Erik Brown's rejection of my 1996 lecture in the theory of science

Erik Brown's rejection of my 1996 lecture in the theory of science

John Bjarne Grover

I had written and delivered to evaluation this lecture in the theory of science - it was rejected in a letter from Erik Brown at the university of Bergen in this letter which I translated as follows for the english version of that collection of the papers from the rejection of my PhD dissertation in 1998. See also this material. Here is Brown's letter translated by me (the translation could have been better but it was written in the days just after having received the rejection letter):

Bergen 21.11.96

For John Grøver
Postboks 320
5001 Bergen

Dear John Grøver!

I send this letter on behalf of the committee for your lecture in the theory of science for the dr.art. degree. All members, Lars Johnsen, Marianne Skånland and I myself, agree that the lecture, in the form it has now, cannot be accepted. Below, I have explained the reason for this, in a reasoning which we all agree upon. (Before this letter was sent to you, a copy was sent to the other two members, who have accepted the contents). In addition to this, I include an expert opinion from senior scientific officer Mickal Walecki at the Institute of Informatics, whom we have used as an expert on the things you write about mathematical/logical foundation research.

You show extensive learning in your lecture, but a main problem for you is that you draw analogies and see connections where we hardly see any. You want to embrace everything, but thereby you run the risk of embracing nothing!

Most serious in this respect is your attempt to see parallels between the science-theoretic problem which you deal with in the first part of the lecture - how one may understand the fact that important scientific discoveries sometimes (often?) are made by different scientists at approximately the same time -and the story about Jacob and Esau in the Old Testament. To pose the first question is legitimate. But the connection to Jacob and Esau seems extremely farfetched, as I also gave expression to in the telephone conversation with you at the end of the last week. Does the Bible tell of scientific discoveries, or even of such simultaneous ones? We can see absolutely no connection between the original problem and what you write from page 28 onwards, which has the effect that the first and the last part falls entirely apart in our view.

But even within the pages up to page 28, there are clear traces of the same inclination to mix phenomena which obviously seem different. Your way of conceiving Kuhn's concept of paradigms is, in this respect, symptomatic. On page 1-2, you see a parallel between Kuhn's concept of paradigms and the concept of archetypes, but to us, this seems strange. Paradigms, such as Kuhn conceives of them, change, while the archetypes are thought of as constant representations in our subconscious ideas. Furthermore: Even if scientific paradigms according to Kuhn have unformulated elements, a kind of conditioned scientific spinal reflexes, they nevertheless contain consciously formulated scientific ideas which hardly can be compared with archetypal ideas. - On the other hand, Kuhn's concept of paradigms has been too closely related to ideas within mathematical/logical foundation research when you, on page 14, see an analogy between Kuhn's conception of science and Cantor's mathematical ideas. Kuhn's concept of paradigms is all too informal to allow for a comparison with strict mathematical concepts.

Another important concept which remains indistinct and somewhat fluid in your discussion is the concept of 'shared consciousness'. In order to account for the concept, you sway between extremes which hardly are suitable 'bedfellows'. On page 24f. you write: "We make the daring leap of assuming that revolutionary work with mathematical concepts is also revolutionarily present in the (more or less) platonic regions of the shared consciousness, which consequently means that the work can be perceived by other mathematicians working in the same regions of mathematics, even if they are in considerable geographical distance from the source of this revolution". How this is to be understood, is left very open. - What are 'the platonic regions'? - Do platonic ideas give rise to a form of extra-sensory perception in disparate researchers? But on the other hand, you relate the cleft consciousness of mathematicians to presumptuously solid social structures. You thereby seem, just above on the same page (page 24), to accept the reductionist science-theorist David Bloor, when he compares mathematics with a social institution. - The problem is here, as other places, that very different ideas are wiped under the same rug.

Another important objection is that you do not give scientific evidence for central assertions. It is important for you to show that there is a conscious ambiguity in Kuhn's use of the expression 'the concept work' (cp. page 23f.). You interpret Kuhn to mean that this expression of his means both the concept of physical work (in a technical sense) as well as work with concepts. The quote you bring from Kuhn just below, seems to us to contradict this hypothesis. The use of the expression "the concept work" which occurs in the first line in the quote, is later on in the same quote clearly connected with the expression "the analysis of machines in motion". That should indicate that only a solid physical inter-pretation of "the concept work" is intended. It is plain enough that Kuhn, in the same quote, also makes use of the word "work" about intellectual work. But the point is that there seems to be no ambiguity in any of the occurrences - "work" means either the one or the other. Apart from this, it is seldom that scientific discussions consciously strive towards ambiguity, therefore your hypothesis lacks "initial probability". Furthermore, you do neither give any deeper sense to the point that this alleged ambiguity of meaning (in "the concept work") is related to his concept of Gestalt-switches in "the Structure of Scientific revolutions".

When it comes to your main question, simultaneous discoveries of identical theories or concepts in the sciences, this is in itself interesting, and that you at the outset relate them to Kuhn's concepts, seems sensible. But your explanation to the phenomenon seems to be somewhat hovering. An unmotivated displacement of the problem is also taking place. One thing is that there occurs researchers, independently of each other and approximately at the same time, who reach the same important discoveries. But you seem, entirely unmotivated, to inflate this phenomenon to metaphysical dimensions. Compare what you say on page 25f.: "In this interpretation, I assume that the revolutionary paradigm shift in geometry was to be socially implemented in the form of a simultaneous discovery with contribution from at least two mathematicians". I am not entirely sure, but it seems as if you here mean to say that there had to be two persons who simultaneously contributed to the scientific turn from Euclidean to non-Euclidean geometry. In any case, it would have been valuable for you to direct the critical searchlight in the opposite direction: how common is it really that several researchers make the same discovery at the same time? Aren't there many examples of unique discoveries, such as only one researcher has contributed to, or even discoveries which are made once, then are forgotten for a long time and then rediscovered by another researcher? Before you critically have investigated the spread of your explanandum phenomenon - the fact that the same creative ideas appear in more than one researcher at the same time - you can hardly say anything well-founded on how important it is, or how pressing it is to find an explanation to it. You, on the contrary, seems to take it for granted that such simultaneous discoveries are the rule, in any case in mathematics, without giving any rationale for it.

This does not mean that I suggest that you should give up this as a topic for your lecture in the theory of science - only that you ought to streamline your conceptions of the problem. You are doubtless both knowing and clever, but I think that it is most fair to tell it right out: If you are to have the lecture accepted, you must grasp yourself critically in your neck. One thing which finally ought to be mentioned is this: You should avoid including references to your relations to the university administration in a scientific work. That makes it too private.

Sincerely

Erik Brown