scientific theories than pure, unadulterated reason.