Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T22:19:43.211Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discussion on the D-Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

J. W. Swanson
J. W. Swanson*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

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

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

REFERENCES

[1] Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1947.Google Scholar
[2] Duhem, P., The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3] Grünbaum, A., “The Falsifiability of Theories: Total or Partial? A Contemporary Evolution of the Duhem-Quine Thesis.” Synthese, Vol. XIV, No. 1, (March, 1962), pp. 17–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[4] Grünbaum, A., “Geometry, Chronometry, and Empiricism,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III (eds. H. Feigl and G. Maxwell), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962.Google Scholar
[4a] Grünbaum, A., “The Falsifiability of a Component of a Theoretical System,” Mind, Matter, Method (eds. Feyerabend, and Maxwell, ), University of Minnesota, Press, 1966, pp. 273–305.Google Scholar
[5] Hempel, Carl., “The Theoreticians's Dilemma: A Study in the Logic of Theory Construction.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II (eds. H. Feigl and G. Maxwell), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1958.Google Scholar
[6] Herburt, G. K., “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 26 (1959), pp. 104–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[7] Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962.Google Scholar
[8] Martin, R. M., Toward a Systematic Pragmatics, North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1959.Google Scholar
[9] Martin, R. M., Truth and Denotation: A Study in Semantical Theory, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958.Google Scholar
[10] Mendelson, E., Introduction to Mathematical Logic, D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., Princeton, 1964.Google Scholar
[11] Pasch, A., Experience and the Analytic: A Reconsideration of Empiricism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958.Google Scholar
[12] Poincaré, H., The Foundations of Science, Science Press, Lancaster Pa., 1946.Google Scholar
[13] Price, D., Science Since Babylon, Yale University Press, New Heaven, 1961.Google Scholar
[14] Putnam, H., “The Analytic and the Synthetic.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III (eds. H. Feigl and G. Maxwell) University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962.Google Scholar
[15] Quine, W. V., From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1953.Google Scholar
[16] Quine, W. V., Methods of Logic, Henry Holt and Co., 1959.Google Scholar
[17] Quine, W. V., Word and Object, Technology Press and John Wiley, New York and London, 1960.Google Scholar
[18] Scheffler, I., The Anatomy of Inquiry, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1963.Google Scholar
[19] Tarski, A., Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965.Google Scholar