The thesis that a scientific hypothesis cannot be tested in isolation, because any prediction drawn from it depends also on auxiliary assumptions, so that a failed prediction shows only that the hypothesis and its auxiliaries are not all true together, never which one to blame. Pierre Duhem argued this specifically for physical theory in 1906; Quine extended it in Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951) into the more sweeping claim that the whole of science faces the tribunal of experience as a corporate body, so that in principle any statement, even one of logic, can be held true come what may by making sufficiently drastic adjustments elsewhere in the system. The thesis is a central plank of underdetermination arguments in philosophy of science, though how far the Quinean extension should be pressed remains contested.
Facts
Origin YearQuine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951) gives the thesis its familiar name and its broadest form; Duhem's own 1906 La Theorie Physique gives the earlier, narrower physics-specific version. Connections
Associated With
Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951) extends Duhem's narrower 1906 physics-specific thesis into its familiar broad form.
Source Underdetermination of Scientific Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In Branch
Sources
1. Underdetermination of Scientific Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Underdetermination of Scientific Theory
At the heart of the underdetermination of scientific theory by evidence is the simple idea that the evidence available to us at a given time may be insufficient to determine what beliefs we should hold in response to it.
Underdetermination of Scientific Theory, on Duhem
The traditional locus classicus for underdetermination in science is the work of Pierre Duhem, a French physicist as well as historian and philosopher of science who lived at the turn of the 20th Century.
- Associated With: Willard Van Orman Quine
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