Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:38:00.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empiricism and Darwin's ScienceFred Wilson Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991, xiv + 358 pp., US$99.00

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Hannah Gay
Hannah Gay
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 176 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1995

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.)

References

Notes

1 In the case of Wilson's thermodynamic example it seems fairly easy to think how it might be falsified. If the relationship between volume, temperature and pressure was different for a series of samples of the same gas treated in the same way, one might have cause to reconsider the truth of even this abstract axiom.

2 This can proceed by a kind of eliminative induction suggested long ago by Francis Bacon. I discussed this in connection with the empirical situation Wilson is interested in (how scientists use what he now calls “abstract” theory) in a paper published 17 years ago. See “The Assymetric Carbon Atom: (a) A Case Study of Independent Discovery; (b) An Inductivist Model for Scientific Method,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 9 (1978): 207–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.