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Discussion on the D-Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

J. W. Swanson
J. W. Swanson*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
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Extract

Reanimated for the contemporary literature in the writings of Quine ([15]), [16]) and Kuhn [7], the conventionalism of Duhem [2] and Poincaré [12] has emerged in the last few years as one of the genuinely interesting topics in the philosophy of science. The theory in question—let us follow Grünbaum [3] in calling it the D-thesis, after its founder, Pierre Duhem—claims three things: (1) a single scientific hypothesis H is never disconfirmable in isolation from its fellow; (2) every single hypothesis H of science presupposes, explicitly or implicitly, the support of a conjunction A = A, • A2 • … • Am of auxiliary assumptions or hypotheses; (3) the failure of an observational consequence of H in face of contradictory evidence disconfirms only the conjunction of H and A, not H alone—i.e. establishes only ∼ (H • A). The logical picture is as follows:

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 59 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1967

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Footnotes

1

The author wishes to express his appreciation to Mr. Lawrence Foster for his very helpful criticism of an earlier draft of this paper. He also wishes to express his gratitude to Professor Adolf Grünbaum, who debated the issues of this paper with the author in a long and patient correspondence, without, however, converting him to an anti-Duhemian position.

References

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