Falsification and grünbaum's Duhemian theses

Synthese 82 (1):23 - 52 (1990)
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Abstract

This paper is a detailed critical study of Adolf Grünbaum's work on the Duhemian thesis. I show that (a) Grünbaum's geometrical counterexample to the (D1) subthesis is unsuccessful, even with minimal claims made for what the counterexample is supposed to show, and (b) the (D2) subthesis is not a reasonable one (and cannot correctly be attributed to Duhem). The paper concludes with an argument about the relation between the Duhemian thesis, concerning component hypotheses of a scientific theory, and the view that it is impossible to falsify entire theories conclusively.

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Arthur Millman
University of Massachusetts, Boston

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References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas Samuel Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Otto Neurath.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
The logic of scientific discovery.Karl Raimund Popper - 1934 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Hutchinson Publishing Group.
Criticism and the growth of knowledge.Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave (eds.) - 1970 - Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press.
The aim and structure of physical theory.Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem - 1954 - Princeton,: Princeton University Press.

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