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PARTISAN REVIEW
does not indicate in what sense the knowledge contained by two
spatially close volume elements is more similar than the contents of
two spatially remote elements . Lacking such a semantic distance
concept, Holton's knowledge space brings to mind a Rubik cube
rather than an ordered conceptual space. Second, and more impor–
tantly , Holton's three-dimensional analogy implies that the three
axes represent independent variables, so that the positions reached
by various scientists in the phenomenal-analytic plane are indepen–
dent of the positions reached by them along the thematic axis. This
cannot be the case, since the kind of instruments set up for taking
meter readings in the first place depend on the thematic pre-under–
standing brought by the observer to the phenomenon under study .
Holton's case study of Einstein benefits from the fact that Ein–
stein published not only his scientific results but his philosophical
views as well. It is thus possible for us to fathom not only what Ein–
stein was doing in the first three decades of this century, when he
developed the theories that vastly extended our understanding of the
physical world, but also what he
thought
he was doing. Holton uses
this legacy to show that Einstein and his contemporaries interested
in the same scientific problems each brought his own themata to his
work and that many of their theoretical disagreements can be traced
to differences in thematic approach to the same phenomena. For in–
stance, using the same data and the same mathematical logic as his
precursors H . A . Lorentz and Henri Poincare, Einstein was able to
develop the special theory of relativity because, unlike their thematic
approach to the propagation of light, his simply ignored the concept
of an ether as carrier of electromagnetic waves .
Holton draws on this material to support another argument in
favor of the claim that phenomenological and analytical propositions
do not suffice to account for the development of scientific knowledge ,
unless the role of themata is taken into account. This argument
relates to what Holton calls (borrowing, without indicating its
source, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's characterization of poetic faith)
"suspension of disbelief," or the willingness of scientists to disregard
empirical data that appear to contradict, or falsify, a theory that (for
them) has reached thematic status . One dramatic example un–
covered by Holton himself about ten years ago concerns Robert
Millikan's oil-drop experiments carried out in 1911-1912 to deter–
mine the basic unit of electric charge of the electron . Upon examin–
ing Millikan's laboratory notebooks preserved at the California In–
stitute of Technology, Holton noticed that , contrary to Millikan's
