JOSEPH L.

ESPOSITO* REICHENBACHS PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

HANS Reichenbach liked to characterize his logical empiricism as a philosophy of nature, even while quick to point out that his new and modern philosophy of nature was similar in name only to the earlier varieties of Schelling and Hegel. In what follows I shall suggest that while there are important respects in which his work, particularly his later work, diverges from that of the Naturphilosophen, there are also important respects in which it continued to nurture major themes of Naturphilosophie. In doing so I am not concerned to make Reichenbach into a Schelling or Hegel, as I am to make the latter into philosophers whose approach to science may be more sympathetically understood today in the light of Reichenbachs subsequent efforts. 1. The Tasks of Naturphilosophie In the last century Naturphilosophie was primarily condemned for purporting to be an intuitionist and purely speculative method of acquiring factual knowledge. It was characterized, for example, by Alexander von Humbolt as a chemistry in which you do not wet your hands.? This was a one-sided assessment however. It emphasized the theoretical reflections of the Naturphilosophen in their efforts to forge conceptual tools for use in more fully comprehending the structures of nature (and history), and it neglected the fact that such tools were intended to be tested in confrontation with the results of scientific experimentation. It was in this latter spirit that Hegel observed not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formulation of the Philosophy of Nature presup*P.O. Box 3368, Tucson, to the works AZ 85722 U.S.A. of Reichenbach consulted will be included in the text; these are The References

Theory of Relativity andA Priori Knowledge, Maria Reichenbach (trans.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965). [RAK]; Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity, Maria Reichenbach (trans.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), [ATR]; The Philosophy of Space and Time, Maria Reichenbach and John Freund (trans.) (New York: Dover, 1958), [ST]; Modern Philosophy of Science, Maria Reichenbach (trans.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), [MPS]; Atom and Cosmos, Edward S. Allen (trans.) (New York: Macmillan, 1933). [AC]; Experience and Prediction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), [EP]; Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Berkeley: University of California, 1%5), [QM]; The in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Philosophical Significance of the Theory of Relativity, P.A. Schilpp (ed.) (Evanston: Library of Living Philosophers, 1949), pp. 289- 311, [PSR]; The Rise of Scientific Phifosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), [RSP]; The Direction of Time, Maria Reichenbach (ed.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), [DT]. =Quoted in H. G. Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 178183. 0039-3681/79/0901-0189$02.00/O

Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., Vol. 10. (1979) NO. 3, pp. 189-200.
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poses and is conditioned by empirical physics.3 The early Naturphilosophen primarily wanted to give theoretical depth and sophistication to late eighteenth-century science, and were less concerned, if at all, to overthrow the results of specific scientific experimentation. To a rather obvious extent Naturphilosophie could not have been possible without the emergence for the first time in the late eighteenth century of scientific periodicals such as Friedrich &ens Journal der Physik (1790 - 1797)which reported the new discoveries in physics and chemistry from the laboratories of Davy, Saussure, Pictet, Rumford, and others. This is not to say that &helling and Hegel carried out their program consistently. The drive for a quickly achieved systematic unity of the greatest comprehension and power was almost too great for them to resist, so that their notorious extrapolations and dialectical short-cuts soon enough were revealed and criticized.4 The Naturphilosophen, then, did not seek to replace experimental science, but to expand the latters theoretical implications. With inspiration primarily from Kant, they sought to get a clear view of the tasks required to carry out their program. Generally these were: (1) the analysis of established science with a view to comprehending and then rationally reconstructing its underlying conceptual framework, (2) a generalization of the results of the first task in order to construct models of relations and lists of categories best characterizing the latest scientific developments, and (3) an investigation of the contextual relation between theory and observation with a view toward detecting historical patterns of scientific development with respect to both explanation and control. Each later task built upon the previous, with the first depending upon a careful examination of scientific language. Abuse of Naturphilosophie by enthusiastic advocates usually took the form of a precipitous leap to the third more grandiose task without adequate preparation at the other levels. These main tasks were partitioned into a number of more detailed investigations, including as part of the first task the formal reconstruction of scientific theories according to a deductive model employing axioms, definitions, and theorems. A theory of categories entered at the second level, comprising a short list of universal categories and a longer list of more specific categories. Hegels work in this area went far beyond anything Schelling had achieved, though a number of other Naturphilosophen were also involved in category theory, and for a while it was a lively debating issue whether the triadic systems of &helling and Hegel were superior to the tetradic systems of Troxler and Wagner. Third-level tasks included a theory of classification of the sciences, %. W. F. Hegel, Phitosophy of Nuture, A. V. Miller (trans.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 6. For an account of nineteenth-century Nuturphilosophie and its critics see Joseph L. Esposito, Schellings Idealism and Philosophy of Nature (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1977). Chs. in Physics: The History and Practice of Nutur5 and 6. See also Barry Gower, Speculation
philosophic, Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 3 (1973), 301 -356.

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based upon reformulated definitions of the subject matter of each science, and a redesign of the disciplines of learning according to the most rational taxonomy of science. Schellings On the Method of Academic Studies (1803) and Okens classification of theories in his General Natural History (1833 - 1841) were prominent contributions prior to Peirces lengthy studies in classification. In the later phases the more glamorous investigations began: the evolutionary theory of the world system (Schelling), the application of dialectical logic to the historical unfolding of the Absolute (Hegel), and the synechistic theory of evolution (Peirce). 2. Reichenbachs
Epistemology

Before attempting to relate Reichenbachs work to the tasks of Naturphilosophie it is important to indicate in what ways his empiricist epistemology allowed for the sort of theoretical investigations necessary to carry on such activity. Traditionally the idealist has argued that a Lockean and Humean epistemology, at least as generally understood, is false as a complete account of perceptual and conceptual activity:5 rather, it is true only as an account of certain epistemic situations subject to conditions deliberately or unwittingly excluded from view. A fuller view would have to encompass and justify the assertions that knowledge always requires an active, constituting dimension, and that mature perception necessarily implies such a dimension. Reichenbach was aware of the need to place an active and relating cognitive function at the center of epistemology. In his view all knowledge comprised a coordination of real objects to a coordinating framework, but neither the real objects nor the framework were simply given and invariable. Perception could not by itself furnish a criterion for the uniqueness of perceived objects because the content of every perception is far too complex to serve as an element of coordination (RAK, 40). In order to isolate the relevant features of a percept a pre-coordination must first take place demarcating relevant and irrelevant features, and this process invariably relies on prior conceptualization. Similarly, relevant perceptions must be ordered and judged veridical, and yet here too prior conceptualization is required (RAK, 41). He also realized that judged from the standpoint of positivism this claim leads to the strange fact that scientific knowledge pertains to particular real objects even while these very objects are defined by coordination to a conceptual framework (RAK, 40 - 42). In order to avoid a subjectivist phenomenalism (positivism, RAK, 42) Reichenbach specified two senses in which our knowledge could be objective while not allowing a perceptual encounter with the objects of common sense. First, he argued in a Kantian vein that perception did involve an encounter with an individual and unique datum beyond the perceiving act, so
Such arguments are discussed in Joseph South. J. Phil. 14 (1976), 431 -442. L. Esposito, Hume and the Transcendental Idealists,

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that regardless of the ontological status of the percepturn it remained true that perception was capable of furnishing a criterion for the uniqueness of a coordination, though how that uniqueness was to be later interpreted ontologically could only be determined by the coordinative criteria adopted. It is, then, probably in relation to Kants notion of sensory experience that we should interpret his remark that experience provides only data, not relations because experience furnishes only a criterion for the uniqueness of the coordination and not the coordination itself (RAK, 63). A second objectivizing factor is found in the relational dimension of knowledge itself. Scientific knowledge requires experimentation and, hence, measurement. Thus, while measurement requires coordinating and metric criteria, a non-mental measuring object is also involved, and so when the experimenter subjects reality to measurement he subjects himself to whatever objective relations might result from the interaction of the instrument with that reality. For not all of the epistemically relevant properties of the instrument can be anticipated and controlled by the initial design and intent of the user. Combining both of these features, Reichenbach defined uniqueness in terms of cognitive coordination and physical manipulation: Uniqueness of a cognitive coordination means that a physical variable of state is represented by the sume value resulting from dif ferent empirical data (RAK, 45). In such an account of uniqueness in knowledge we are only allowed to speak of an objective dimension in knowledge relative to some system of coordination. For the phenomenologically unique percepturn prior to coordination is not something properly speaking that we can be said to know. Perhaps for this reason, and because he was not prepared to abandon his insights on the role of coordination in knowledge, Reichenbach was willing to give up the hope of ever finding an invariable method for determining the unique referents of scientific knowledge. Getting the same value for two measurements depended upon metrical assumptions, and calling two perceptions different depended upon temporal assumptions. Instead he saw the development of science as marking an increasing awareness of the influence of such assumptions and, for this reason, a progressive relativization of the notion of uniqueness. In a way suggestive of Hegels analysis of sense-certainty Reichenbach pushed the analysis of perception into wider and wider fields:
Where does the definition of knowledge as unique coordination come from? From an analysis of the knowledge gathered up to now. Yet nothing can prevent us from eventually confronting experiences that will make a unique coordination impossible, just as experiences show us today that Euclidean geometry is no longer adequate. The requirement of uniqueness has a definite physical significance. It says that there are constants in nature; by measuring them in various ways, we establish their uniqueness. (RAK, 82.) Yet,

he goes on to suggest, physical constants themselves may be variable in

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some systematic fashion, and then such an hypothesis (advanced in the nineteenth century by Peirce and in this century by Dirac) seems to require a cosmic metric in order to detect an otherwise undetectable discrepancy between physical state values and the methods used to measure them. But such an hypothesis, Reichenbach argued further, could not be clearly stated independently of probability assumptions. The concept of uniqueness now would inevitably involve an epistemologically complex probabilistic dimension, and this would even be less acceptable to the positivist (RAK, 85).6 Having guided epistemology away from ndive realism work remained to be done to ensure that a ndive subjectivism did not also result. In Reichenbachs view this meant that the notion of a changeless a priori had to be abandoned and with it the transcendental conception of knowledge. Toward this end he relativized Kants a priori, first by showing its relation to the physics of everyday life (ST, 113), and then by showing the contextual relation between the physics of everyday life and our very conceptions of knowledge and its object. A priori could still mean before knowledge, but now no longer for all time (RAK, 105). The difficulty with Kants approach was diagnosed in the following manner: If he searched for the conditions of knowledge, he should have analysed knowledge; but what he analysed was reason. He should have searched for axioms instead of categories. It is correct that the nature of knowledge is determined by reason; but how this influence of reason manifests itself can be expressed only by knowledge, not by reason. There cannot be a logical analysis of reason, because reason is not a system of fixed propositions but a faculty that becomes fruitful in application to concrete problems. (RAK, 72.)

Reichenbachs point seems to be that when Kant analysed the operations of the understanding he was also analysing the effects of the legislative function of reason. For there is no dumb or spontaneous application of, say, the category of causality in the understanding, but rather a complex, highly presuppositional framework of ideas, principles, and maxims at work in the act of judgment, and deriving from the reflective and facultative nature of reason. Kant himself had taken significant steps in investigating such a framework, though he did not sufficiently follow through on the implications and details of this active and contextual dimension. Reichenbach, benefiting from Kants work, put reason at the center of scientific activity by making its
6HistoricaIly, this conclusion put Riechenbach at odds with Schlicks own interpretation of the irreducibility of unique coordination in the latters General Theory of Know/edge [Albert E. Blumberg (trans.) (New York: Springer Verlag, 1974), pp. 56ffl. To Reichenbach, Schlicks failure to allow the dissolution of unique correlation resulted from the latters psychologizing method of analysis [RAK, 1161. But Schlick clarified his position by calling his notion of uniqueness a mere definitional account of knowledge and truth. As a result Reichenbach was satisfied that in no way was the priority of the constitutive role of coordinating assumptions in our concept of an object being undermined by Schlick [MPS, 361.

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determinations influence both the form and future content of knowledge. Kant had envisioned an epigenesis of pure reason, but not one subject to modification through the efforts of scientific inquirers. In Reichenbachs theory it becomes possible in principle for human inquirers to transcend the limitations of a prevailing concept of knowledge and its object, not willy-nilly to another concept, but systematically to a more generalized and sophisticated epistemic stance. We must renounce the apodictic certainty of all statements about the form of knowledge (MPS, 29), not because we are incapable of considering such questions, but because we are more capable than Kant seemed to believe. Interestingly, it was Kants idealistic descendants who fully realized these broader implications involved in the growth of scientific knowledge. If epistemology can grow in sophistication without apparent limit this means, Reichenbach further concluded, that the volitional element of knowledge itself is capable of undergoing development. Initially it enters by means of primitive and tentative choices of standards of comparison; this act of reason to generate a ratio then broadens into a realization of the influence of semiotic systems upon what can be expressed, and more recently takes the form of theories of the development of scientific theory. Reichenbach implies the latter achievement when he observes:
For every scientific system there is a corresponding system of presuppositions, but, conversely, for every system of presuppositions, one can construct a system of possible experiences which would not be consistent with these presuppositions. In modern scientific philosophy, the above formulation replaces the old idea of a system of categories. (MPS, 82.) Without the possibility theory of coordination of such theory construction, and without the general to help establish the nontriviality of such construc-

tions, there could be no advance beyond the notion of a changeless a priori. Scientific knowledge then requires deeper sources of information (AC, 24ff) - instrumentation, experimentation, metricization, and generalization - and in each respectively the volitional element plays an increasingly crucial role. In concluding that the only path to objective knowledge leads through conscious awareness of the role that subjectivity plays in our methods of research (ST, 37) Reichenbach echoed a central assumption of Hegels theory of the free mind. In his discussion of theoretical mind Hegel remarks:
But as knowledge, intelligence consists in treating what is found as its own. Its activity has to do with the empty form - the pretence offinding reason: and its aim is to realize its concept or to be reason actual, along with which the content is realized as rationaL Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith (trans.) (New York: St. Marins Press, 1965). p. 174 (B167). G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy Clarendon, 1971), par. 445.

of Mind, William

Wallace

and A. V. Miller (trans.)

(Oxford:

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The two Reichenbachean features are suggested here: the recognition of the volitional dimension of theoretical knowledge, and the rejection of the pretence of considering this appropriation a discovery of something absolute and objective. Another indication of Reichenbachs rejection of a positivist epistemology emerges in the role the probability theory of meaning plays in his epistemology. According to such a theory a statement has meaning if it is possible to assign to it a weight, and two statements have the same meaning if they have the same weight for all possible observations (EP, 54). One significant effect of the theory is to expand the limits of permissible hypothesizing beyond those generally set by positivists. To illustrate this significance Reichenbach describes a cubical world where scientists within the cube observe moving shadows on the walls (EP, 114 - 129). Granting that the scientists perceive only what happens within the cube, is it possible for them to infer anything from the data on the walls about a realm outside the cube? Someone wishing to restrict factual significance to statements about what is observable would argue that we are never warranted in claiming that the moving images can tell us something about an unperceivable reality. Reichenbach however maintains that if spatio-temporal relations between the images can be established it becomes more probable that those relations are not accidental and that if no factors within the cube can account for them a reality beyond the cube can be inferred as their cause. A leading assumption of this argument seems to be that the more articulated our scientific data become the more probable that data reveal information about a world beyond that of common sense-experience. The probability designation, then, serves as a measure of the theoreticians ability to rearrange his knowledge and to compare various arrangements of facts. The value of probability inferences in this scheme is its transcending or over reaching character (EP, 127, 130); only in this manner can knowledge grow in depth and complexity. Plainly Reichenbach is seeking to broaden, not restrict, the scope of future scientific knowledge. Like Peirce before him he saw in probability theory a powerful tool for reasoning upon elusive and subtle conceptual distinctions, of the sort required for Naturphilosophic. 3. The Principles of Scientific Knowledge I shall now briefly consider some of the ways in which Reichenbachs work continues the first two tasks of Naturphilusuphie. Attempts to isolate the basic assumptions of our knowledge of nature can be traced in one form or another to the beginnings of modern philosophy, and certainly to Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz in particular. Later Kant gave an elaborate account of mechanics in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, while &helling attempted

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to go beyond this by encompassing both the natural and life sciences within a general axiomatic theory of the world system in his numerous works between 1797 and 1803; Hegel then took advantage of these explorations and reorganized the project into an Encyclopedia, which Peirces uncompleted magnum opus - The Principles of Philosophy - was to have put on a sound mathematical foundation. Unquestionably Reichenbach never intended to produce works whose scope would match that of those just noted. Yet his most substantial output (ATR, ST, QM, DT) involves the effort both to structure scientific knowledge axiomatically and to draw philosophical implications of the arrangement of axioms. In his early work in particular (ATR, portions of MPS and RAK) we find a deductive structuring of the axioms of relativity physics. By means of such a classification Reichenbach sought to construct a deductive system comprising two sets of axioms, axioms of connection embodying an abstract theory of relations (set theory, group theory, and the like) implicitly accepted by the scientist, and axioms of coordinhtion consisting of general procedural rules employed by the scientist to define and locate in experience the objects of discourse. In line with the theory of coordination both kinds of axioms involved a volitional posit. In the first case the various relations must be posited in mathematical construction, while in the second case a parametric value must be assigned to an operation. Not all of the axioms of connection were purely formal however; some involved creative and substantive intuitions about the nature of physical reality. The founding posit of Einsteins general theory of relativity (space-time geometry = 8rr x stress-energy tensor) would be an example of such a physical axiom of connection. Having separated what was axiomatic and what was derivative in the assumptions of physics, Reichenbach next hoped to be able to generalize on these distinctions in order to display the general process of their formation. Here he suggested general principles of coordination (RAK, 47) involving the notions of direction, metric, and order, with the notion of order being described in terms of specific principles of probability, genidentitjr, and space and time. In ATR we find perhaps the best account of how the principles had concrete application in the special-relativistic axioms of order, connection, and power. At this point Reichenbach began to draw even wider implications from the general coordinative principles concerning the future course of scientific theory, implications that would more fully emerge in the third task. As part of the second task the Naturphilosophen formulated a small number of general principles which they used to build their third-level theories. For in almost all cases these principles suggested to them the possibility of formulating laws of process and development which would afford not only a means of classifying and organizing prevalent scientific knowledge, but also a picture of the future development of science (and with it, of culture and history as well). In Schell-

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ings identity - philosophy the major principle simply put was: the real and ideal are relatively distinguishable and absolutely identical; for Hegel it was: by means of the Concept the Idea becomes the Absolute; while Peirces synechistic principle involved something very much like Hegels principle, only described in terms of the relational categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. These general principles were not simply generalizations of the more specific principles formulated in the course of the first two tasks, but rather overarching acts of creative homologizing. This hypothetic process is precisely what Reichenbach stressed as the crucial element in his own method of logical analysis (RAK, 75). Once such analysis is underway and its results surveyed, it becomes possible further to generalize upon the conditions of such analysis. And it is at this point that the general principles begin to be seen. Reichenbachs method was based upon the following assumption: It is logically admissible and technically possible to discover inductively new coordinating principles that represent a successive approximation of the principles used until now (RAK, 69). Using this method of successive approximations it became possible to look at the results of scientific experimentation as localized instances of more general principles. Logical analysis then is both an analytic and a synthetic method. By contextualizing existing scientific knowledge it not only can help generate theories of broader import, but it can reveal more explicitly the workings of theory in the formulation of such knowledge. Reichenbach was even tempted to suggest that it might be possible to outline once and for all the entire range of future influences of theory on knowledge:
For modern philosophy of science, however, it is important not only to detect the arbitrary principles of knowledge, but also to determine the totality of admissible combinations. That part of our scientific knowledge which stems from reason must be distinguished, by a sort of invariant theoretical method, from the objective content of science, a content which, in the present form of science, is no longer clearly visible. (MPS, 38.)

The necessity for an invariant theoretical method was the reason &helling and Hegel thought it necessary to produce as part of their Naturphilosophie a phenomenology of mind. This was simply the analysis of the systematically variable perspective at work in concrete experience. In Reichenbachs case these broader implications of the method of logical analysis are never reflectively developed, though they are implied both in the theory of conventionality and in the method of successive approximations. 4. The Development
of Science

Perhaps the clearest evidence of Reichenbachs

involvement with the third

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task of Naturphilosophie can be found in his approach to the issue of conventionality and in his views on the growth of the generality of principles. His rejection of extreme conventionality centered around his claim that if the conventionalist thesis is a factual claim, it would rule out the possibility of our being able to encounter or imagine situations in which putatively a priori knowledge does not hold (MPS, 129; RSP, 47). He recognized that it was not the operational analysis of physical concepts as much as the theoretical reflection on the conventionalist implications of such analysis that most decisively influenced the development of modern physics. By noting and then challenging the conventionalist factor in our concepts of simultaneity and congruence Einstein was free to suggest an alternative system of conventions in the form of a new geometry of physical space and a physical interpretation of geometry. The extreme conventionalist chooses to focus only upon the founding influence of assumptions and posits, while the Reichenbachean conventionalist chooses to focus upon their effects on the formation of future hypotheses. Reichenbach did not only investigate the use of conventions, but also gave some conventionalist answers of his own to certain physical problems. His definition that the to-and-fro velocity of light is equal was based on his claim that such a choice leads to simpler relations (ST, 127) and that such a choice was justified in the light of the geometry of space - time. He recognized that it remained possible that such a definition would someday have to be changed, but only to accommodate a more generalized, even simpler, hypothesis about the relation of objects in space-time. At any time we are permitted to change the convention, but only if we are also prepared to isolate and see through the implications of such a change for the rest of our physics. The habit of detecting and toying with conventions changes our attitude toward the nature of our knowledge. Noticing, for example, the influence of language on our assertions led to the Aristotelian categories and to logic proper. The effect of more recent conventionalist analysis has led to the awareness, in Reichenbachs words, that the objective character of the physical statement is thus shifted to a statement about relations (ST, 37). Naturphilosophen, Peirce prominently among them, have strenuously insisted upon this. This shift from categories of objects to categories of events,. relations, and processes marks a point of no return for the Reichenbachean conventionalist; any future conventions must operate within the latter context. This was the upshot of the philosophical implications of relativity physics, which Reichenbach described as follows:
The philosophical theory of relativity, i.e., the discovery of the definitional character of the metric in all its details, holds independently of experience. Although it was developed in connection with physical experiments, it constitutes a philosophical result not subject to the criticism of the individual sciences. (ST, 177.)

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It is not generally noticed that something approximating Reichenbachean conventionality can be found in the traditional idealistic perspective of Nuturphilosophic. A major goal of Schellings and Hegels analysis of concepts of science was to reveal underlying connections between seemingly disparate natural phenomena. To do this they sought to retranslate the prevalent scientific vocabulary into a more sophisticated conceptual language, and thereby to reveal the rational element of our more picturesque knowledge. Schellings theoretical anticipation of the underlying unity of electricity and magnetism was among the more noteworthy successes of this effort. An even clearer case in point can be found in Hegels treatment of space and time. In pictorial thought, Hegel noted, space and time are taken to be quite separate: we have space and also time; philosophy fights against this, also.Q Hegel wished to uncover the conventionality of common-sense notions of space and time, and toward that end even displaced Euclidean geometry from its privileged role as the language of space and time, substituting instead the categories of dialectical logic.O In the process he produced something close to Reichenbachs causal theory of time. Generally the Naturphilosophen gave a more ramified account of the relation between theory and observation than is found in Reichenbachs conventionalism. Eventually this account took them into a theory of physical holism in one form or another.? Reichenbach himself had no taste for such grandiose speculation, and yet even here we find some provocative intimations in his longstanding remarks on the evolution of concepts in science. As indicated he regarded science as an evolutionary process whereby the implications of systems of principles increasingly come to awareness. Each system then becomes a special case of a later, more generalized system so that for every principle, however it may be formulated, a more general one can be indicated that contains the first as a special case (RAK, 81). This claim is the working assumption of the method of successive approximations. Scientific knowledge becomes increasingly general; however, it never attains complete generality. There is no most general geometry; nor are there most general concepts (RAK, 80, 87). Among Naturphilosophen, it should be noted, the possibility of attaining absolute theoretical generality remained a lively intramural debating point, some arguing that the basic metaphysical categories themselves had to evolve along with the knowing mind, others that the short-list categories were now, or at sometime would be, beyond revision.lJ Reichenbach saw human
*Op. cit. note 3, Zusatz to par. 257. OOp. cit. note 3, pars. 255, 256. Op. cit. note 3, par. 258.
An account of conventionalism with specific reference to holism and idealism is given by Geoffrey Joseph in Conventionalism and Physical Holism, J. Phil. 74 (1977). 439-462. In earlier idealism the Eschenmayer - Schelling and Schelling - Hegel debates illustrate this point. See Schellings Idealism. pp. 139- 142, 165 - 185.

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reason as an unfolding of a deeper Reason lying within nature (MPS, 104; AC, 293), and even suggested at one point that the general development of science followed a dialectical (Hegelian) pattern (ST, 217). He considered this developmental view of scientific concepts and principles part of his new philosophy of nature (MPS, 82), though it was an integral part of the old philosophy of nature as well. 5. Conclusion It may be somewhat clearer at this point why Reichenbach preferred to describe his philosophy as Naturphilosophie and not as the more fashionable Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften. I4 His own rationalistic empiricism (MPS, 104) more closely fits the historical mold of Naturphilosophie than any other single philosophical perspective, even though he himself disdained the comparison (MPS, 83). In his more polemical moments he attacked idealism as a ndive and escapist fantasizing, eventually to be replaced by more mature attitudes (RSP, 72, 121, 254, 269, 303, 308). Generally, however, what he attacked was one form or another of subjective idealism (AC, 282). To the objective idealists the possibility of scientific growth became a point of departure, just as the possibility of scientific truth had been the point of departure for Kant. They were far less interested in accounting for subjectivity than they were in accounting for the expanding encounter of mind and nature we find in scientific discovery. Reichenbach, who worked during a period of intense scientific change, continued this spirit of investigation. And while not all of the features of Naturphilosophie are found in his work, there is still a discernable pattern of problems and perspectives to suggest an affinity with the older tradition, and to warrant a more understanding view of the efforts and pitfalls of the output of the older Naturphilosophen.
Texas Tech University U.S.A.

M. Strauss points this out in Modern Physics and its Philosophy (Dordrecht Reidel, 1972), p. 276.

- Holland:

D.