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Duhem, Quine and a New Empiricism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Mary Hesse
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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
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 3: Knowledge and Necessity , March 1969 , pp. 191 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1969

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References

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