William Wimsatt, Donald Campbell, and the Idea of Robustness

Abstract

In this paper, I chart the influence of social scientist Donald Campbell’s work on William Wimsatt’s ideas of robustness reasoning. One reason is that Campbell’s work is less familiar in the broader philosophy of science literature. Another is that Wimsatt’s famous 1981 paper on robustness was originally published in a Festschrift for Campbell and cited the three major works discussed here: on pattern-matching, on definitional operationism, and on the multitrait, multimethod matrix analysis of construct validity. I highlight some questions in contemporary debates in robustness reasoning: what is (are) the function(s) of robustness, the problem of discordant evidence, and the unification of robustness reasoning. I argue that some debates can be traced back to ideas present in both Campbell’s and Wimsatt’s work. Here I appeal to some unpublished notes and correspondence from Campbell as support and to coherence with Wimsatt’s larger philosophical framework. I propose that some resolution can be found there as well, through Wimsatt’s idea of robustness as a heuristic.