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Discussion: Feyerabend and Laymon on Brownian Motion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Spyridon George Couvalis
Spyridon George Couvalis*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy University of New South Wales
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Abstract

In this paper, I will defend Paul Feyerabend's claim—that there are some scientific theories that cannot be refuted unless one of their rivals is first confirmed—by criticizing Ronald Laymon's well-known attack on Feyerabend's claim. In particular, I will argue both that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was not refuted before the Kinetic Theory's predictions were confirmed, and that it could not have been refuted without the confirmation of the remarkable predictions of some rival theory.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 415 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank the anonymous referee who raised some important objections to an earlier version of this paper, and Karelyn Curran and Libi Nugent for typing the manuscript.

References

REFERENCES

Brush, S. (1976), The Kind of Motion We Call Heat, Book 2. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, P. (1981), Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laymon, R. (1977), “Feyerabend, Brownian Motion, and the Hiddenness of Refuting Facts”, Philosophy of Science 44: 225–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nye, M. (1972), Molecular Reality. London: Macdonald.Google Scholar
Poincaré, H. (1904), “The Principles of Mathematical Physics”, in H.J. Rogers (ed.), Congress of Art and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis 1904, Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, pp. 604–622.Google Scholar