Philosophy Atlas

How Thinkers Disagree
Articles

Why Science Still Works Anyway

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
Why Science Still Works Anyway

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Hume's problem does not stop laboratories from running experiments, and it is worth asking why not, since nobody has actually solved it in the sense of supplying the demonstrative proof he showed was missing. Part of the answer is practical: a habit that has never once failed, however philosophically ungrounded, is still the only tool anyone has, and refusing to use it buys nothing, since the alternative is not a better method but no method at all. Part of the answer is a change of question. Twentieth century philosophy of science largely stopped trying to justify induction directly and asked instead whether science needs it at all. One influential answer holds that science does not confirm theories by accumulating supporting instances, the way induction is usually pictured, but by trying, honestly and severely, to refute them, keeping only the theories that survive serious attempts to break them. On this picture a theory is scientific not because enough sunrises have been observed to prove the next one, but because the theory forbids something, some observation that would count against it, and has been tested against that forbidden possibility and held up. This does not answer Hume's original question so much as route around it: a surviving theory is not proven true, only not yet shown false, which turns out to be a weaker and more honest thing to claim than proof ever was. Whether this fully escapes the problem, or only restates it one level up, since a theory's past survival is itself an inductive basis for trusting its future survival, is exactly the kind of question that keeps philosophy of science a live argument rather than a settled one.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. The Problem of InductionView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.