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Duhem's Thesis, Observationality, and Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

William K. Goosens*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia

Extract

Adolf Grünbaum, [1], and Philip Quinn, [7], have proposed two problems as sharpened versions of theses suggested by Pierre Duhem. (1) Can an hypothesis which in itself has no observational consequences ever be falsified by the evidence ? (2) When a theory has observational consequences only in conjunction with auxiliary hypotheses and some of these consequences fail, can the theory always be reasonably defended by constructing alternative auxiliary hypotheses ?

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

Grünbaum, A.Can We Ascertain the Falsity of a Scientific Hypothesis?” In Observation and Theory in Science. Edited by Mandelbaum, M. and Barker, S. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.Google Scholar
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