Antirealism and induction

the epistemology of physics in the young Mário Schenberg

Abstract

In this article we characterize the epistemological stance of the young Mário Schenberg, as expressed in his first work, The Principles of Mechanics, published in 1934 in Revista Polytechnica. We highlight the explicit and implicit dialogues that Schenberg engages with epistemologists and physicists from the turn of the twentieth century, particularly his dialogues with Pierre Duhem and Ernst Mach. At that time, Schenberg defends an anti-realist and instrumentalist epistemology, against an invasion of theory by metaphysical elements. The young Schenberg also defends the safety of the process of theorizing by induction, from experiments to laws and from laws to theory. At the time of publication of the article, Schenberg was an engineering student at the Polytechnic School of São Paulo, recently transferred from the 159 Pernambuco School of Engineering, where he had met professor Luiz Freire. Freire’s influence was decisive on Schenberg’s scientific trajectory, which would lead him to becoming the first theoretical physicist proper in Brazil. It is through Freire that Schenberg approaches a relatively marginal tradition of professors from engineering schools who were building, during the first decades of the twentieth century, a scientific identity. This group of professors fought for “pure science”, in contrast to the utilitarianism that prevailed in polytechnic schools in the period prior to the foundation of universities. Schenberg’s article can be read as one of the last works of this tradition of engineers with a scientific identity, a work that, while carrying some features of the polytechnic tradition, points to a reflection that would only develop fully with the emergence of a scientific disciplinary regime within the faculties of science founded in the second half of the 1930s