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Do the Successes of Technology Evidence the Truth of Theories?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
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Borrowing perhaps from mathematics, there is a custom of speaking of science as pure science and applied. Platonism, and other classical positions in the philosophy of mathematics, did not think of the applications of mathematics as a test of the truth of its theorems. 1 But the picture is otherwise for science and technology. It is initially tempting to say that the theories of pure science are empirical generalizations and that the applications of these theories in the makings and doings of technology, accordingly as they succeed or fail, test the theories. Qualifying factors and counter-acting causalities needing to be allowed for, falsification will not be immediate, but inexplicable and apparently irremediable technological failure is likely to be taken as falsifying a theory, and a continued and expanding pattern of technological achievement, a triumph of technology, as the superannuated trope has it, will be taken as a confirmation of a theory, from the inductivist perspective, adding in spadesful to the evidence for its truth.
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References
1 But emphatically these are not the only positions. See Ormell, C. (ed.), New Thinking about the Nature of Mathematics (Norwich: MAG-EDU University of East Anglia, 1992).Google Scholar
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