Fundamentalism vs.

the Patchwork of Laws Author(s): Nancy Cartwright Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 94 (1994), pp. 279-292 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Aristotelian Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545199 Accessed: 28/01/2010 11:03
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelian. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Aristotelian Society and Blackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

http://www.jstor.org

XII*FFUNDAMENTALISM vs. THE PATCHWORK LAWS OF by Nancy Cartwright

I Realism. A numberof years ago I wrote How The Laws of Physics Lie. Thatbook was generallyperceivedto be an attack on realism.Nowadays I thinkthatI was deludedaboutthe enemy: it is not realismbutfundamentalismthatwe need to combat. My advocacy of realism-local realism about a variety of differentkindsof knowledgein a varietyof differentdomainsacross a rangeof highly differentiated situations-is Kantianin structure. Kantfrequentlyused what shouldbe a puzzling argumentform to establish quite abstrusephilosophical positions (0): We have X But -perceptual knowledge,freedomof the will, whatever. without or 0 (thetranscendental unityof apperception, thekingdomof ends) X would be impossible,or inconceivable.Hence 0. The objectivity of local knowledge is my 0; X is the possibility of planning,precontrolandpolicy setting.Unless ourclaims diction,manipulation, about the expected consequences of our actions are reliable, our plans arefor nought.Hence knowledgeis possible. Whatmightbe foundpuzzling aboutthe Kantianargument form are the X's from which it starts. These are generally facts that appearin the clean and orderlyworld of pure reason as refugees with neither proper papers nor proper introductions,of suspect worthand suspiciousorigin.The facts thatI take to groundobjectivity are similarlyalien in the clear, well lighted streetsof reason, where propertieshave exact boundaries,rules are unambiguous, and behaviouris precisely ordained.I know that I can get an oak tree from an acorn, but not from a pine cone; that nurturing will make my child more secure; that feeding the hungryand housing
*Meetingof the AristotelianSociety, held in the SeniorCommonRoom, BirkbeckCollege, London,on Monday,May 9th 1994 at 8.15 p.m.

For

280

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

the homeless will makefor less misery;andthatgiving moresmear tests will lessen the incidence of vaginal cancer. Gettingcloser to physics, which is ultimatelyour topic here, I also know that I can drop a poundcoin from the upstairswindow into the handsof my daughterbelow, but probablynot a paper tissue; that I can head northby following my compassneedle (so long as I am on foot and not in my car), that... I know these facts even though they are vague and imprecise, and I have no reasonto assume thatthatcan be improvedon. Nor, in many cases, am I sure of the strengthor frequency of the link between cause and effect, nor of the range of its reliability.And I certainlydo not know in any of the cases which plans or policies would constitutean optimalstrategy.But I wantto insist thatthese items are items of knowledge.They are, of course, like all genuine items of knowledge (as opposed to fictional items like sense data or the synthetica priori) defeasibleandopen to revision in the light of furtherevidence and argument.If I do not know these things, what do I know and how can I come to know anything? Besides this odd assortment inexactfacts, we also have a great of deal of very precise and exact knowledge, chiefly suppliedby the naturalsciences. I am not thinkinghere of abstractlaws, which as an empiricistI take to be of considerableremove fromthe worldto which they are supposed to apply, but ratherof the precise behaviourof specific kinds of concrete systems, knowledge of, say, what happens when neutralK-mesons decay, which allows us to establish c-p violation, or of the behaviour of SQUIDS (super conductingquantuminterference devices) in a shieldedfluctuating magnetic field, which allows us to detect the victims of strokes. This knowledgeis generallyregimentedwithina highly articulated, highly abstracttheoreticalscheme. One cannotdo positive science withoutthe use of induction,and where those concretephenomenacan be legitimatelyderivedfrom an abstractscheme, they serve as a kind of inductivebase for that scheme. How TheLaws of Physics Lie challengedthe soundnessof these derivationsandhence of the empiricalsupport the abstract for laws. I still maintainthatthese derivationsare generallyshaky,but that is not the point I want to make here. So let us for the sake of argument assume the contrary:the derivations are deductively correctandthey use only truepremises.Then, grantingthe validity

vs. OF FUNDAMENTALISM THE PATCHWORK LAWS

281

of the appropriate we inductions,1 have reasonto be realistsabout in question. But that does not give us reason to be the laws To fundamentalists. grantthata law is true-even a law of 'basic' physics or a law aboutthe so-called 'fundamental particles'-is far from admittingthat it is universal, that it holds everywhere and governs in all domains. II Returnto my roughdivision of law-like Against Fundamentalism. items of knowledge into two categories:(1) those thatare legitimately regimentedinto theoreticalschemes, these generally,though not always, being facts aboutbehaviour highly structured, in manufacturedenvironmentslike a sparkchamber;(2) those thatare not. Thereis a tendencyto thinkthatall facts mustbelong to one grand scheme, andmoreoverthatthis is a scheme in which the facts in the first category have a special and privileged status. They are exemplaryof the way natureis supposedto work. The othersmust be made to conform to them. This is the kind of fundamentalist doctrinethat I think we must resist. Biologists are clearly already doing so on behalf of their own special items of knowledge. Reductionismhas long been out of fashion in biology and now emergentism is again a real possibility. But the long-debated relationsbetween biology and physics are not good paradigmsfor the kindof anti-fundamentalismurge.Biologists used to talkabout I how new laws emergewith the appearance 'life'; nowadaysthey of talk,not aboutlife, butaboutlevels of complexityandorganization. Still in both cases the relationin question is that between larger, richly endowed, complex systems, on the one hand, and fundamental laws of physics on the other: it is the possibility of 'downwards' reductionthatis at stake. I want to go beyond this. Not only do I want to challenge the possibility of downwards reduction but also the possibility of 'cross-wise reduction'. Do the laws of physics that are true of systems (literallytrue, we may imagine for the sake of argument) in the highly contrivedenvironmentsof a laboratoryor inside the
I
These will depend on the circumstance and on our general understandingof the similaritiesand structures kinds and essences that obtainin those circumstances. or

282

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

housing of a modem technological device, do these laws carry across to systems, even systems of very much the same kind, in differentand less regulatedsettings?Canourrefugee facts always, with sufficient effort and attention, be remoulded into proper membersof the physics community,behavingtidily in accordwith the fundamentalcode. Or must-and should-they be admitted into the body of knowledge on theirown merit? In moving from the physics experiment to the facts of more everydayexperience,we are not only changingfrom controlledto uncontrolledenvironments, often from microto macroas well. but In order to keep separatethe issues which arise from these two different shifts, I am going to choose for illustrationa case from classical mechanics, and will try to keep the scale constant. Classicalelectricityandmagnetismwould serve as well. Moreover in orderto makemy claims as clear as possible, I shall considerthe simplestandmost well-knownexample,thatof Newton's thirdlaw and its applicationto falling bodies: F = ma. Most of us, brought up within the fundamentalistcanon, read this with a universal quantifierin front:for any body in any situation,the accelerationit undergoeswill be equal to the force exerted on it in that situation divided by its inertialmass. I want instead to read it, as indeed I believe we shouldreadall nomologicals, as a ceteris paribus law: for any body in any situation,if nothinginterferes,its acceleration will equal the force exertedon it dividedby its mass. But what can interferewith a force in the production motionotherthananother of force? Surely thereis no problem:the accelerationwill always be equalto the total force dividedby the mass. Thatis just whatI want to question. Thinkagain abouthow we constructa theoreticaltreatment a of real situation.Before we can apply the abstractconcepts of basic theory-assign a quantumfield, a tensor,a Hamiltonian,or in the case of our discussion,writedown a force function-we must first producea modelof thesituationin termsthetheorycanhandle.From that point the theory itself provides 'language-entryrules' for introducing termsof its own abstract the vocabulary, therebyfor and bringingits laws into play.How TheLawsof Physics Lie illustrated this forthecases of theHamiltonian-which is roughlythequantum analogueof the classical force function.Partof learningquantum mechanics is learninghow to write the Hamiltonianfor canonical

vs.THE OFLAWS FUNDAMENTALISM PATCHWORK

283

models, for example, for systems in free motion, for a squarewell potential,for a linearharmonic oscillator,andso forth.RonaldGiere has made the same point for classical mechanics.2 The basic strategyfor treatinga real situationis to piece together a model from these fixed components;and then to determinethe prescribedcomposite Hamiltonianfrom the Hamiltoniansfor the parts.Questionsof realismarise when the model is comparedwith the situationit is supposedto represent.How the Laws of Physics Lie arguedthateven in the best cases, the fit betweenthe two is not very good. I concentratedthere on the best cases because I was trying to answer the question 'Do the explanatorysuccesses of modem theoriesarguefor theirtruth?'Here I want to focus on the multitude of 'bad' cases, where the models, if available at all, providea very poor image of the situation.These arenot cases that disconfirm the theory. You can't show that the predictionsof a theory for a given situationare false until you have managed to describe the situation in the language of the theory. When the models are too bad a fit, the theory is not disconfirmed;it is just inapplicable.3 Now consider a falling object. Not Galileo's from the leaning tower, nor the pound coin I earlier described droppingfrom the upstairs window, but rathersomething more vulnerableto nongravitationalinfluence. Otto Neurath has a nice example. My doctrineaboutthe case is much like his.
In some cases a physicist is a worse prophetthan a [behaviourist psychologist], as when he is supposed to specify where in St. Stephen's Squarea thousanddollar bill swept away by the wind will land, whereas a [behaviourist]can specify the result of a conditioning experimentratheraccurately.('United Science and Psychology', in B. F. McGuiness,ed., UnifiedScience. Dordrecht: Reidel)

Mechanics provides no model for this situation.We have only a partialmodel,whichdescribesthe 1000dollarbill as anunsupported
2 Giere, R.N. 1988. ExplainingScience: A CognitiveApproach.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 3 HereI follow AlanMusgrave:'Wedo notfalsify a theorycontaininga domainassumption by showing that this assumptionis not true of some situations...;we merely show that that assumptionis not applicable so that situationin the first place.' ('On Interpreting Friedman,'KYKLOS,34 (1981). Fasc. 3, 377-387, 381.)

284

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

object in the vicinity of the earth,and therebyintroducesthe force exerted on it due to gravity. Is that the total force? The fundamentalistwill say no: there is in principle (in God's completed theory?) a model in mechanics for the action of the wind, albeit probably a very complicated one that we may never succeed in This belief is essentialfor the fundamentalist. there If constructing. is no modelfor the 1000 dollarbill in mechanics,thenwhathappens to the noteis notdetermined its laws. Some fallingobjects,indeed by a very great number,will be outside the domain of mechanics, or only partiallyaffected by it. But whatjustifies this fundamentalist belief? The successes of mechanicsin situationsthatit can model do how preciseor surprising accurately not support no matter it, they are.They show only thatthe theoryis truein its domain,not thatits to that domainis universal.The alternative fundamentalism I want to propose supposesjust that:mechanics is true, literally true we may grant,for all those motions whose causes can be adequately represented the familiarmodels thatget assignedforce functions by in mechanics. For these motions, mechanics is a powerful and precise tool for prediction.But for other motions, it is a tool of limited serviceability. Let us set our problemof the 1000 dollar bill in St. Stephen's Square to an expert in fluid dynamics. The expert should immediatelycomplainthatthe problemis ill defined.Whatexactly is the bill like: is it folded or flat? straightdown the middle, or...? is it crisp or crumpled?how long versus wide? and so forth and so forthandso forth.I do notdoubtthatwhenanswerscan be supplied, fluid dynamicscan providea practicable model. But I do doubtthat for every real case, or even for the majority,fluid dynamics has enough of the 'rightquestions' to ask to allow it to model the full set of causes, or even the dominantones. I am equallyscepticalthat the models thatwork will do so by legitimatelybringingNewton's laws (or Lagrange's for that matter) into play.4 How then do airplanesstay afloat?Two observationsareimportant. First,we do not need to maintainthatno laws obtainwhere mechanicsrunsout. Fluid dynamics may have loose overlaps and intertwiningswith
4 And the problemis certainlynot thata quantumor relativisticor microscopictreatment is needed instead.

FUNDAMENTALISM vs. THE PATCHWORK OF LAWS

285

mechanics.But it is in no way a subdisciplineof basic physics; it is a discipline on its own. Its laws can directthe 1000 dollarbill as well as can those of Newton or Lagrange.Second, the 1000 dollar bill comes as it comes, and we have to hunta model for it. Justthe reverse is true of the plane. We build it to fit the models we know work.Indeed,thatis how we manageto get so muchintothedomain of the laws we know. Many will continue to feel that the wind and other exogenous factors must produce a force. The wind after all is composed of millions of little particleswhich must exert all the usual forces on the bill, both at a distance and via collisions. That view begs the question. When we have a good-fitting molecularmodel for the wind, and we have in our theory (eitherby compositionfrom old principlesor by the admissionof new principles)systematicrules that assign force functions to the models, and the force functions assigned predictexactly the rightmotions, then we will have good scientific reason to maintainthat the wind operates via a force. Otherwisethe assumptionis anotherexpressionof fundamentalist faith. III CeterisParibus Laws Versus Ascriptionsof Natures.If the laws of mechanicsarenot universal,butneverthelesstrue,thereareat least two optionsfor them.Theycould be pureceterisparibuslaws:laws thathold only in circumscribed conditionsor so long as no factors relevant to the effect besides those specified occur.And that's it. Nothingfollows aboutwhathappensin differentsettingsor in cases where other causes occur. Presumablythis option is too weak for our example of Newtonianmechanics.When a force is exertedon an object,the force will be relevantto the motionof the objecteven if other causes for its motion not renderableas forces are at work as well; and the exact relevance of the force will be given by the formulaF= ma:the (total)force will contribute componentto the a accelerationdeterminedby this formula. For cases like this, the olderlanguageof naturesis appropriate. is in the natureof a force It to produce an accelerationof the requisite size. That means that ceteris paribus, it will produce that acceleration.But even when othercauses are at work, it will 'try' to do so. The idea is familiar

286

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

in the case of forces:tryingto producean acceleration, F/m, consists in actually producing F/m as a vector component to the total acceleration.In generalwhatcountsas 'trying'will differfromone kind of cause to another.To ascribea behaviourto the natureof a is featureis to claim thatthatbehaviour exportable beyondthe strict confines of the ceterisparibusconditions,althoughusuallyonly as a 'tendency'or a 'trying'.The extentandrangeof the exportability will vary.Some naturesare highly stable;othersarevery restricted in their range. The point here is that we must not confuse a wide-rangingnaturewith the universalapplicabilityof the related ceterisparibuslaw.To admitthatforcestendto causetheprescribed acceleration(and indeed do so in felicitous conditions) is a long way from admittingthat F=ma is universally true.5In the next sections I will describe two different metaphysical pictures in which fundamentalism about the experimentallyderived laws of basic physics would be a mistake.The firstis wholism;the second, pluralism.It seems to me that wholism is far more likely to give rise only to ceteris paribus laws, whereas naturesare more congenial to pluralism. IV Wholism.We look at little bits of nature,and we look undera very limitedrange of circumstances. This is especially trueof the exact sciences. We can get very precise outcomes,but to do so we need very tight control over our inputs. Most often we do not control them directly, one by one, but ratherwe use some general but effective form of shielding. I know one experimentthat aims for direct control-the StanfordGravityProbe. Still, in the end, they will roll the space ship to average out causes they have not been able to command. Sometimes we take physics outside the laboratory. Then shielding becomes even more important.SQUIDS (Superconductingquantuminterferencedevices) can make very fine measurementsof magnetic fluctuations,which helps in the
5 I have writtenmoreaboutthe two levels of generalization, laws andascriptions natures, of in Natures,Capacitiesand TheirMeasurement, OxfordUniversityPress(1989). See also 'AristotelianNaturesandthe Modem Experimental Method', in Inference,Explanation & Other Philosophical Frustrations.ed. John Earman,University of CaliforniaPress (1992).

FUNDAMENTALISM THEPATCHWORK LAWS vs. OF

287

detection of stroke victims. But for administeringthe tests the hospitalmust have a Hertz box-a small metal room to block out magnetismfrom the environment.Or,for a morehomely example, we all know thatbatteriesare not likely to work if theirprotective casing has been pierced. We tend to thinkthatshieldingcannotmatterto the laws we use. The same laws apply both inside and outside the shields, the differenceis thatinside the shield we know how to calculatewhat the laws will produce,but outside, it is too complicated.Wholists are waryof these claims:if the events we studyarelocked together ratherthanthe arrangeand changes depend on the total structure ment of the pieces, we are likely to be very mistakenby looking at small chunksof special cases. Considera scientificexample,the revolutionin communications technology due to fibre optics. Low-loss optical fibres can carry information ratesof manygigabitsper second over spansof tens at of kilometres.But thedevelopmentof fibrebundleswhichlose only a few decibels per kilometreis not all there is to the story. Pulse broadeningeffects intrinsicto the fibres can be truly devastating. If the pulses broaden as they travel down the fibre, they will eventuallysmearinto each otheranddestroythe information. That means that the pulses cannot be sent too close together, and the rate transmission may dropto tens or at most hundredsof megabits per second. We know that is not what happens-the technology has been successful.That'sbecausethe rightkindof opticalfibrein the right circumstancecan transmitsolitons-solitary waves thatkeep their shape across vast distances.I'll explainwhy. The light intensityof the incoming pulse causes a shift in the index of refractionof the optical fibre, producing a slight non-linearityin the index. The non-linearity leads to what is called a 'chirp' in the pulse. Frequenciesin the leadinghalf of the pulse areloweredwhile those in the trailinghalf areraised.The effects of the chirpcombinewith those of dispersionto producethe soliton. Stable pulse shapes are not at all a generalphenomenonof low loss opticalfibres.They are instead a consequence of two different, oppositely directed processes. The pulse wideningdue to the dispersionis cancelledby the pulse narrowingdue to the non-linearityin the index of refraction. We can indeed produce perfectly stable pulses. But to do so we

288

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

mustuse fibres of just the rightdesign, andmatchedprecisely with the power and inputfrequencyof the laser thatgeneratesthe input pulses. By chancethatwas not hardto do. Whenthe ideas were first tested in 1980 the glass fibres and lasers readily available were easily suited to each other. Given that very special match, fibre optics was off to an impressive start. Solitons are indeed a stable phenomenon.They are a featureof nature,but of natureunder very special circumstance.Clearly it would be a mistaketo suppose thatthey were a general characteristic of low loss optical fibres. The question is, how many of the scientificphenomenawe prizearelike solitons,local to the environments we encounter,or-more importantly-to the environments we construct?If natureis more wholistic thanwe are accustomed to think, the fundamentalist'shopes to export the laws of the to laboratory the far reachesof the world will be dashed. It is clear that I am not very sanguineaboutthe fundamentalist faith. But that is not really out of the kind of wholist intuitionsI have been sketching.After all, the storyI just told accountsfor the powerful successes of the 'false' local theory-the theory that solitons are characteristic low loss fibres-by embeddingit in a of far more general theory about the interactionof light and matter. Metaphysically,the fundamentalist borneout. It may be the case is that the successful theories we have are limited in their authority, but their successes are to be explained by reference to a truly universal authority.I do not see why we need to explain their successes. I am prepared believe in more generaltheorieswhen to we have directempiricalevidence forthem.But notmerelybecause they arethe 'best explanation'for somethingwhich seems to me to need no explanationto begin with. 'The theory is successful in its domain':the need for explanationis the same whetherthe domain is small, or large,or very small,or very large.Theoriesaresuccessful wherethey are successful,andthat'sthat.If we insist on turning this into a metaphysicaldoctrine,I suppose it will look like metaphysical pluralism,to which I now turn. V ThePatchworkof Laws.Metaphysical nomologicalpluralismis the doctrinethat natureis governedin differentdomains by different

FUNDAMENTALISM THE PATCHWORK LAWS vs. OF

289

systems of laws not necessarily related to each other in any systematicor uniformway: by a patchworkof laws. Nomological pluralismopposes any kind of fundamentalism. are here conWe cernedespecially with the attemptsof physics to gatherall phenomenainto its own abstract theories.In How the Lawsof Physics Lie I arguedthat most situationsare broughtunder a law of physics only by distortion, whereas they can often be described fairly correcty by concepts from more phenomenological laws. The picturesuggestedwas of a lot of differentsituationsin a continuum from ones that fit not perfectly but not badly to those thatfit very badly indeed. I did suggest that at one end fundamentalphysics might run out entirely ('What is... the value of the electric field vector in the region just at the tip of my pencil'), whereas in it transistors works quitewell. But thatwas not the principalfocus. Now I want to draw sharp divides: some features of systems typically studied by physics may get into situationswhere their behaviouris not governed by the laws of physics at all. But that does not mean thatthey have no guide for theirbehaviouror only low-level phenomenologicallaws. They could fall under a quite differentorganizedset of highly abstractprinciples. Therearetwo immediatedifficultiesthatmetaphysical pluralism encounters.The first is one we createourselves,by imaginingthat it must be joined with views that are vestiges of metaphysical monism. The second is, I believe, a genuine problemthat nature must solve. First. We are inclined to ask, How can there be motions not governed by Newton's laws? The answer: there are causes of motionnot includedin Newton's theory.Manyfind this impossible because, althoughthey have forsakenreductionism, they cling to a near-cousin: supervenience.Supposewe give a complete 'physics' descriptionof the falling object and its surrounds. Mustn'tthatfix all the other featuresof the situation?Why? This is certainlynot true at the level of discussion at which we standnow: the wind is cold and gusty; the bill is green and white and crumpled.These propertiesare independentof the mass of the bill, the mass of the earth,the distancebetween them. I supposethoughI have the superveniencestorywrong.It is the microscopic propertiesof physics that matter;the rest of reality superveneson them. Why should I believe that?Supervenienceis

290

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

touted as a step forwardover reductionism.Crudely,I take it, the advantageis supposedto be thatwe can substitutea weakerkindof reductionism,'token-token'reductionism, the more traditional for which was provinghardto carryout. But 'type-type' reductionism in thetraditional view hadarguments its favour.Science does sketch a varietyof fairlysystematicconnectionsbetweenmicro-structures and macro-properties. Often the sketch is rough, sometimes it is precise, usually its reliabilityis confined to very special circumstances.Neverthelessthereare strikingcases. But these cases supfor porttype-type reductionism; they areirrelevant supervenience. has the Type-typereductionism well-knownproblems: connections we discoveroften turnoutto look morelike causalconnectionsthan like reductions;they are limited in their domain; they are rough rather than exact; and often we cannot even find good starting proposalswhere we had hoped to producenice reductions.These problems suggest modifying the doctrinein a numberof specific ways, or perhapsgiving it up altogether.But they certainlydo not as leave us withtoken-tokenreductionism a fallbackposition.After of all, on the storyI havejust told,it was the appearance some degree of systematicconnectionthatarguedin the first place for the claim that microstructuresfixed macro-properties.But it is just this systematicitythatis missing in token-tokenreductionism. The view that thereare macro-properties do not supervene that on micro-features studied by physics is sometimes labelled 'emergentism'. The suggestion is that where there is no supervenience, macro-properties must miraculously come out of nowhere. But why? There is nothing of the newly landed about these properties. They have been here in the world all along, of standingbeside the properties physics. Perhapswe aremisledby the feeling thatthe set of propertiesstudiedby physics is complete. Indeed,I thinkthatthereis a real sense in which this claim is true, butthatsense does not support chargeof emergentism. the Consider how the domainof propertiesstudiedby physics gets set. Here is one caricature: begin with an interestin motions-deflections, we orbits.Then we look for the smallest set of properties trajectories, that is closed (or, closed enough) under prediction.That is, we expandthe set until we get all the factorsthatare causallyrelevant to our starting factors, and then everything causally relevant to those and so forth.To succeed does not show thatwe have gotten

FUNDAMENTALISM THE PATCHWORK LAWS vs. OF

291

all the propertiesthere are. This is a fact we need to keep in mind quite independently of the chief claim of this paper, that the predictive closure itself only obtains in highly restrictedcircumstances.The immediatepoint is thatpredictiveclosure among a set of propertiesdoes not imply descriptivecompleteness. Second. The second problemthat metaphysicalpluralismfaces is that of consistency. We do not want colour patchesto appearin regionsfromwhichthe laws of physicshave carriedaway all matter and energy. Here are two storiesI have told in teachingthe mechanicalphilosophyof the 17thCentury.Both areabouthow to write the Book of Nature to ensure that a consistent universe can be created.In one storyGod is very interestedin physics. He carefully writes out all of the law of physics and lays down the initial distribution matterandenergy in the universe.He then leaves to of St. Peter the tedious but intellectuallytrivialjob of calculatingall futurehappenings,includingwhat, if any, macroscopicproperties and macroscopic laws will emerge. That is the story of reductionism.MetaphysicalpluralismsupposesthatGod is insteadvery concerned about laws, and so he writes down each and every regularitythathis universewill display.In this case St. Peteris left with the gargantuan task of arrangingthe initial propertiesin the universe in some way that will allow all God's laws to be true together.The advantageto reductionism thatit makes St. Peter's is job easier. God may nevertheless choose to be a metaphysical pluralist. VI Conclusion. I have argued that the laws of our contemporary science are, to the extentthatthey aretrueat all, at best trueceteris paribus. In the nicest cases we may treat them as claims about natures.But we have no groundsin our experiencefor takingour laws-even our most fundamental laws of physics-as universal. Indeed I should say 'especially our most fundamentallaws of physics', if these aremeantto be the laws of fundamental particles. For we have virtuallyno inductivereason for countingthese laws as true of fundamental particlesoutside the laboratorysetting-if they exist thereat all. IanHackingis famousfor his remark,'If you can spray them, they exist.' I have always agreed with that.But I

292

NANCY CARTWRIGHT

would now be more cautious: 'When you can spray them, they exist.' The claim that theoreticalentities are created by the peculiar conditions and conventions of the laboratoryis familiarfrom the social constructionists. stablelow-loss pulsesI describedearlier The provide an example of how thatcan happen.Here I want to add a caution,notjustabouttheexistenceof thetheoretical entitiesoutside the laboratory, abouttheirbehaviour. but Hacking's point is not only that when we can use theoretical entities in just the way we want to produce precise and subtle effects, they must exist; but also that it must be the case that we understand theirbehaviourvery well if we are able to get them to do what we want. Thatargues,I believe, for the truthof some very concrete,context-constrained claims, the claims we use to describe their behaviourand controlthem. But in all these cases of precise to control,we build our circumstances fit our models. I repeat:that does not show that it must be possible to tailor our models to fit every circumstance. Perhapswe feel thattherecouldbe no realdifferencebetweenthe one kind of circumstanceand the other, and hence no principled reason for stoppingour inductionsat the walls of our laboratories. But thereis a difference:some circumstances resemblethe models we have;othersdo not.And it is just the pointof scientificactivityto buildmodels thatget in, underthe cover of the laws in question,all andonly thosecircumstances thelaws govern.6 that Fundamentalists see matters differently. Theywantlaws;theywanttruelaws;butmost of all, they wanttheirfavouritelaws to be in forceeverywhere. urge I thatwe resistfundamentalism. Realitymay well bejust a patchwork of laws.
Departmentof Philosophy,Logic and ScientificMethod TheLondonSchool of Economicsand Political Science HoughtonStreet London WC2A2AE

6 Or, in a more empiricist formulation that I would prefer, 'that the laws accurately describe'.