Scientific theorizing behind closed doors

Perspectives on the Thematic Analysis of Scientific Thought

Gerald Holton
Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and
Research Professor of History of Science

The main point of interest for my presentation here is that my being able then
to look at Einstein’s drafts of his work, and copies of his letter responses to
inquiries concerning it, it came to me as a revelation that here, too,
in addition to his attention to data and logical/analytical tools (to which Einstein
himself referred to as the empirical and the rational aspects), one origin and
mainspring of his work more often than not was a set of fiercely held
presuppositions, what I came soon to call thematic elements. Among the
themata which guided Einstein’s theory construction were clearly the following:
the primacy of formal, rather than materialistic explanation; unity or unification;
logical parsimony and necessity; symmetry; simplicity; causality in the classical
sense; completeness in the subordination of every phenomenon under the
respective theory; the continuum; and of course constancy and invariance.

Once seen clearly in the nascent stages, these thematic components can
sometimes, with some effort, be observed also in the published papers, although
Einstein, like most scientists, took care to keep such motivating, quasi-
metaphysical aspects out of view. The hold of these on his wide-ranging
imagination explains why he would obstinately continue in a given direction
even when testing against experience (as in both SRT and GRT) was initially
unavailable or difficult (and on some occasions holding fast even contrary to
recent experimental results). And it explains also what to some commentators
have been persistent puzzles: why Einstein was hostile to theories well
supported by correlation with experiments but based on thematic
presuppositions opposite to his own (as in the case of quantum mechanics of
Niels Bohr's school, with its emphasis on discontinuity, probabilism, and
incompleteness in the description of phenomena; and why to him Michelson’s
experiments were not crucial in the genesis of the relativity theory).

Philosophers of science, and especially philosophers in the Vienna Circle,
had overlooked Einstein’s pilgrimage from a self-confessed follower of Ernst
Mach’s ideas to a position much closer to that of Max Planck. Indeed, one of
these, a distinguished student of Hans Reichenbach, chided Einstein in print, in
no uncertain terms, for not having fully acknowledged what his critic took to be
a necessary experimental support for Einstein’s proposal of the principles in the
special relativity theory.

Turning now from the autobiographical sketch to a review of the main
points of the work itself, it may be helpful, especially for those who have not
followed the books and articles in which the role of themata were dealt with, to
outline the thematic approach, not least in order to clarify the distinctions with
entirely different conceptions, such as archetypes, paradigms, or Kantian
Categories.

To summarize essentials and to set the stage, consider that when scientists
publish the results of their work in journals, textbooks, etc., they are submitting
them for acceptance into what could be called Public Science, generally making
quite sure to cast a veil over the prior stage of their effort, the scientist’s
individual activity during the nascent period, which deserves the term Private
Science. The common error of using the word science without making this
distinction can show up glaringly when the historian of science tries to
understand the motivation of scientists for pursuing their research problems, the
original choice of their conceptual tools, or the treatment of their data. In all
these cases, one may discover that during the nascent, private period of work,
some scientists, consciously or not, use highly motivating, very general thematic
presuppositions.

But when such work is then proposed for entry into the public phase of science,
these motivating aids tend to be suppressed, and even disappear from view.
Even though such thematic notions arise from a deep conviction about nature,
on which the initial proposal and eventual reception or rejection of one’s best work
may be based, they are not explicitly taught, and they are not listed in the research
journals or textbook. That has certain advantages, insofar as their silence about
personal motivations and thematic preferences avoids any deep, unresolvable disputes
in the public phase; consensus is easier to reach if thematic elements are kept out of
sight, as they are also in pedagogic presentation.

Some modern philosophers of science, particularly those tracing their
roots to empiricism or positivism, go further and assign meaning to any
scientific statement only insofar as the statement can be shown to have
phenomenic and/or analytic components in this plane. And, to be sure, this
policy has freed science from innate properties, occult principles, and other
tantalizing, metaphysical notions which cannot be resolved into components
along those x and y-axes. It was in part for the sake of this advantage that
positivists and empiricists, from Hume to the Vienna Circle—movements that
grew out of courageous opposition to speculative, ungrounded, and
metaphysical deadwood that was thought to infest the public science of their
time—urged the activity science to be defined entirely in terms of sense
observation and logical argument.

Nevertheless, this two-dimensional view of science also has had its costs.
First, it is not true to the behavior and experience of individuals engaged in
research. It does nothing to explain why at any given time the choice of
problems or the reception of theories may be strikingly different among
individuals or like-minded groups who face the same corpus of data. (Examples
on this point are the early, quite different responses to relativity in Germany,
England, France, and the United States of America.) It also overlooks both the
positive, motivating, and emancipatory potential of certain presuppositions, as
well as the negative and enslaving role that sometimes has led promising
scientists into disastrous error. For, again, Einstein and Niels Bohr were rather
well matched in navigating the two-dimensional plane of science, as were
Schrödinger and Heisenberg. Yet there were among them fundamental
antagonies in terms of programs, tastes, and beliefs, with occasional passionate
outbursts among the opponents. The thematic differences, which are at the core
of such controversies, do sometimes break through—and they shatter the two-
dimensional model.

Above all, this limited view does not explain what an historian, looking at
laboratory notebooks or early drafts of a distinguished scientist, can sometimes
see with stark clarity: as noted, the willingness to what can only be called a
suspension of disbelief about the possible falsification of their hypotheses,
emerging from the data before them. Thus while the planar view is satisfactory
for the scientists intent on furthering advances in their field inductively, that
view, requires an amendment to help those who try to understand the original
sources and pathways of the creative process. The various thematic6
propositions can be found persist for a long time in the individual case, as well as
throughout long periods of history. Many are widely shared, and in a given
science such as physics they are and have been surprisingly few in number.

Among other major scientists discussed in the books noted in the end-list,
and whose work has lent itself to better understanding through thematic
analysis, are Galileo (book 5, chapter 4), Ernst Mach (book 1, chapter 7; book 4,
chapters 1 and 2), A. A. Michelson (book 1, chapter 8), R. A. Millikan book 2,
chapter 2), Heisenberg (book 3, chapter 7), Erwin Schrödinger (book 1, chapter 4),
J. Robert Oppenheimer (book 3, chapter 7), Max Planck (book 4, chapter 3),
Thomas Young (book 5, chapter 4), and Steven Weinberg (book 2, chapter 1). In
other publications I have added P. W. Bridgman, B F. Skinner, and Michael
Polanyi. Thematic analysis in teaching the history of science, discussed in the
fifth chapter of book 5, is shown there to be one of nine conceptual tools needed
for a full understanding of an event or a case in the history of science.

Themata embraced by opposing scientists often appear in opposing
Dyads…Examples are continuum (e.g., in field) versus discontinuum
(e.g., in atomism); complexity/simplicity; reductionism/holism;
unity/hierarchical levels; causality/probabilism; analysis/synthesis. There are
also a few triads, such as evolution/steady state/devolution, or
mechanistic/materialistic/mathematical models. While I have studied primarily
themata in physical science, the same findings appear to be applicable also to the
other sciences. A list of those found so far can be constructed from the indexes of
the books listed at the end, under thema and themata.

All these become visible most strikingly during a conflict between
individuals or groups that are committed to opposing themata, or within the
developing work of a scientist holding on to a thematic concept for as long as
possible, until he was forced to switch to the anti-thema (as in the case of
Millikan, on the photoelectric effect; or in the case of Max Planck and the
quantum). It is impressive that research has led to the finding that only a
relatively small number of themata and anti-themata—perhaps of the order of
one hundred—have sufficed throughout modern science. The contrary themata
of Heraclitus and Parmenides are still in use. This is one reason to avoid the
word theme in place of thema, for as in music here is no limit to the number of
possible themes, there is no longevity, nor any overarching generality that can be
drawn from them for science.

We can turn now to one of the puzzles facing every scientist and historian
of science. If, as Einstein and others have claimed, the concepts of science are
free inventions of the human mind, should that not allow an infinite set of
possible axiom systems to which one’s mind could leap or cleave? Virtually
every one of these would ordinarily be useless for constructing a theory to
encompass the phenomena being studied. How then could there be any hope of
success except by chance? The answer must be that the license implied in the
leap to an axiom system by the freely inventing mind is the freedom to make
such a leap, but not the freedom to make any arbitrary leap whatever. The
choices available are narrowly circumscribed by a scientist’s particular set of
themata that filters and constrains, and shapes the style, direction, and rate of
advance on novel ground. (See book 2, chapter 2.) And insofar as the
individuals sets of themata overlap, the progress of the scientific community as a
group is similarly constrained or directed. Otherwise, the inherently anarchic
connotations of freedom could indeed disperse the total effort.


List of books referred to:
(1) Holton, Gerald Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein
(2nd, revised ed. of 1973 1st ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1988).
(2)______. The Scientific Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
(3)_ _____. The Advancement of Science, and its Burdens (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1998).
(4)______. Science and Anti-Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
(5)______. Einstein, History, and Other Passions (Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 2000).

4 "Über die Hypothesen, welche der Naturwissenschaft zu Grunde liegen," in Adolf
Portmann (ed.), Eranos-Jahrbuch XXXI/1962 (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1963, pp. 351-425).
5 The concept of subjecting scientific work to thematic analysis was discussed and taken
up by others, as mentioned in the Postscript to the revised edition of Thematic Origins of
1988 (such as R. K. Merton, Erik Erikson, Roman Jakobson, Robert Nisbet, Helge Kragh,
John Losee), as well as a number of others since that date, including Peter Galison and S.
S. Schweber.

http://www.physics.harvard.edu/holton/RabatMS.pdf