Mohan ridicules Stebbing with a fantastic bit of rhetoric: "Eric admires Susan Stebbing because she was a philosopher who spoke out against the authority of science. I am not so convinced that her stance was all that admirable. I am all for challenging scientists when their philosophy is confused. I am much less keen on setting up common sense as a competitor of science. This is what Stebbing did." Now, first, I had written, appreciatively about "her willingness to challenge the way the authority of science is used in irresponsible, public speech." In fact, Stebbing is not setting up common sense as a competitor to physics, nor is she concerned about defending common sense against displacement from science. Rather, she is attacking muddled metaphysics and muddled theology that mixes common sense and esoteric mathematical physics. (I am willing to grant that in doing so she may have missed what is valuable in Eddington.) On the contrary, she has a healthy respect for physics qua physics. As she writes, "in the present stage of physics, very little can be conveyed to those who lacks the mathematical equipment required to understand the methods by which results are obtained and the language in which these results can alone find adequate expression" (p. 44 in the 1944 edition; p. 50 in the origiginal).
Throughout his piece, Mohan misrepresents the dialectic between Stebbing and Eddington. For example, in context, Stebbing is not refuting external-world skepticism (as Mohan implies), but an argument that such external world skepticism "can itself be the outcome of the labours of the physicists," (p. 90 in my 1944 edition; p. 112 in the first; note Stebbing's plural) because (of course) such (shared) labors presuppose that the "the world of physics" is about *something* (that is, "the physical world"). That is, in fact, a solid bit of philosophical wisdom.
Along the way, Mohan appeals to Gellner's refutation of “the argument from the paradigm case” to show how confused Stebbing is. Now, first, as far as I can tell, Gellner never mentions Stebbing (or Eddington) in Words and Things. (I did not re-read the book carefully, so maybe somebody can find a passage.) Second, it would be a bit strange were Gellner's ire directed at Stebbing because Gellner is going after the quietist and a-political stance of neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy (and philosophers) at Oxbridge (long after Stebbing died). But, of course, Stebbing's stance was not like this. Recall my second epigraph: "There is an urgent need to-day for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions." Stebbing, Thinking to Some Purpose.
Now, does Sttebbing deploy the argument from the paradign case? I don't think so. She recognizes that "solid' contrasted with "empty," or "hollow," or, alternatively "porous" can mean very different things, etc. Nor does she deny that physics can teach us how solidity is created (etc). Rather, she attacks the idea that there are "two tables" (worlds, etc) and some such nonsense.
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