Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:06:59.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Duhem, Quine and a New Empiricism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Extract

As in the case of great books in all branches of philosophy, Pierre Duhem's Le Théorie Physique, first published in 1906, can be looked to as the progenitor of many different and even conflicting currents in subsequent philosophy of science. On a superficial reading, it seems to be an expression of what later came to be called deductivist and instrumentalist analyses of scientific theory. Duhem's very definition of physical theory, put forward early in the book, is the quintessence of instrumentalism:

A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible a set of experimental laws [p. 19].

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1969

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

REFERENCES

Chomsky, N., ‘Quine's empirical assumptions’, in Synthese (1968) 19, 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duhem, P., The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton, N.J., 1906; trans. Wiener, Oxford, 1954).Google Scholar
Feyerabend, P. K., ‘Explanation, reduction and empiricism’, in Minnesota Studies, iii, ed. Feigl, H. and Maxwell, G. (Minneapolis, 1962) p. 28.Google Scholar
Grunbaum, A., Philosophical Problem of Space and Time (New York, 1963).Google Scholar
Grunbaum, A., ‘The falsifiability of a component of a theoretical system’, in Mind, Matter, and Method, ed. Feyerabend, P. K. and Maxwell, G. (Minneapolis, 1966) p. 273.Google Scholar
Hanson, N. R., Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge, 1958).Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962).Google Scholar
Popper, K. R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959).Google Scholar
Popper, K. R., Conjectures and Refutations (London, 1963).Google Scholar
Quine, W. v. O., From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass., 1953).Google Scholar
Quine, W. v. O., Word and Object (New York, 1960).Google Scholar
Quine, W. v. O., ‘Replies’, in Synthese (1968) 19, 264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, I., Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis, 1967).Google Scholar