Methodology of receptor research--a philosophical perspective

Two examples taken from the philosophy of physics (measurement and experiment) show the dependence of quantitative data and of causal judgements on technical aims that are invested into both laboratory research and the concept formation of a successful science. Accordingly, methodology is defined as the theory of methods, i.e. of the rules governing actions constitutive of research and the phrasing of its results. Judgement on methods is a matter of means-and-ends rationality. The objects and relations under consideration are not natural but technical ones. With respect to analytical chemistry, a problem concerning the application of mathematics to quantitative data is described in order to argue for the irreducibility of measurement of macroscopic quantities (like volume) to the counting of numbers of micro-objects (like molecules): the basic concepts of microbiology, analytic chemistry and toxicology remain related to certain theoretical (and corresponding experimental) contexts. Starting from the perspective that receptor research is dealing with the effects of chemical substances on organisms, a few constraints on receptor research are characterised. The idealisation of causes and effects by describing them in terms of chemistry (on a molecular level) hinges on a problematic presupposition. It is objected that there is neither a way down from levels more complex to simpler ones nor a way up from simple to complex levels in so far as the criteria for medical diagnoses are not causally linked with chemical descriptions. As a result, the significance of the traditional connection between the medical treatment of persons and the manageableness of health effects by pharmaceutical means is stressed. Whether molecular models, theories and explanations are helpful for a phenomenological description has to be tested accordingly but cannot generally be presupposed.