The Duhem-Quine Thesis Reconsidered

The high point of the falsification of physical theories in a standard view of the philosophy of science is the so-called crucial experiment. This experiment is a kind of manipulated empirical test, which provides the criterion for distinguishing between two rival hypotheses, where one is an acceptable theory due to passing the test, and the other turns out to be an unacceptable theory as it does not pass the test. The crucial experiment was supposed to play a significant role because, in virtue of an empirical disconfirmation of one theory, the experiment was assumed to confirm the other as true. However, in 1906, in La théorie physique, son object et la structure (hereafter quoted in English translation as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906/1954)), Pierre Duhem famously argued against this view and stated that crucial experiments in physics are impossible as they are necessarily ambiguous and logically incomplete. His contention rested on the claim that, “[a] physical theory is not an explanation [of true reality in itself in virtue of some broad metaphysical ramification of physics]. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply, as completely, and as accurately as possible a set of experimental laws” (ibid., p. 19). Furthermore, different theories could be equally suitable to represent a given group of experimental laws. And, assuming holism, no hypothesis could be tested in isolation, but merely as a part of a set of an entire scientific theory. The problem which Duhem identified in 1906 was slightly overshadowed and neglected in mainstream philosophy of science until the appearance of a challenging paper by Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951 and entitled “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Quine’s paper caused a revival of interest in Duhem’s original formulation and gave a new impulse towards the problem in the form of the so-called Duhem-Quine thesis. The aim of this paper is to reconsider whether Duhem was right to argue that there are no crucial experiments in physics. In order to assess the validity of the thesis, first, this paper makes an exposition of Duhem’s arguments in their favour, and analyses the major criticisms of this position offered in the subject-literature of Adolf Grünbaum, who explicitly attacked the arguments for the thesis as inconclusive and false. Then, this paper presents possible modes of defence of the Duhem-Quine thesis and argues that the original formulation of the thesis is well qualified and plausible. Finally, this paper offers a pragmatic interpretation of the theory choice.

Perception and Past Experience 50 Years After Kanizsa’s (Im)possible Experiment

In the revolutionary year 1968, the Institute of Psychology of the University of Trieste directed by Gaetano Kanizsa published a collective volume to celebrate the 70th birthday of Cesare L. Musatti. Kanizsa devoted the opening article to the empirical refutation of an argument developed by Musatti in Structure and experience in perceptual phenomenology. Musatti held that the debate between rationalist and empiricist theories of perception was not scientific, since a crucial experiment on the role of past experience is—in principle—impossible. Besides rejecting his mentor’s argument on logical grounds, Kanizsa produced a parade of visual effects to demonstrate that in several conditions (involving object formation and camouflage, Petter’s rule, phenomenal transparency, shape recognition, motion organization) actual perception violates expectations based on familiarity with specific objects. The empirical refutation of expectations based on past experience was recurrent in Kanizsa’s subsequent production and represents a lively topic of current perceptual science, though Musatti’s smile is still here.

The Troubles with (As-Is) Consciousness Science

A fully-functioning consciousness science is vital for humankind's navigation of the 21st century. Unfortunately the field currently has a number of significant dysfunctions. Fortunately, they're all eminently fixable! However, there's very little attention currently either to the deep roots of problems, or to fixes. Notably, there's a crucial experiment that needs to be done, if we're to have any kind of scientific approach to conscious experience ... This Chapter ends with an explicit strategy for engaging with, and transforming, the current field. [Chapter 3 from 'The Science We Need - One Experiment to Change the World'.]

Epilogue

The virtues of the profession of engineering are extolled. The views of one of the greatest electrical engineers (Rudolf Kompfner) of the last century are quoted as follows: “The feeling one experiences when he obtains a new important insight when a crucial experiment works, when an idea begins to grow and bear fruit, these mental states are indescribably beautiful and exciting. Nomaterial reward can produce effects even distantly approaching them. Yet another benefit is that an inventor can never be bored. There is no time when I cannot think of a variety of problems. All waiting to be speculated about, perhaps tackled, perhaps solved. All one has to do is to ask the questions, why? How? And not be content with the easy, the superficial answer.”

Crucial experiments

A ‘crucial experiment’ allegedly establishes the truth of one of a set of competing theories. Francis Bacon (1620) held that such experiments are frequent in the empirical sciences and are particularly important for terminating an investigation. These claims were denied by Pierre Duhem (1905), who maintained that crucial experiments are impossible in the physical sciences because they require a complete enumeration of all possible theories to explain a phenomenon – something that cannot be achieved. Despite Duhem, scientists frequently regard certain experiments as crucial in the sense that the experimental result helps make one theory among a set of competitors very probable and the others very improbable, given what is currently known.

Toward a history of explanation in science communication: the case of Madame Wu experiment on parity violation

By focusing on a specific episode of 20th Century physics — the discovery of parity violation in 1957 — the paper presents a study of the types of explanations of the crucial experiment as they are found in different editorial categories: a peer-review journal, a popular science book, an encyclopedia and a newspaper articles. The study provides a fine-grained description of the mechanism of the explanation as elaborated in non-specialist accounts of the experiment and identifies original, key-explanatory elements which characterize them. In so doing, the paper presents a reflection on the processes of transformation and adaptation implied by the circulation of knowledge — which features as a productive process in its own right — and shows which further insights a focus on explanation can offer to the current historical researches on science communication.