Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-fnpn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T02:28:20.834Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Light at the End of the Tunneling: Observation and Underdetermination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Michael Dickson*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
*
History and Philosophy of Science, 130 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.

Abstract

If observation is ‘theory-laden’, how can there be ‘observationally equivalent theories’? How can the observations ‘laden’ by one theory be ‘the same as’ those ‘laden’ by another? The answer might lie in the expressibility of observationally equivalent theories in a common mathematical formalism.

Type
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Thanks to audiences at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University, and PSA 1998 for helpful questions and comments on earlier versions or portions of this paper. Thanks especially to Don Howard, Michael Friedman, and Noretta Koertge for their comments and questions.

References

Cushing, J. (1994), Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Einstein, A. (1949), “Reply to Critics”, in Schilpp, P. A. (ed.), Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Hanson, N. R. (1958), Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N. (1987), The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sextus Empiricus (1933), Outlines of Pyhrronism (trans. R.C. Bury). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar