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A Heuristic for Conceptual Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Frank Arntzenius
Frank Arntzenius*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of Southern California
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Abstract

One of our more fundamental beliefs is that causal chains are continuous in time: we believe that every influence from the past upon the future runs through the present. I argue that this tenet, given certain data, can force conceptual changes upon us. I attempt to formulate a heuristic for discovery, based as explicitly as possible upon this tenet, and illustrate it by means of several examples, one of which is Mendel's discovery of genes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 357 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1995

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Footnotes

†

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, 3709 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451.

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