Cognitive structural realism a radical solution to the problem of scientific representation majid da
Cognitive
Structural Realism A Radical Solution to the Problem of Scientific Representation Majid Davoody Beni
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/cognitive-structural-realism-a-radical-solution-to-the-p roblem-of-scientific-representation-majid-davoody-beni/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
An Epistemic Foundation for Scientific Realism: Defending Realism Without Inference to the Best Explanation John Wright
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For my Maaedeh.
Preface
This book strives to make an improvement on the scientific structuralist view in the philosophy of science and its account of scientific representation. Scientific structuralism is influenced by breakthroughs in logic and model theory in the twentieth century. It endeavours to frame scientific representations—i.e. the connection between theories and the world—in terms of formal logical relations. This book is loyal to this foundational insight of scientific structuralism. We may endeavour to regiment the structure of scientific theories (and even representations) with formal exactitude. However, framing scientific representations with formal precision is not quite enough for providing an intelligible account of scientific representation. The book relies on recent breakthroughs in computational neuroscience to address the problem of scientific representation. In unfolding this view, I advocate a radically naturalistic solution to the issue of scientific representation. To know more about my approach to the problem of scientific representation, kindly read the first chapter of this book.
This is my first book, and there is bound to be a long list of acknowledgements. The ideas that are developed in this book are formed during a long period (around 10 years) of philosophical speculations. Some seminal ideas about the relationship between scientific theories and logical systems that frame them emerged during heated discussions with my mentor and the supervisor of my PhD thesis, Richard Creath, to whom I feel a heartfelt gratitude. Steve Elliot was preparing me (literally, coaching me) for becoming a prolific writer in that forming period, so I have to thank Steve too. Later, I discussed some of my basic insights with John Donald Collier on one or two occasions. It should be noted that in this book, I do not aim to extend structural realism into the philosophy of cognitive science (although I have done so in a number of previous publications). Here I am presenting a form of structural realism that has its stronghold in cognitive sciences and theoretical biology but can deal with the issue of scientific representation in the field of the general philosophy of science. While most people were expressing a polite disinterest in a maverick form of structural realism that has its home in cognitive sciences and psychology, John not only encouraged me to develop my work, but most marvellously, he even grasped my basic insights! He deceased a few weeks ago, but I think he would liked
this book. I am also indebted to Steven French for his unreserved kindness and encouragement. It was impossible to muster enough courage to write drafts under testing circumstances without the reassurance that I received from Steven French during the past years and, more recently, from James Ladyman whose naturalised metaphysics has been a source of inspiration. The same holds true for Georg Northoff for his moral support and interest in my work. I have to thank Gualtiero Piccinini, the editor of the Springer series, Studies in Brain and Mind (I feel privileged to be able to publish in this series). I am also grateful to Mark Povich, the referee of this book, for his extensive and inspiring comments. I thank Amin Yaghmaee for our long discussions of some aspects of structural realism (in physics) and Dr. Hossein Karami (the director of HPS program at the AUT) for his support during my service at the AUT. On a more personal level, I thank my parents Ebrahim and Zohreh for their sufferance and support and my wife (to whom this book is dedicated), for the selflessness with which she takes care of the basic structure of our life.
Tehran, Iran 15/12/2018
Majid Davoody Beni
1
2
6
4.4 Universalities and Renormalization Groups
4.5 Real Patterns?
4.6 Logical Depth as a Criterion for Individuation
4.7 Complexity and Reality
5.1 Launching Cognitive Structural Realism
5.2 Addressing the Problem of Representation
5.3 Connectionism and Cognitive Models
5.4 Structuralist Elements of Churchland’s
5.5 Realist Elements of Churchland’s Theory
5.6
5.7
5.8
5.9 Dealing with the Problem of Underdetermination
5.10 Proto-CSR’s
5.11
7.4 Embodiment, Enactivism, and Ecological Psychology
7.5 Further Remarks on Direct Realism and Ecological Elements . .
7.6 Biological Realism and the Function of Cognitive Models
7.7 Dissolving the Problem of Representation, a Direct Realist Approach
8 Cognitive Structural Realism, the Nature of Cognitive Models, and some Further Clarifications
8.1 A Comprehensive Version of SR
8.2 Cognitive Models and Embodied Informational Structures
8.3 An Embodied Informational Framework
8.4 Latching onto the World, Semantics or Pragmatics?
8.5 Concluding Remarks
Chapter 1 Introduction, a Radically Naturalist Solution to the Problem of Scientific Repre sentation
The book aims to provide a radically naturalistic account of scientific representation in the field of philosophy of science and within the context of structural realism. The book’s account of scientific representation is presented within the context of a new (Cognitive) version of Structural Realism. This new theory, i.e., Cognitive Structural Realism (or CSR), is inspired by two rival approaches in the contemporary philosophy of science. These are (orthodox) Structural Realism and Cognitive Models of Science Approach. Also, CSR draws on resources of computational neuroscience, theoretical biology, as well as embodied and enactivist interpretations of theories of cognitive psychology, to provide a fresh theory of scientific representation and defend a naturalistically plausible and down-to-earth version of structural realism.
CSR makes a strong improvement on SR and its various stripes that dominate the contemporary philosophy of science. Structural realism (SR) itself is an advanced form of standard scientific realism, which assumes that the success of scientific theories has to be explained on the basis of the relationship between theories and reality. However, unlike scientific realism, SR relies on a structuralist account (of the nature of theories or/and reality) to flesh out its epistemology and ontology. SR’s epistemological and ontological claims are built upon a structuralist account of scientific representation. It is the structure of the theories—instead of their theoretical terms or propositions—that carries the semantic burden of scientific theories. Scientific theories represent facts of the matter or phenomenal models (depending on one’s philosophical perspective), in virtue of their mathematical structures not their theoretical content. Orthodox versions of SR draw on formal frameworks (specifiable in terms of set theory, model theory, category theory, or information theory) to account for the representational relation between scientific theories and causal structure of the world. But the new theory that I will present in this book—i.e. Cognitive Structural Realism or CSR—is an extension of SR that makes use of cognitive structures.
The underlying insight of this book is that, although formal tools that are used by orthodox versions of SR can regiment the structure of scientific theories precisely,
M. D. Beni, Cognitive Structural Realism, Studies in Brain and Mind 14, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05114-3_1
1
1 Introduction, a Radically Naturalist Solution to the Problem
they fail to provide a meaningful or significant relationship between the underlying structure of theories and the causal structure of the world. To clarify this statement, we have to find a way to explicate what ‘meaningful’ or ‘significant’ means within this context. Speaking of the significance of representational relations in cementing epistemological and ontological claims may raise a few philosophers’ eyebrows in doubt. For, it may be presumed that ‘representations’ (as semantic relations) should be kept neatly separated from epistemological ontological elements. But my point is that epistemological and ontological commitments of scientific realism are inseparable from the assumption concerning the veracity of scientific representations of the unobservable parts of the world by theories. This indicates that the relationship between representations (which are supposed to be semantic components) and epistemological and ontological claims of theories should be more intimate than what is offered by rigid categorisations that set divisions between semantics, epistemology and ontology. The semantical component of realism indicates that scientific descriptions of reality are true. Epistemological commitments of realism indicate that the representations provide accurate knowledge of the world. And the metaphysical component of realism holds that the world is as described by the theories. Therefore, semantic, epistemic, and ontic components of realism are interconnected. Epistemological and ontological commitments rely on semantic commitments, because unless we assume that theoretical descriptions of the world are true, we cannot go further to state our epistemological and ontological commitments on the basis of those descriptions. According to the scientific realist, scientific representations convey information about the causal structures that constitute the world. The scientific realist’s epistemological and ontological commitments cannot be stated regardless of this basic semantic assumption. The point about the interconnection of semantic, epistemological, and ontological commitments seems to be even more important from the structural realist point of view. This is because the structural realist views about the structural nature of knowledge or/and the world are based on a semantic thesis about the structural nature of scientific representations; Theories represent the world in virtue of their mathematical structures, rather than their theoretical terms or propositions. A structural realist could hardly explain how it is that scientific representations support epistemological and ontological commitments of SR, without considering the reliance of these commitments on the structuralist tendency of the semantic component of SR. We (as structural realists) cannot derive epistemic and ontic conclusions without taking our semantic insights into the structural nature of scientific representations seriously. On the other hand, to support the thesis or realism, the sematic component should indicate that representational structures carry meaningful information about what constitutes the world. However, the semantic formal tools (e.g., set/model-theoretic tools) that are used by the orthodox versions of SR could not explicate how it is that the theories contain significant information (with realist implications) about the world (Chaps. 3 and 4 of this book flesh out this claim). Once the chasm between representations and the world’s constituents is carved, it would be quite hard to bridge it by formal semantic tools employed by the orthodox versions of SR. The radical solution to the problem of
representation (that will be unpacked in this book) presumes that scientific representations can be specified (nearly identified) in terms of the embodied informational structures that are entwined with the causal structures implemented in the world. Unlike the orthodox versions of SR, the new cognitive version of SR that is presented in this book draws on theories of embodied cognition, enactivism, and ecological psychology (instead of formal semantic tools) to substantiate that the representational relationship between theories and the world can be explicated in naturalistically plausible terms. Hence the book’s radical naturalist solution to the problem of representation.
The cognitive version of SR that I present in this book is inspired by Paul Churchland’s (1989, 2012) earlier use of neural networks as vehicles of representation. But in the final chapters of this book (Chaps. 6, 7, and 8), I rely on more advanced theories (in comparison with theories used by Churchland) of computational neuroscience and theoretical biology to explicate the representational relations between theories (that could be regimented by cognitive models) and the world. I also argue that theories of computational neuroscience can be construed along the lines of embodied approaches to cognition, as well as ecological psychology and enactivism. I develop this view to argued that an embodied construal of the representational relationship between the structure of theories (regimented into cognitive models) and the world dissolves the problem of representation in a fundamental way.
Cognitive Structural Realism (CSR) indicates that the underpinning structure of scientific theories can be regimented in terms of cognitive models. And there are embodied accounts of cognition that almost obliterate the representational veil that prevails between the models and the world. An embodied account does not carve a deep chasm between cognitive models and the external world. And embodied approaches seem to be quite popular in the recent philosophy of psychology (Gallagher and Allen 2016; Clark 2016; Chemero 2009). This book draws on this literature to argue that we can conceive of cognitive structures as embodied informational structures entwined with the causal structures of the world. We do not even need to agree with a radical embodied theory that removes representations and models from the scenario completely. What remains of representational relations in a moderate embodied approach, though, can be specified in terms of bodily mechanisms that underpin the representations. This allows for identifying the representational relations that are retained1 in a moderate embodied approach in terms of embodied structures entwined with and inseparable from causal physical structures. This approach provides a foundational solution to the problem of representation, because it does not assume that there is a deep gap between representations and the world. This solution paves the way for defending a robust and down-to-earth version of scientific structural realism. This account of representation (in terms of biologically and neurologically explicable relations) is different to more familiar
1 As I shall explain, since I draw on a moderate form of embodied theory (instead of a radical one), representational relations could be retained, at least to some extent. However, the divide between representations and their target in the external world is not as deep as what is the case in a classical representationalist theory. The reply will be unpacked in Chaps. 6 and 7 of this book. 1 Introduction,
accounts of scientific representation. Orthodox versions of SR account for representations in terms of extensions of formal Tarskian semantics. Among few others, Steven French built upon the logical works of Newton da Costa to provide a semantic framework for scientific representations (da Costa and French 2003; da Costa et al. 1998). But, as I will argue in the third and fourth chapters of this book, the orthodox theories cannot show how it is that representational structures latch onto physical structures in the real world, say, instead of being useful, instrumental patterns that emerge quite accidentally or in accordance with our practical interests.
An abstract, amodal conception of scientific representation does not help us to show how it is that theories latch onto reality. This means that abstract, amodal representations do not contribute to substantiating the thesis of realism, especially in view of the depth of the gap that is carved between representations and the world according to the orthodox versions of SR. The modest (and maverick) version of realism that is developed in this book presumes that for realism to take hold, there should be meaningful representational connections between the structure of theories and the causal structure of the world. By regimenting scientific representations in terms of cognitive models (implemented in biological brains), the book seeks to present a naturalistically plausible account of the relationship between theories and the world. And by drawing on embodied theories and enactivsit-ecological approach to cognition, the book seeks to dissolve the problem of scientific representation in a very fundamental way. The account of representation borrowed from the moderate embodied theories in the field of cognitive neuroscience almost removes the veil between scientific representations and their targets. Instead, the solution to the problem of representation underpins the entwinement between cognitive structures and causal physical structures in the real world. This means that CSR dissolves the problem of scientific representation by drawing biologically (and ecologically) explicable connections between the structure of theories and reality. In this book, I argue that this approach results in a new, down-to-earth version of realism. It should be noted that the existing versions of SR do not use the capacity of their formal components to accomplish their realist pretences. The significance of this point cannot even be appreciated within the context of orthodox versions of SR. According to the orthodoxy, formal frameworks invoked to regiment scientific representations do not have a capacity for fulfilling realist pretences because they are purely formal tools. The representational role of mathematical structures should not be conflated with the ontologically constitutive role of physical structures. Accordingly, it has been assumed that the burden of supporting the realist pretences of SR should be carried by classical philosophical arguments such as No Miracle Argument NMA. This book explores fresh grounds for raising a new form of realism. It finds these fresh grounds in recent breakthroughs in the field of the philosophy of cognitive science and neurophilosophy. A turning point of the book’s discussions is that the formal frameworks that are invoked by CSR are not purely formal in nature (in spite of their capacity for being regimented with exemplary formal exactitude) but cognitive. Specifying theories’ structures in terms of cognitive structures (and accounting for representations in cognitive terms) is the key to dealing with the problem of representation. To provide this robust version of SR, 1 Introduction, a Radically Naturalist
CSR draws on the resources of two traditions in the philosophy of science. Obviously, one of these traditions is SR. Below, I shall refer to the other traditions.
The Cognitive Models of Science Approach (CMSA) emerged as a strong reaction to the growing use of the model-theoretic tools in the philosophy of science. SR is an extension of the model-theoretic approach in the philosophy of science, whereas CMSA is a strong reaction to the dominance of the model-theoretic approach. However, my attempt at improving SR’s account of scientific representation relies on the resources of CMSA, and it conveys a scheme for integrating the philosophically interesting aspects of SR and CMSA. In a nutshell, CSR offers to replace the model-theoretic (or abstract information-theoretic) structures that are used by the orthodox versions of SR with cognitive structures. Orthodox versions of SR use formal structures (e.g., model-theoretical structures) to regiment the underlying structure of scientific theories. But CSR introduces and uses cognitive structures to account for scientific representations in a naturalistically plausible way.
Primarily, cognitive structures could be specified in terms of activation spaces formed in the brain. These structures could be forged by the brain’s unsupervised training and its connectionist networks (Chap. 5 of this book). But this account of cognitive structures is a bit rudimentary, and in order to develop it, I shall embark on informing my account of the cognitive structures by drawing on recent developments in cognitive and computational neuroscience. This means that to account for the cognitive structures, I will rely on the brain’s predictive coding and specify cognitive structures as embodied informational structures that could be defined in terms of the brain’s predictive processing. This results in a biologically viable and naturalistically plausible solution to the problem of scientific representation. Thus, CSR’s account of scientific representation is informed by the theories of computational neuroscience and more particularly by Predictive Processing Theory (PPT).
CSR uses cognitive structures to provide adequate frameworks of regimenting the underlying structure of scientific theories rigorously. More interestingly, given the natural propensity of cognitive structures for latching onto the causal structure of reality, cognitive structures could account for scientific representation with enough naturalistic plausibility. As I mentioned before, the book identifies scientific representations in terms of biologically explicable relations. This means that the representational relation between theories and reality is not purely formal. The representations are supposed to convey information about the physical structures in the external world. But how they do this can be plausibly explicated in terms of our best theories of computational neuroscience and theoretical biology because the theories are generated and confirmed by the brains of biological organisms such as ourselves. That is to say, the representational relationship can be understood in terms of a natural relationship explicable in terms of the latching capacity, i.e., the capacity of cognitive structures for latching onto the world (according to an embodied approach, in Chap. 7) or inferring and representing its causal structure (according to an inferentialist approach in Chap. 6). CSR is built on this naturalistic account of representation. The outcome is a more comprehensive theory of the philosophy of science which integrates the advantageous points of SR and CMSA.
1 Introduction, a Radically Naturalist Solution to the Problem
CSR relies on a scientific theory from the field of computational neuroscience so as to deal with the problem of representation. PPT holds that the brain works in the capacity of a Bayesian machine in order to infer statistically the causal structure of reality. CSR offers to replace SR’s reliance on model theory (or category theory, abstract informational structures, etc.,) with cognitive structures that can be specified in terms of the structures grounded in the brain’s information processing. The book shows how to regiment the structure of scientific theories in terms of the brain’s sparse coding and difference-based coding. It also explains how CSR could rely on the brain’s prediction error reducing mechanisms to account for the important issue of scientific representations. Information structures which are embodied in the brain’s information processing mechanisms could be used to regiment the underlying structure of the theories neatly. At the same time, given the natural propensity of these structures to latch onto the causal structure of the world, CSR could use them to deal with the issue of scientific representation. This means that CSR could address the problem of representation in a naturalistic way that remains beyond the scope of the orthodox versions of SR.
CSR relies on a theory of computational neuroscience to deal with the problem of representation. This solution to the problem of representation is presented in the spirit of radical naturalism. Also, from the fifth chapter of the book onward I argue that there are good evolutionary reasons to assume that PPT’s account of the brainworld relationship can guarantee the veracity of the brain’s models of the world. It is possible to challenge the naturalist-cum-evolutionary reasons which are conjured to substantiate the viability of CSR’s account of representation. But I do not think we need to be able to assuage fundamental doubts regarding the validity of naturalist arguments in this book. This is because both structural realists and CMSA-theorists are rather strongly committed to the ideal of naturalism. The book presupposes that it is best to let our philosophical theories be tailored to our best scientific findings, instead of trying to domesticate the philosophical interpretation of scientific theories to the habituated intuitions of orthodox metaphysics (Ladyman et al. 2007). But it delves into further details to explain why it is plausible to understand scientific realism and scientific representation along the lines of the naturalist-cumevolutionary point of view. While there may be general reasons for scepticism with regard to naturalism, I do not go out of my way in this book to address those doubts. If naturalism is good enough for structural realists and CMSA-theorists, it is good enough for CSR. CSR furthers the naturalist program of SR and CMSA more consistently and comprehensively than each one of these theories. CSR integrates the positive aspects of SR and CMSA and provides a naturalistically plausible account of scientific representation, in a way that has not been offered by the advocates of the previous theories.
But there are other vague points that have to be ironed out before we can substantiate the plausibility of CSR. First of all, we have to demonstrate that the diverse existing branches of SR could not use the capacity of their various formal tools to provide a viable account of scientific representation. Then we have to specify the cognitive structures precisely and explain how it is that they could be grafted into the trunk of SR. This means that we have to be able to explain why PPT provides an
adequate formal framework for regimenting the structure of scientific theories and dealing with the issue of scientific representation. Aspiring towards a radical form of naturalism, this book delves into necessary scientific and philosophical discussions to unravel these vague points.
The second chapter of the book elaborates on the historical context of the discussion of CSR. The chapter begins by highlighting the story of the departure of the Semantic View of Theories (SVT) from the so-called Received View of Theories (RVT). It elaborates on the role (and nature) of the underlying structure of theories from the perspective of the SVT and RVT. The chapter also reviews structural realists’ attempt at inflating metaphysical and epistemological commitments of the SVT. CMSA has emerged as a strong reaction to the SVT, and it is a foil to SR which is an extension of the SVT. The chapter highlights the divide between SR and CMSA, but it also explains that SR and CMSA could be unified through CSR. CSR won’t be vulnerable to objections which target each of SR and CMSA separately.
Chapter 3 aims to survey SR’s account of scientific representation. To be more precise, the chapter focuses on the question of the competence of SR in providing a viable account of scientific representation. After taking issue with SR’s account of scientific representation, the chapter also articulates weak and strong forms of the problem of representation. In this chapter, I will scrutinise Steven French and collaborators’ theory of partial isomorphisms, to demonstrate that despite its merit, it does not provide a substantive account of the theory-world relationship. To substantiate this point, the chapter highlights the structural realists’ account of the division between the representational role of mathematical structures and the constitutive role of physical structures. The main insight of the chapter is that once the dichotomy has been established, even the attempt at enriching the framework of standard model theory by invoking partial structures and pragmatic truth won’t dissolve the problem of representation.
There are forms of SR that do not directly rely on model theory in order to specify the underlying structure of scientific theories. For example, Luciano Floridi (2008, 2009) and Ladyman et al. (2007) invoked information-theoretic frameworks to articulate their versions of SR. Chapter 4 is specifically concerned with Ladyman and Ross’ informational version of SR. As the chapter indicates, there is room for a prima facie optimism about the capacity of Ladyman and Ross’ informational version of SR for addressing the problem of representation and providing a naturalistically plausible account of scientific representation. This is because their development of ISR draws on a biophysical notion of information which presumably makes it possible to draw a connection between the informational structure of theories and the causal structure of the world. However, as I argue in the fourth chapter, this promising idea did not evolve into a satisfactory solution to the problem of representation.
From Chap. 5 onward, I begin to spell out my own account of scientific representation, which is mainly based on the strategy of replacing the model-theoretic structures (or informational structures) of scientific theories in orthodox versions of SR with cognitive structures. In the fifth chapter, I begin to unpack this strategy by drawing on Paul Churchland’s neurocomputational account of theories. According
to Churchland, it is possible to use connectionist networks and activation spaces to reconstruct traditional epistemology and philosophy of science. Churchland’s view has been presented in the spirit of CMSA, but I argue that it is possible to construe Churchland’s view as a form of SR. Consequently, it would be possible to see neural networks as the frameworks underlying the structure of scientific theories. After explicating the structural and the realist elements of Churchland’s view, I shall explain how this approach could also provide a viable solution to the problem of representation. This solution is supported on the basis of evolutionary and naturalistic reasons. I also show how my reconstruction of this prototypical version of CSR could dissolve the problem of underdetermination and pessimistic meta-induction. That being said, I will add that Churchland’s view does not tell a full story about how the brain could invoke its information processing capacities to connect its models to the causal structure of the world. In Chaps. 6 and 7, I shall draw on the resources of more recent theories of computational neuroscience to provide the necessary details that have been neglected in Churchland’s account.
In Chap. 6, I will develop CSR and set forth its solution to the problem of representation. To do so, I introduce PPT and elaborate on the brain’s implemented Bayesian mechanisms that forge the statistical inferential links which connect the brain to the causal structure of the world. It is possible to assert that CSR’s cognitive structures can be specified in terms of connectionism. But this specification is still fairly vague. So, we can go further and draw on recent breakthroughs in cognitive science and elaborate on the nature of the cognitive structures that CSR employs. This means that CSR could rely on PPT to specify the nature of the cognitive structures in terms of statistically forged informational structures. The problem of scientific representation could be dissolved on the basis of the brain’s prediction error reducing mechanisms, predictive processing and the free energy principle. Chapter 6 develops this insight into a neurologically-informed solution to the problem of representation. This solution is obviously in line with CMSA. I also explain the connection between predictive coding and difference-based coding to show that this solution is in accord with the structuralist tendency of CSR. I will argue that the PPT-based solution to the problem of representation has the edge over the orthodox structural realist solutions in virtue of its reliance on cognitive structures which have a natural propensity for latching onto the world. But the problem of representation could haunt the inferential links that are supposed to connect the cognitive models of science to the causal structure of the world. To exterminate the problem of representation for good, in the seventh chapter I reinterpret the PPT-based solution to the problem of representation in terms of direct realism.
My account of PPT in Chap. 6 is based on Hohwy’s representationalist construal (Hohwy 2014; Beni 2017). Given the inferentialist nature of this construal, this approach could not uproot the strong version of the problem of representation completely. In the seventh chapter, I shall shift my emphasis and rely on an ecological construal of PPT so as to forge the cognitive structures and dissolve the problem of representation. This ecological construal (which has been presented by Andy Clark and a few others) is associated with enactivism, and it accommodates a version of direct realism. Since the construal does not include evidentiary boundaries and
References
inferential veils, it does not leave any room for the endurance of the problem of representation. This construal does not dispense with the notion of representation altogether but modifies it and retains a situated or grounded notion of representation. If we construe the cognitive structures in terms of this embodied, ecological view, we could dissolve the problem of representation easily enough. I draw on an embodied construal of PPT to show how it is that the informational structure of our (scientific, as well as neurological) representations can be explicated in biologically plausible terms, as embodied informational structures (entwined with the causal structures in the physical world). The embodied approach could be used to furnish a foundational solution to the problem of representation, and to support a down-to-earth version of SR.
Chapter 8 restates Cognitive Structural Realism and hammers out few remaining details. Among other things, it clarifies the connection between CSR and ISR, by remarking that CSR could be understood as a kindred approach, provided that we concede on understanding informational structures as grounded or embodied structures and emphasize their reliance on the mechanisms of cognitive informational processing in real organisms. This chapter also underlines the pragmatic nature of CSR’s solution to the problem of representation and explicates CSR’s ontological commitments to embodied informational structures.
References
Beni, M. D. (2017). Reconstructing the upward path to structural realism. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 7(3), 393–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-016-0167-8. Springer. Chemero, A. (2009). Radical embodied cognitive science. London: MIT Press.
Churchland, P. M. (1989). On the nature of theories: A neurocomputational perspective. In C. W. Savage (Ed.), Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, Volume 14. Scientific theories (pp. 59–101). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Churchland, P. M. (2012). Plato’s camera: How the physical brain captures a landscape of abstract universals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clark, A. (2016, April). Busting out: Predictive brains, embodied minds, and the puzzle of the evidentiary veil. Noûs, 51, 727–753. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12140
da Costa, N. C. A., & French, S. (2003). Science and partial truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/019515651X.001.0001
da Costa, N. C. A., Bueno, O., & French, S. (1998). The logic of pragmatic truth. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 27(6), 603–620. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004304228785. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Floridi, L. (2008). A defence of informational structural realism. Synthese, 161, 219–253. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9163-z
Floridi, L. (2009). Against digital ontology. Synthese, 168(1), 151–178. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11229-008-9334-6
Gallagher, S., & Allen, M. (2016, November). Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition. Synthese, 195, 2627–2648. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1269-8 Springer.
Hohwy, J. (2014). The self-evidencing brain. Noûs, 50(2), 259–285. https://doi.org/10.1111/ nous.12062
Ladyman, J., Ross, D., Collier, J., & Spurrett, D. (2007). Every thing must go. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276196.001.0001
Chapter 2 The Parting of the Ways
Abstract This chapter unfolds the background of Cognitive Structural Realism (CSR) and its account of scientific representation. This overviews the pursuit of the idea of the underlying structure of scientific theories in the history of the philosophy of science and elaborates on some of the central themes of this book, e.g., unification, the underlying structure, and scientific representation. It also canvasses two blooming theories of the philosophy of science. These are structural realism and Cognitive Models of Science Approach. These two theories have usually been understood as rivals. But CSR emerges as a synthesis between these two theories. By being unified, structural realism and the cognitive models of science approach amend one another’s shortcomings.
2.1 On Regimentation
Scientific realists and antirealists solution in different ways to the question of the goal of the scientific activity. Can science represent reality, or is being empirically adequate the ultimate goal that a scientific theory could achieve? The realist and the antirealist do not provide the same solution to this question. But there are also points of agreement. For example, there are both realists and antirealists who generally agree that scientific theories could be regimented in terms of neat mathematical structures. Science was carried forward by an urge for quantification and systematisation. Mathematical structures are the backbone of the corpus of scientific theories. In asserting the last sentence, I deliberately assume that scientific theories could be integrated into a unified corpus. Of course, scientists use various sorts of mathematical tools in order to articulate their scientific theories. They use, among other things, arithmetical, algebraic, geometrical, and group-theoretic tools. They even apply common-sense language, metaphor, physical models or maps in order to articulate and present their theories. Alluding to the fact that scientists use (sometimes incongruous) mathematical formalisms to articulate the theoretical and the observational parts of their theories is not ipso facto interesting from the logicophilosophical point of view. The more ambitious goal is to reconstruct rationally scientific theories by regimenting them into a well-defined logical framework.
M. D. Beni, Cognitive Structural Realism, Studies in Brain and Mind 14, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05114-3_2
2 The Parting of the Ways
Since its dawn in the early twentieth century, the philosophy of science came with a great urge to regiment incongruous formal and informal statements of scientific theories into universal logico-mathematical frameworks. Some of the founding fathers (e.g. Wittgenstein 1922) had tried to allude to (an unspeakable) connection between the logical space of regimenting the structure of scientific theories on the one hand and the fundamental structure of reality on the other. Others (Russell 1927; e.g. Carnap 1928, 1934) had developed a structural framework that remained loyal to the spirit of empiricism. Regardless of the realist commitments that may or may not saddle the search for an underlying logical framework, it had been assumed that rational (or logical) reconstruction of diverse formal and informal enterprises that constitute scientific practice had been a worthwhile project. This chapter is mainly concerned with unfolding the origins of the idea of rational reconstruction in the philosophy of science. The chapter also explains how some realist and empiricist approaches in the contemporary philosophy of science still pursue the goal of unveiling the underlying structure of scientific theories. In this chapter, I also must draw attention to a strong reaction to this structuralist quest for identifying the nature of scientific theories. This means that, after explaining the semantic view of theories and structural realism as the follow-ups of the earlier attempts at regimenting the structure of scientific theories in logical terms, I shall allude to Ronald Giere and colleagues’ reaction that emphasised the model-based and informal aspects of scientific representation. Finally, I shall draw a connection between this historical survey and the goal of this book, which consists of reconciling structural realism to Giere’s cognitive approach to scientific theories. I support this new version of SR with recent breakthroughs in the contemporary computational neuroscience.
2.2 The Received View of Theories
At the dawn of the philosophy of science, there were logical empiricists. Logical empiricism is an umbrella term which subsumes different philosophical movements in the Vienna Circle, the Berlin Circle, or sympathetic enterprises in Britain or the United States. Even before logical empiricism, there had been philosophers (such as Peirce, Dewey, and Duhem among others) and scientists (such as Poincare and Einstein) who had been discussing the themes related to the philosophy of science. But the impact of the works of the logical empiricists on the formation and development of the philosophy of science was so conspicuous that their collective view of scientific theories has been dubbed the Received View.
According to the Received View of Theories (RVT), a scientific theory is an axiomatised collection of sentences of the first-order predicate logic. As Rudolf Carnap (a prominent advocate of logical empiricism) remarked in his own intellectual autobiography at the beginning of Schilpp’s (1963, 10–12) volume, the general insight into forming such an axiomatised framework had struck him at the earlier stages of his philosophical activity. Frege had brought the significance of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica to Carnap’s attention, and Carnap studied the
Principia around the year 1919. Being impressed by the comprehensiveness and clarity of Whitehead and Russell’s exposition of the system of logic, Carnap began to formulate his own articulations of philosophical problems in axiomatic terms. He went so far as to attempt regimenting the theory of space and time into an axiomatic system, and even proposed to write his dissertation on “Axiomatic Foundations of Kinematics”. His proposal was rejected because people at the University of Jena could not decide where to place it (either in the physics department or the philosophy department). However, Carnap’s passion for the axiomatic formulation of space-time topography and axiomatic specification of a quantitative physical magnitude was not suppressed. He kept developing his ideas in his doctoral thesis Der Raum (Space) and several other works (e.g., Carnap 1928, 1937, 1956). Other logical empiricists such as Hans Reichenbach and Carl Hempel contributed to the development of the RVT. Below, I shall unfold some basic ideas and draw attention to the unificatory core of the logical empiricist program.
Empiricism and logic are the two components of logical empiricism. The empiricist component had been constructed upon Bertrand Russell’s preceding endeavour for reviving the philosophical agenda of classical empiricists. But Russell was also a prominent logician, and Russell’s logical ideas influenced the logical empiricists too. Among other places, the idea of logical empiricism blossomed in Carnap’s Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik (1927–1929), where Carnap extended Russell’s type theory and reinforced it with Hilbert’s idea of the system of things (see Awodey and Carus 2001). It is also worth mentioning that in this program, Carnap attempted constructing the basis of a discipline named Axiomatics, which was supposed to comprise logic, arithmetic, and set theory. The discipline was supposed to provide a groundwork for reconstructing reports of the empirical world logically. Moreover, he tried to show how standard mathematical interpretations of certain important axiomatic systems (such as Peano arithmetic) could be used in order to label the referents of notations of axiomatic systems. The project aimed to characterise meaning and designation (i.e. indexing) of realised structures in terms of the encounter of the system with physical reality (Awodey and Carus 2001, 155). The involvement of concepts of meaning and designation may indicate that the RVT was not exclusively committed to syntax, and its advocates were ready to accommodate semantic notions, too (Coffa 1991; Creath 1990; Beni 2015b). So, there was the idea of forming a (semi-semantical) logical framework for regimenting the underlying structure of descriptions of physical reality (in terms of scientific theories). There was a premiere version of scientific structuralism—with clear unificatory implications—in the making. We must also consider the connection between Carnap’s project and Hilbert’s formalist approach to mathematics.
David Hilbert’s formalist approach to mathematics was an important source of inspiration for the logical empiricists. Hilbert’s ideas influenced logical empiricists’ attempt at regimenting the structure of experience in terms of logic (see Zach 2006). In his sixth problem, Hilbert highlighted the problem of how to provide an axiomatic presentation of the physical sciences (e.g., physics and mechanics) in which mathematics plays a salient part (Hilbert 1901, in Browder 1979, 14). Being inspired by Hilbert’s formalism, the RVT indicated that sets of postulates (or axioms of the
system) could be adopted conventionally, and regardless of considerations of objectivity and correctness. This conventionalism allows for assuming that practical considerations guide us to choose one set of postulates over the alternatives (Uebel 2013). To explicate the amount of influence of Hilbert’s work on the RVT, Creath (1992) relied on an oral tradition to describe Carnap’s work in the Logical Syntax of Language as “Hilbertization of Principia Mathematica”. Despite its reliance on Russell’s pioneering work on logic, Carnap’s view was developed along the lines of formal conventionalism, which makes the choice of the postulates of the logical framework of scientific theories a matter of convention. This indicates that derivation of the components of the system is a matter of implicit definitions. Accordingly, logical empiricists conceived of the formal framework of regimenting the structure of scientific theories as a logical framework which could be articulated in a metalanguage. Once the axioms and postulates of the system are fixed, the logical skeleton of the system finds its form and we can implicitly define the terms of the system and its predicates (see Nagel 1961). This understanding of the logical framework of scientific theories, as an axiomatic first-order predicate system, lies at the heart of the RVT.
Of course, after succeeding in regimenting the structure of scientific theories into an axiomatic system (if at all), we have to find a way to account for the connection between structural and experimental components of scientific theories. Scientific realists tend to argue that scientific theories represent the essential features of the external world, whereas, allegedly, logical empiricists made concession on the instrumental efficiency of scientific theories. One may legitimately doubt the instrumentalist reading of logical empiricism (Psillos 2000a, b; Beni 2015a). Even so, i.e., even if we accept the instrumentalist construal, logical empiricists had to explicate the connection between the theoretical part of scientific theories and the world of experience as a class of models of physical phenomena that are supposed to be represented by the theories. This is an important problem because, unlike mathematical theories, scientific theories are not dislodged from the world of experience. While the theoretical parts of the theories could be specified by formal postulations and explicit definitions, the theories should also include observable (or verifiable) components. The relation between the mathematical parts and non-mathematical parts of the theory should be explicated at some point. Logical empiricists attempted to face the problem by contriving correspondence rules, bridge laws, and implicit definitions. According to the RVT, regimenting the theories into a neat logical framework makes it possible to account for the correspondence between theoretical and observational parts of scientific theories. This means that the connection between the theories and their observable consequences could be drawn more efficiently after regimenting the theories in logical terms. A given logical system consists of a theoretical vocabulary, an observational part that allegedly includes verifiable (or observable) consequences of the theory, and a set of correspondence rules that have to relate theoretical components to observational ones. But, at least
according to critics of the RVT, correspondence rules were a heterogeneous confusion of meaning relationships, experimental design, measurement, and causal relationships (Suppe 1998, S103). And not all empirical components of the theories could be exhausted in terms of explicit or even implicit formal definition.1 The take-home point is that the problem of how to regiment heterogonous theoretical components of scientific theories into a unifying framework and use the capacities of the framework to account for the issue of scientific representation had been right there at the dawn of the philosophy of science.
The question of the connection between the mathematical structure of scientific theories and their targets (either as enduring objective reality or phenomenal models and empirical data structures) continues to bewilder philosophers of science. This problem, i.e., the problem of representation, lies at the very heart of this book, and it will be discussed extensively through its chapters. In this part, I only drew attention to the point that in order to fulfil the program of rational reconstruction, logical empiricists drew on the resources of the logical breakthroughs of Frege, Russell, Hilbert and others, in an effort to regiment the structure of scientific theories in terms of an axiomatic system in first-order predicate logic. Although I do not want to scrutinise the precision of this received account of the RVT, I point out that further investigation may reveal that, at least to the extent that reliance on the logical systems of Frege and Carnap were at issue, logical empiricists were willing to go beyond first-order logic and consider higher-order formulations of the theories. But it is not my aim to delve into details to challenge the accuracy of the received report about the RVT.
1 Logical empiricists took great pains to show how theoretical terms could be exhausted in terms of the observational components of the theory. And some of the strategies that they devised are purely logical. Carnap’s (1956) use of the Ramsey-sentence stands out as a prominent example. I shall briefly mention Carnap’s proposal here.
TC is our theory. It includes theoretical (Ti) and observational (Oj) terms and postulates (in Ramsey 1926, secondary and primary terms respectively). TC could be stated in the following way, TC(… T1 … O1 … T2 … O2 … Tn … Om …) where Tnrefers to theoretical predicate constants and Om are observational predicate constants. It is possible to derive Ramsey-sentence, R(TC), from T(C): (∃U1), … (∃Un)TC(U1, … Un; O1, … Om).
In R(TC) the observational terms (Oj) are preserved, and the theoretical constants (Ti) which occur in TC are replaced by distinct higher-order predicate variables (Uk) which do not occur in TC. The variables are prefixed by existential quantifiers. This is the realized form of the theory, because, according to Ramsey, R(TC) would be observationally equivalent to TC, and would preserve the empirical content of the theory, (that is TC → O if and only if R(TC) → O). According to Carnap, R(TC) would be semantically equivalent (L-equivalent) to TC. That is, (speaking in model-theoretic terms) if there exist a class of entities which satisfies the Ramsey-sentence, then there is a denotation between theoretical terms (Ti) and the class members. The Carnap-sentence of the theory, namely R(TC) ⊃ TC, works as an analytic part of the reformulation of the theory to provide the necessary interpretation of the theoretical terms (also see Psillos 2000a).
2 The Parting of the Ways
2.3
The Semantic View of Theories
Despite some attempts at restoration (Halvorson 2013; Beni 2015a), the RVT is almost extinct now. To be more precise, in the second half of twentieth century, the logical empiricist conception of the formulation of logical syntax in a meta-language began to lose ground to the upcoming semantic, model-theoretic approaches that began to gain ground in the wake of Alfred Tarski’s work on the foundation of logic. Among few others, Suppes and van Fraassen (Suppes 1962, 1967; van Fraassen 1969, 1980) built upon the earlier endeavours of Tarski, von Neumann, and Evert Beth so as to unfold the implications of model-theoretic advancements for the philosophy of science and its conception of scientific theories. The general idea was that the philosophers have to put language in its proper place and to direct their attention to models and modelling instead of vocabulary and the grammar of the language. The new approach did not place much emphasis on syntax as such or proof theory.
The advocates of this new approach, which goes by the name of the Semantic View of Theories (SVT), argued that theories are not linguistic entities, and metamathematical elaborations of theories cannot individuate scientific theories correctly. There were undeniable technical grounds for doubting the plausibility of the RVT. For example, it turned out that first-order logic was not an adequate tool for regimenting the structure of scientific theories because, as Suppe (1998, S104) pointed out, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem had proved that theories of first-order predicate logic include wildly unintended models. If a countable theory of the first order logic accommodates an infinite model, then such a theory cannot control the cardinality of its models. And theories with infinite models cannot correspond to unique data models up to isomorphism. The RVT-theorists’ account of theories allegedly relies on the first-order predicate logic. But this logic cannot provide the right framework for accommodating well-defined formulations of the scientific theories because it fails to provide a meaningful criterion for demarcating original scientific theories from numerous surplus models that can represent the world (or models of experience) in a number of different ways. Thus the RVT fails because of its reliance on the framework of first-order logic. The Lowenheim-Skolem theorem does not hold in stronger logics. By the same token, it is not a problem for the advocates of the SVT who conceived of theories as mathematical structures and dispensed with the linguistic, meta-mathematical parts that could be regimented in terms of the first order logic. By replacing the logical framework of the first order logic with model theory, the SVT-theorists endeavoured to liberate scientific theories from the yoke of the RVT. There might be other reasons for being sceptical of the plausibility of the RVT as well. For example, the RVT’s distinction between observational and theoretical parts of language could be challenged. However, it could be argued that some notable RVT-theorists, such as Carnap, did not take that distinction seriously (see Creath 2012). The axiomatic nature of the framework of the RVT had been criticised too, but this is hardly a problem, and even Suppes’ (1962) advanced set/model-theoretic
extension of the SVT allows for the development of an axiomatic conception of theories. Perhaps a more serious problem concerns the relationship between theories themselves and what is represented by the theories (reality, observation, phenomenal data-structure, etc.). The RVT’s account of theories and their verifiable consequences (and more generally, the experimental domain) had been spelt out in terms of correspondence rules. But as Suppe (1998, S103) remarked, correspondence rules were a heterogeneous confusion of meaning relationships, experimental design, measurement, and causal relationships, some of which were not even properly parts of theories. I appreciate the seriousness of this last problem. But as we will see in this book, even SR (which relies on the formal advancements of model theory and its extension to the philosophy of science through the SVT) could not address the question of the theory-world relationship satisfactorily. As I will explain later in this book (Chap. 3), the problem haunts the more advanced forms of the contemporary philosophy of science that had their roots in the SVT’s conception of scientific theories.
Let us recap. SVT-theorists suggested that the philosophy of science should bypass the RVT and dispense with the meta-mathematical formulation of theories. In this vein, Suppes (Suppes 1962, 1967) endeavoured to regiment the structure of scientific theories in terms of set/model theory. Similarly, van Fraassen (1989, 366) suggested that it is best to understand scientific theories in terms of classes of mathematical models instead of axiomatic systems chained to a particular language. According to the SVT, a scientific theory consists of classes of models that form a mathematical structure. To be more precise, a mathematical model is a mathematical structure (i.e. a set with relations, functions, constants) and an interpretation function that maps symbols of the logical language onto the elements of the structure. By mapping the expressions of the language, the interpretation function assigns truth values to the expressions of the language. That is to say, the interpretation function shows that the expressions are true (or false) under certain interpretations of the structure.
When applied to the philosophy of science, the model-theoretic approach says that set/model-theoretic structures underlie the representational content of scientific theories. The model-theoretic structures capture the representational content of classes of empirical phenomena or the external world (depending on the preferred philosophical construal), where models are defined as mathematical posits that consist of interpreted structures (van Fraassen 2014, 277).
Before ending this section, I point out that the story of the victory of the SVT over the RVT is not as straightforward as has been related in this section. For example, Hans Halvorson (2012, 2013) has recently argued that if we understand scientific theories as language-free set/model-theoretic structures (as the SVT suggests), we cannot help but distinguish between theories that are equivalent and identify theories that are distinct. Halvorson sought to substantiate his view concerning examples from modern physics, e.g., with reference to the distinction between Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formulations of Newtonian mechanics. Whether the SVT-theorists could face Halvorson’s challenge or not is another story (see van Fraassen 2014; Glymour 2013).
2.4 Structural Realism and Its Varieties
The SVT per se did not include realist commitments about what lies beyond the mathematical structure of scientific theories. As a matter of fact, some of the most prominent SVT-theorists, such as Bas van Fraassen, are vehement advocates of empiricism-cum-instrumentalism. However, some contemporary philosophers of science endeavoured to re-inflate the SVT to the extent that is necessary for accommodating a progressive form of scientific realism (see French and Ladyman 1999). The progressive form of scientific realism that I am referring to is Structural Realism (or SR for short).
SR is a flourishing theory of the contemporary philosophy of science. Classical scientific realism claims that our scientific theories provide an almost precise description of main features of the real world. However, this claim is both vague and hard to substantiate. The claim is vague because an almost precise (or approximately true) description could be a literally false description. The scientific realist account of scientific representation is liable to some vicious antirealist challenges (some of which will be unfolded in this section). SR emerged as a modified version of scientific realism which maintains the defensible parts of the orthodox scientific realist claim but dispenses with the parts that are vulnerable to the antirealist objections. This means that SR is a modified form of realism that also acknowledges the validity of some antirealist arguments against classical (entity-based) scientific realism. To canvass the relevant literature, we have to go beyond the discussion of the logical nature of the structure of scientific theories and consider the metaphysical question of their connection with reality. As we engage more deeply with the issue of realism, the problem of the representational capacity of scientific theories (i.e., the problem of representation) begins to loom large.
Scientific realism holds that the empirical success of mature scientific theories is a consequence of their almost precise representation of the main features of reality. The empirical success of the theories is supposed to be a result of the connection between scientific theories and reality. To be more precise, it is the truth of scientific theories (in the sense of their correspondence with reality) which grounds their empirical success. In other words, the empirical success of scientific theories could be explicated in terms of the fact that theoretical terms of the scientific theories refer to real (though perhaps unobservable) states of the world. Scientific theories are at least approximately true, and this is why they can successfully predict and explain things. When articulated in this fashion, the empirical success of scientific theories is supposed to confirm the thesis of realism. The realist builds upon this intuition to argue that realism is the only thesis that does not make the success of science miraculous. Otherwise, if realism is wrong about the referential capacity of scientific theories, the success of science will be a miracle (Putnam 1975, 69). This is the famous No Miracle Argument (or NMA for short). Similarly, a realist may want to argue that scientific realism provides the Best Explanation of the success of sciences, by holding that scientific theories are approximately true, and their referential links 2
to reality are almost intact. The thesis of realism explains why the theories that include theoretical terms work efficiently. Scientific realism explains the empirical efficiency (or adequacy) of theories on the basis of the referential capacity of the theoretical terms of the theory (Putnam 1978, 2). Thus the plausibility of scientific realism could be established by an explanatory inference or an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). The same set of arguments could be used to account for continuity in the history of science. Below, I shall unpack this remark.
In the face of antirealist challenge from the theoretical shifts in the history of science, the realist may invoke NMA and IBE to argue that theoretical terms in the old and new theories refer almost to the same extra-theoretical entities. This would indicate that the new successful scientific theories preserve the referential links of the earlier mature theories (as their limiting cases). Old and new scientific theories are all approximately true, but the new theories refer more precisely in comparison to their predecessors. The antirealist could solution to the realist’s arguments by remarking that the notions of approximate truth and partial reference are too vague to provide a solution as to whether a theory which consists entirely of approximately true laws would be empirically successful. The realist cannot assert that an old theory and the new one are both literally true. For, if Einstein’s General Relativity theory were completely true, then Newton’s mechanics should be literally false. Thus, the realist cannot help relying on the notions of approximate truth and partial reference of the theories if she wants to claim that intactness of the referential capacity of the theoretical terms of the theory could be preserved across the history of science. However, the notion of approximate truth could not play its part convincingly, because the notion of approximate truth is a bit too vague to forge the link between the success of the theories and their relation to reality vigorously enough. On such grounds, the antirealist could question the soundness of the realist’s assertion about the interrelation between truth, reference, and the empirical success of scientific theories. Larry Laudan (1981) articulated such an antirealist argument in terms of a pessimistic induction. Laudan argued that theories could be empirically successful without being true or without having robust referential links to reality. Moreover, he argued that even if we could show that successful theories are approximately true, it does not mean that the truth of the theories and their success are essentially connected. Then there are the reservations about the vagueness of the notion of approximate truth. It could be argued that the notion of ‘approximate truth’ is too vague to support the scientific realist’s claims. For what is approximately true is literally false. All of these remarks point to the fact that the standard forms of scientific realism which rely on NMA and the notion of approximate truth cannot face the challenge of antirealism. These traditional ways cannot defend the integrity of the realist thesis in the face of the challenge from the shifting history of science. For, the continuity of referential links across the history of science and the plausibility of the thesis of scientific realism stand and fall hand in hand. This problem goes by
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nick Carter Stories No. 158, September 18, 1915: The blue veil; or, Nick Carter's torn trail
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Nick Carter Stories No. 158, September 18, 1915: The blue veil; or, Nick Carter's torn trail
Author: Nicholas Carter
Contributor: Bertram Lebhar
Release date: June 21, 2022 [eBook #68360]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Street & Smaith, 1914
Credits: David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Northern Illinois University Digital Library) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NICK CARTER STORIES NO. 158, SEPTEMBER 18, 1915: THE BLUE VEIL; OR, NICK CARTER'S TORN TRAIL ***
Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York Post Office, by S S , 79-89 Seventh Ave., New York. Copyright, 1915, by S S . O. G. Smith and G. C. Smith, Proprietors.
Terms to NICK CARTER STORIES Mail Subscribers.
(Postage Free.)
Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each.
3 months 65c.
4 months 85c.
6 months $1.25
One year 2.50
2 copies one year 4.00
1 copy two years 4.00
How to Send Money—By post-office or express money order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage stamps in ordinary letter.
Receipts—Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. No. 158. NEW YORK, September 18, 1915. Price Five Cents.
THE BLUE VEIL;
Or, NICK CARTER’S TORN TRAIL.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
REMARKABLE TRICKERY.
Nick Carter listened without interrupting.
The man addressing the famous detective was not one to be wisely interrupted. His strong face, his broad, thin-lipped mouth and square jaw, the glint of his steel-blue eyes, his portly and imposing figure—all denoted that he was the type of man that insists upon having his way, his inning at the bat, as it were, but who then would graciously accord the same privilege to another.
“The danger, Mr. Carter, cannot be overestimated,” he was forcibly saying. “It really is very terrible. We are living in constant peril. That man is a perpetual menace. Unless he can be wiped out of existence, or put behind prison bars, there is no telling what he might accomplish, no possible way to anticipate it and guard against it. I cannot for the life of me understand how he got by a detective as marvelously keen and discerning as you. I cannot, Carter, on my word.”
Nick smiled and knocked the ashes from his cigar.
“It is not very difficult to understand,” he replied, with patience unruffled. “There were two reasons for it, Mr. Langham.”
“Two reasons?”
“Yes. One, because the likeness between Chester Clayton and David Margate, or Doctor David Guelpa, in which character this exceedingly clever rascal then was posing, is a most extraordinary one. I doubt that two other persons could be found, not excluding the most perfect of twins, who look so precisely alike.”
“But you already knew of that extraordinary resemblance, Mr. Carter, when Margate eluded you and made his escape.”
“Very true,” Nick admitted. “But there were other facts which I did not know, and which I had had no way of learning. That is why there was a second reason for Margate’s escape. Any detective, even one as ‘keen and discerning’ as myself, if I may quote you, would be deceived by a seeming impossibility.”
“Impossibility?”
“Seeming impossibility,” corrected Nick.
“What do you mean?”
“Bear in mind, Mr. Langham, that Margate rushed from the house in which we secured his confederates and ran to his suite in the Hotel Westgate, of which Clayton still is manager.”
“I know about that.”
“I then did not know that a secret electric communication existed between the very room in which we made the arrest and the apartments to which Margate had gone, nor that a signal informing him of the arrest and warning him to flee could be communicated to him by stepping on a concealed button under the carpet. I since have learned all about that. That was done by Scoville, one of the arrested crooks, unknown to me and my assistants.”
“But, Mr. Carter——”
“One moment, please,” Nick now interrupted. “I want you to see how impossible Margate’s exploit must have appeared.”
“Go on, then.”
“Only ten minutes elapsed from the time Margate left his confederates, until I entered the Westgate in pursuit of him. The first person I saw in the hotel office was, I supposed, Manager Clayton.”
“Well?”
“How could I believe anything else?” Nick went on more earnestly. “He was in the office inclosure and wearing an entirely different suit from what Margate was wearing ten minutes before. Ten minutes is an incredibly short time in which to have covered the distance between the two houses, to have gone to his suite and changed his outside garments and got down to the hotel office.”
“I admit that, Carter, of course.”
“I called to the supposed Clayton, therefore, and we went up to Margate’s suite, in company with my junior assistant, Patsy Garvan,” continued Nick. “We found the supposed Margate unconscious on his bed, clad in the same suit in which I had seen him, as I have said, only ten minutes before. Who on earth would have suspected, despite the extraordinary resemblance and all that previously had occurred, that such a lightninglike change of character could be accomplished; that the man on the bed was Clayton, and the man at
my elbow was the crook himself? It would have seemed incredible, utterly impossible. That is why I did not give it a thought.”
“How was it accomplished, Mr. Carter?”
“I since have learned, of course,” said Nick. “Margate received the warning signal the moment he entered his suite. He instantly telephoned down to the hotel office and requested Clayton to come up there immediately on important business.”
“He did so?”
“Certainly. Clayton had no occasion to suspect Margate, whom he knew only as Doctor Guelpa. He complied, of course, and Margate invited him to his suite. Then, passing back of him, he threw one arm around his head and over his mouth, at the same time injecting into his neck a quantity of the same swiftly acting drug with which he had overcome Patsy Garvan earlier in the evening.”
“Clayton has told me about that.”
“It was done in a couple of minutes,” Nick went on. “Margate then stripped Clayton of his outside garments, exchanging them for his own, and placed his senseless form on the bed.”
“But what motive had he?” questioned Langham. “Why did he not flee at once after receiving the warning?”
Nick laughed a bit derisively.
“You don’t know this rascal, Mr. Langham,” he replied. “I now know more about him than I then did. He turned that trick only because he was short of funds. He then went down to the hotel office, a human counterfeit of Clayton, with the intention of stealing the money from the hotel vault.”
“Ah, I see,” Mr. Langham nodded. “A rascal, Carter, indeed.”
“My timely arrival with Patsy at just that moment prevented his design,” said the detective. “He had no sane alternative, when I called to him, but to accompany us to the suite. My assistant then made a hurried examination of the man on the bed, and he at once inferred that Margate had committed suicide.”
“I suppose it appeared so,” Mr. Langham allowed.
“In the meantime,” Nick added; “the supposed Clayton cried that he must telephone the good news to his mother and to Mademoiselle Falloni, whose stolen jewels we had just recovered. He hurried from the room, as if to do so.
We now know that he hurried from the house, and that is the last we saw of him. But the whole business from beginning to end occurred in less than fifteen minutes, Mr. Langham, and no detective on earth, unless gifted with clairvoyance, would have suspected the trick.”
“I admit, of course, that it would have seemed impossible,” bowed Langham.
“Now, sir, let me tell you what I since have learned about this crook,” said Nick. “I have looked up his record abroad. He twice had been convicted and sent to prison. He at one time was associated in Paris with the notorious Doctor Leon Deverge, who was executed two years ago for wholesale murder by means of drugs and poisons, of which he had made so profound a study that he knew much more of their subtle and deadly qualities than has been learned by any of his contemporaries.”
“I remember having read of the man.”
“This notorious physician and chemist imparted to David Margate much of his dangerous knowledge, and the career of the latter has always been one of vice and crime. It has been accomplished with such exceeding craft and cunning, moreover, that he most of the time has completely baffled the police. I admit that Margate is a terrible menace to society and to——”
“To us, Mr. Carter, in particular,” said Mr. Langham, interrupting. “For he threatened Clayton by letter many months ago that he would wreak vengeance upon him for having put you on his track, and that your life would be the price for having foiled him and imprisoned his confederates. In view of all this, Carter, and particularly his extraordinary likeness to Clayton, his very existence is a constant menace.”
“Those are the only reasons, Mr. Langham, why I consented to drive up here into the Berkshire Hills with my assistants to attend these festivities,” Nick again interposed.
“That was very good of you, Mr. Carter, to be sure,” bowed the other.
“I was pleased, of course, to be present at the marriage of Clayton and your daughter, and both assured me that they would feel easier if I was here,” Nick added. “Clayton apprehended that Margate, despite that he has not been seen or heard from save once since his jewel robbery, might attempt knavery at this time. I attribute that, however, to Clayton’s somewhat nervous temperament. I don’t take very much stock in the threats of crooks,
you know, for I long have been accustomed to them. Very few of them ever make good. I doubt that David Margate ever will.”
“Well, I hope not, I’m sure.”
“It is nearly time, I think, for Clayton and his bride to depart,” Nick now said, glancing at his watch. “You will wish to see them leave, I suppose.”
It then was ten o’clock in the evening, that of a bright day in June—a fit day, indeed, for the marriage of as beautiful a girl as charming Clara Langham, the only daughter of the multimillionaire president of the Century Trust Company, with whom Nick Carter had been talking.
More than six months had passed since the extraordinary case they had been discussing, that involving the theft and recovery of the world-famous jewels of Mademoiselle Falloni, the celebrated prima donna, a case resulting also in the arrest and conviction of all of the crooks save their ringleader, whose unparalleled elusion of Nick Carter at the last moment they had been reviewing.
Nick never had confided, not even to his trusty assistants, the terrible secret intrusted to his keeping by Clayton’s cultured and attractive mother; that his extraordinary personal resemblance to the notorious crook was due to his twin relationship; that he bore his mother’s maiden name, and David Margate that of the criminal father of both, who had deserted his wife in England while the children were infants, taking with him this son, who afterward fell naturally into the evil footsteps of his vicious father, who since had died under sentence in a German prison.
Nick would not have thought of betraying such a secret, of which Clayton was entirely ignorant, and the disclosure of which would serve only to mar his happiness and in a measure wreck his subsequent life.
The secret then was known, in fact, only by Nick and the sad-hearted mother, Mrs. Julia Clayton, who had confided it to him only in order that the detective might prove Clayton innocent of the great jewel robbery mentioned. It was a secret that could be safely trusted to a man of Nick Carter’s sterling integrity.
The room in which he then was seated was the private library of Mr. Gustavus Langham, in the money magnate’s great stone mansion, occupied only as a summer residence. It had been built several years before at an enormous expense, before the death of his gay and fashionable wife.
It was like an old feudal castle, with its massive walls and parapets, its broad halls and winding stairways, its stately rooms and attractive surroundings, covering a vast wooded estate in one of the most picturesque and secluded sections of the beautiful Berkshire Hills.
From the room in which Nick was seated could be heard, though the door was closed, the strains of the orchestral music, also the vivacious conversation and gay laughter of a multitude of guests, gathered at the wedding reception by a special train from New York, or with motor cars from select summer colonies from a radius of fifty miles.
The driveways and roads through the vast estate of nearly a square mile were alive with moving conveyances of one kind or another, some of the guests residing at a distance already having made their departure.
For the wedding ceremony had been performed two hours before, the reception was nearing its end, and the bride and groom were making final preparations for a precipitous departure to avoid the customary good-luck shower on such occasions.
Mr. Langham also drew out his watch and glanced at it.
“Nearly ten,” he remarked, replying to the detective. “Why, yes, I certainly wish to see them leave. I also want a last word in private with Clara. I will go and see her before she leaves her room. I told her I would do so about this time. She is expecting me, no doubt, and——”
But Mr. Langham, who had arisen while speaking, got no further with his remarks.
He was interrupted by the unceremonious opening of the door and by the hurried entrance of Clayton’s best man, George Vandyke, a New York lawyer with whom Nick Carter was very well acquainted.
One glance at the young man’s white face and dilated eyes was enough to convince the detective that something both alarming and extraordinary had occurred.
“Out with it, Vandyke,” he exclaimed, starting up and dropping his cigar into the cuspidor. “What’s the matter with you? What has happened?”
CHAPTER II.
THE STOLEN BRIDE.
Nick Carter evidently was the man George Vandyke was seeking. He appeared unable to speak for a moment, nevertheless, so great was his suppressed excitement.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he finally gasped, when Nick seized him by the arm and shook him. “They told me you were here. I——”
“Out with it!” repeated Nick more sharply. “What’s the trouble?”
“Clayton has disappeared,” choked Vandyke. “He cannot be found. His bride also is missing. Neither of them are in their rooms, nor——”
“Good God! Has the blow fallen?”
Mr. Langham staggered as if he had, indeed, received a brutal blow.
Nick Carter immediately took the ribbons.
“Don’t create a stir!” he commanded quickly. “Leave me to look into the matter. Since both are missing, they may have departed together, bent upon eluding their very zealous friends and a deluge of confetti.”
“That cannot be, Nick,” Vandyke hurriedly protested. “Clayton’s suit case is still in his room. He would have taken it with him, of course, if he——”
“Leave it to me. Don’t alarm the guests needlessly.”
“But some of them already know——”
Nick did not wait for more. He brushed by the two men, and, outwardly perfectly calm, hastened through the crowded hall toward the main stairway.
Both Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan then were on the main floor of the vast house, the former near the open front door, where, both in the hall and on the granite steps and the broad veranda outside, scores of guests had gathered to speed the happy couple on their wedding journey.
Chick saw Nick approaching and caught the ominous gleam in his expressive eyes.
“What’s up?” he asked quietly, hastily meeting him.
Nick now said what he really thought.
“That devil has got in his work again.”
“Not Margate?”
“I fear so. Both bride and groom are missing.”
“The deuce you say!”
“Nothing could have been pulled off, however, under the eyes of this mob on the steps and veranda. Slip around to the side door and see what you can learn,” Nick hurriedly directed. “Keep your eyes open and nail any one acting suspiciously. Get word to Patsy and send him to the rear door. The trick may not have been turned yet. They can have been missing only a few minutes.”
“I’m wise,” Chick nodded, starting for the side hall and the broad exit under the massive porte-cochère.
Nick hastened to the second floor and toward the two rear rooms used by the bride and groom that evening, those in front having been needed to accommodate the throng of guests.
Nick discovered a solitary bridesmaid near the door of Clara’s room, and somewhat apart from the group of women then near the stairs. She happened to be one with whom he was acquainted, and he hurriedly approached her.
“What’s this I hear, Miss Arden?” he said quietly. “What do you know about it?”
“Little enough, Mr. Carter,” she replied, pale and mystified. “I only know that Clara sent us all from her room after she was dressed for her journey. She explained that her father wanted to see her privately before she left, and that she was momentarily expecting him. We left her alone, therefore, and went downstairs.”
“You mean yourself and the other bridesmaids?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Not more than ten minutes; hardly as long, I think.”
“Who discovered her absence?”
“I did. I returned to get my handkerchief, which I had left in the room. I found the room deserted. Clara had gone, but her suit case and hand bag still are there. I came out, of course, and I at once saw Mr. Vandyke coming up the side stairs. I told him about it, Mr. Carter, and he said that Clara probably was with Mr. Clayton in his room. He knocked, but received no answer. He then went in and found that Mr. Clayton also was missing.”
“Did you make any inquiries among the guests here in the hall?”
“Yes, immediately. We could find no one who had seen either of them go out. Strange though it seems, both of them have mysteriously disappeared, leaving their luggage in their rooms.”
“You say that Miss Langham, or, rather, Mrs. Clayton, was clad in her outside garments?”
“Yes, sir. She had on her hat, veil, and jacket, and was ready to leave at any moment.”
“What is her traveling costume?”
“A navy-blue suit with hat and veil to match.”
“Who, now, is in her room?”
“No one, Mr. Carter. She——”
“Wait!” Nick interrupted. “I will look in there.”
He stepped into the room while speaking. It was in considerable disorder after the change of attire from a wedding gown to a traveling costume. There was no sign of the missing girl, no written line explaining her sudden departure, no evidence of when, why, or how she had gone. Both windows were open, but in each there was a wire screen secured on the inside. Nick saw plainly that neither of them had been tampered with.
“By Jove, this looks bad enough. It looks, indeed, as if Dave Margate has again got in his work,” he said to himself while retracing his steps. “Has the rascal designs upon this girl, disregarding the valuable gifts now in the house? Those were safely guarded from every side, but who would have thought it necessary to guard her in such a throng as this?”
“What do you think about it, Mr. Carter?” questioned Miss Arden, awed by the more serious expression on the detective’s face when he came from the room.
“I cannot say at present,” Nick replied. “Don’t be alarmed, nor spread the news too quickly. There still is a possibility that they will return.”
He did not wait for an answer, but hastened into an opposite room, that occupied by Chester Clayton.
There Nick found, at first, the same negative conditions. A single window overlooked the rear grounds. It was closed and locked. Clayton’s suit case stood near the door. His overcoat and hat were missing, however, though a pair of new kid gloves lay on the dressing stand.
Nick had only time to note these features of the scene when Vandyke hurriedly entered, looking even more pale and disturbed.
“Why did you apprehend so quickly that something was wrong?” Nick asked a bit abruptly, turning to him.
“Only because Clayton appeared to fear some mishap,” Vandyke replied. “He admitted he had no definite reason for it, but he seemed very nervous.”
“Where were you when he left? You were his best man.”
“True. I came here to tell you about that.”
“About what?”
“One of the caterer’s assistants came in here a short time ago, not more than twenty minutes, and stated that Mr. Lenaire wanted to see me in the dining room.”
“Lenaire is the caterer?”
“Yes. It was upon my recommendation that he was given this job. I asked Clayton if he had any immediate use for me, and he told me to go ahead and see what Lenaire wanted. I did so and found him in the dining room.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to thank me again for having recommended him, and also to ask me to express his gratitude to Clayton for having seconded my suggestion, which he feared he would not have an opportunity to do personally before Clayton departed. He explained at some length, Nick, and when I returned I found that Clayton was missing. Then, when unable to find Clara, I feared something was wrong.”
“I see,” Nick nodded. “Did the waiter who came up return to the dining room with you?”
“No, not with me,” said Vandyke. “I hurried down ahead of him. I did not see him again.”
“Do you know his name?”
“I think Lenaire called him Toulon.”
“By Jove, I think I scent the rat in the meal,” Nick muttered. “Have you looked in the closet, Vandyke?”
“Not yet. Who would expect to find Clayton in the closet, or concealed in any part of the room? It would be absurd to suppose anything of the kind ——”
“Not absurd to me,” Nick suddenly interrupted. “See for yourself.”
He had, while Vandyke was speaking, looked hurriedly into the wardrobe closet and under the bed. A broad, old-fashioned couch near one of the walls then claimed his attention. It was draped with a valance, which he quickly raised, and then he found what he was seeking.
Flat on his back under the couch lay the senseless form of Chester Clayton, his eyes closed and his white face upturned, as ghastly as if the hand of death had been laid upon him.
Vandyke recoiled with a shudder.
“Good heavens!” he cried. “Is he dead? Is he dead, Mr. Carter?”
“Quiet,” Nick cautioned. “No, not dead. The rascal who did this job doesn’t thrust his knavish neck into a noose. Clayton has been drugged. It’s the work of the same miscreant who downed him at the time of the jewel robbery.”
“David Margate?”
“Yes.”
“What shall we——”
“Don’t stop to question,” Nick interrupted. “Lend me a hand and we will place him on the couch. Slip out and find a physician, if there is one among the guests. Don’t alarm them, however, by stating what has occurred. A physician soon can revive him. Send Mr. Langham in here, but not a word about this to Mrs. Julia Clayton. Leave me to inform her.”
“You think——”
“Never mind what I think,” Nick again cut in while they placed the senseless man on the couch. “Do what I have directed.”
“But Clara, his wife—what of her?”
“There’s nothing to it, Vandyke,” said the detective. “It’s as plain as twice two. The bride has been stolen.”
CHAPTER III.
THE ASSAULTED WAITER.
Chick Carter, hastening to follow Nick’s instructions, found nothing in the side hall nor out-of-doors that shed any light on the mystery.
Several guests were departing in a limousine from under the portecochère, but Chick knew two of them personally and that none was worthy of the slightest suspicion.
Returning through the hall, he found Patsy Garvan and quickly told him what had occurred, while both hastened out of the rear door of the house. As they were descending the steps, one of the kitchen servants, who was on her way in, approached them and said somewhat excitedly, addressing Chick:
“Sure, sir, there’s something wrong around here. Would you mind telling Mr. Langham, sir?”
“Something wrong?” questioned Chick, sharply regarding her. “Where? What do you mean?”
“Round here, sir,” she replied, leading the way. “I was after taking out some refuse for the barrels, sir, and I heard moaninglike, as if some one was hurted.”
“Heard it where?”
“Here, sir, under the cellar door. I was after—there ’tis again, sir!”
The corpulent Irishwoman shrank back affrighted.
A hollow, half-choked moan had issued from under a slanting bulkhead door abutting the foundation wall on that side of the house.
It was the opposite side from that on which was located the driveway making around from the front of the vast stone mansion and leading out to the stable and garage. Aside from the bulkhead door leading down to the basement there was only another door opening upon an entry and stairway for the use of the servants.
The adjoining grounds in that locality were deserted, and lighted only by the stars glittering in the purple sky. A path led across a strip of lawn to several outbuildings. Beyond this were the trees of the park and woodland
covering the vast estate. Through the gloom beneath them some fifty yards away could be faintly seen a gray gravel driveway making off to the east.
Patsy caught sight of something white on the ground, just as the hollow moan interrupted the woman, and he stopped to pick it up.
It was a partly burned cigarette, yet from which only a few puffs had been taken.
Instinctively Patsy slipped it into his pocket, just as Chick exclaimed:
“By Jove, the woman is right. Lend me a hand, Patsy. This door is not locked. Here’s a man on the stone steps.”
His words evoked another moan from the prostrate man.
“Wait a bit!” said Patsy. “Here is my searchlight.”
Chick had opened both sections of the slanting door, and Patsy now sent a beam of light down the several stone steps. In the area below, against an inner door of the cellar, lay a man in evening dress, bound hand and foot with stout cords and brutally gagged.
“Gee whiz!” cried Patsy. “Something wrong, Chick, is right.”
“Help me lift him out.”
“Lord save him!” said the woman, crossing herself. “Is he dead, sir?”
“Far from it,” said Chick. “Dead men don’t moan. He’ll be all right when he can breathe freely. Now, sir, speak for yourself. How came you in this mess?”
The two detectives had placed him on the greensward outside of the bulkhead door, and Chick had quickly cut his bonds and removed the gag from his mouth.
The man choked and gasped convulsively for a moment, then explained with an effort that he was Pierre Toulon, employed as a waiter by Mr. Jean Lenaire, the French caterer; that he had stolen out a short time before to smoke a cigarette, and that he had been suddenly assaulted by three masked men, who had bound and gagged him, and then confined him under the bulkhead door.
Chick did not wait to look more deeply into the man’s story, but turned to Patsy and said hurriedly:
“Go tell the chief. You’ll find him on the second floor, probably in Clayton’s room. I will help Toulon into the house. Nick will question him later.”
Patsy hurried away without replying.
He found Nick, Mr. Langham, and two physicians in Clayton’s room. The latter had begun to revive from the effects of the drug. He already could talk intelligently, and in a vague way could recall and state what had occurred.
It appeared, Nick already had learned, that the same waiter who had called Vandyke from the room, or a man so closely resembling him that Clayton detected no difference, returned almost immediately after Vandyke departed, saying that he missed his cuff link and thought it might have dropped on the floor.
Clayton naturally had bowed to look for it, whereupon the rascal instantly threw one arm around his head, covering his mouth, and at the same moment thrust the needle of a hypodermic syringe into his neck, injecting a quantity of the same potent and quick-acting drug with which, Nick immediately suspected, Clayton had been overcome by Margate at the time of his escape after the jewel robbery.
Clayton knew nothing of what had followed, having quickly lost consciousness, and Nick now left Mr. Langham and the physicians to enlighten him with the sad information. He withdrew with Patsy and hastened down to the private library in which he had been talking with Langham only a few minutes before.
Patsy already had told him about finding the waiter, Toulon, and Nick’s next move was to send for Mrs. Julia Clayton, whom he briefly informed of his suspicions, and then cautioned the dismayed woman against inadvertently betraying the secret she so long had kept from all the world.
The shocking news now was generally known, and the house was in confusion. Guests were hurriedly departing, leaving sympathetic messages with the butler and other servants. All keenly felt that they could be of no assistance in the investigations then in progress, and that they were better out of the way.
“Gee whiz! there’s nothing to this, chief,” commented Patsy, turning after closing the door upon Mrs. Clayton. “This is Margate’s doings, all right.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Nick. “He served Clayton the same trick as before.”
“Surest thing you know.”
“We will try later to find out how he got away with the girl. It would be useless to undertake it at present, and immediate pursuit is out of the question. A hundred conveyances have left here during the past half hour.”
