A Theory about Unobservables Based on Allāma Tabātabāī’s Views

A wide-ranging debate about the nature of unobservables, such as electrons and genes, has been occurred between scientific realists and antirealists. The main questions, at the ontological, epistemological, and semantic levels of discussion, are respectively as follows: Do unobservables exist? Is our knowledge of unobservables truthful? How are unobservables referred to? This paper theorizes about unobservables on the basis of the philosophical views of Muhammad Husayn Tabātabāī (1903–1981 AD), known with the honorific title Allāma Tabātabāī, an Iranian philosopher and Islamic thinker. These views include the ontological primacy of existence over quiddity, the fallibility of knowledge by concepts, and the theory of i'tibārīāt.

Conceptual analysis constitutes the main method of this study. The paper develops a theory about unobservables through an analysis of Allāma Tabātabāī’s philosophical views. Although the theory that is developed has not been expressed by Tabātabāī, it can be built based on his views. The approach of the paper is comparable to those of contemporary neoAristotelian philosophers of science. The paper’s argument, however, is based on the views of Tabātabāī rather than on Aristotle’s.

According to the theory of the ontological primacy of existence over quiddity, existence is external, whereas quiddity is mental. Quiddity is a presentation of external existence in our mind, or in other words, minds abstract the quiddity of things from their external existence. Relying on this view, the paper argues that an unobservable exists if it has real effects, and that the quiddity of things is constructed in our minds. Although this construction is mainly inevitable in the case of ordinary objects such as tables, the construction of scientific models describing unobservables is (partly) contingent. Furthermore, the theory of i'tibārīāt explains how mental processes ascribe the definition of, or a judgment made about, a thing to another thing. On the basis of this theory, the paper explains how assumptive and metaphorical elements contribute to building scientific models. The paper also analyzes the theoretical concepts that describe unobservables, and argues that they can be categorized neither as ordinary quiddity concepts (such as the concept of a table), nor as logical concepts (such as contraposition), nor as philosophical concepts (such as existence), nor as practical i'tibārīāt (such as good and bad). Nevertheless, they share similarities to quiddity concepts and to those of practical i’tibārīāt. Although theoretical concepts are assumptive and metaphorical, they can represent aspects of reality. After all, our knowledge of unobservables is gained by concepts, but this knowledge is different from the knowledge of ordinary objects in that theoretical assumptions and metaphors, which are the characteristics of i'tibārīāt, play a central role in the advancement of our (fallible) knowledge of unobservables.

Unobservable entities exist, and their theoretical descriptions are truthful. At the same time, several contingent factors are employed in the construction of the theoretical models of unobservables, and therefore scientific knowledge of them is fallible. The realist view of this paper takes into account the constructive and contingent features of scientific modeling. Scientific knowledge represents reality to the extent that it relies on external existence. But be that as it may, scientific knowledge is contingent because of the role historically contingent elements play in its construction.