| Subject: Duhem-Quine thoughts |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 12/21/02 3:54pm
Duhem-Quine is often cited as a refutation of the idea that science does not, as Karl Popper purported, hinge on the mechanism of falsification.
The thesis is often taken to mean that since no theory can in practice be tested without auxillary assumptions that the experimental hypothesis tested will generate a system of answers as opposed to a singular answer; for when one affirms the trueness of one statement, one also affirms the negative case of the same statement, along with a host of accompanying assumptions.
I believe the conflation of Duhem-Quine is a bit unfortunate, because it rather complicates two philosophies with subtle differences that make a large difference with regards to the claim that the mechanism of falsification is in error.
Duhem held that no one observation can make a theory obsolete or falsified; a person could be lying, not to mention a host of other paranoid-schizophrenic sorts of inclinations. This in itself is not a problem to falsification so far as science is concerned because when an experiment is falsified it is usually done by a community of people, not simply one person. Often these experiments are performed time and again to confirm their falseness.
Quine on the other hand, offered the conjecture that a theory can always be saved by so called ad hoc hypothesis. In other words, one can always offer some reason as to why data is a certain way, or isn't. The problem that Quine pins down is more of an existential problem that underlies all of reality; it is true that one can always question or explain away evidence, however, this is a problem with the nature of evidence in general. The end result is that no evidence is admissable if Quine is right, and there is no science. Clearly, something is lacking in this outlook, for certain things do seem to hold consistently as far as we can observe. If we are to admit Quine as a potential threat to Popper's mechanism of falsification, we must admit it to all situtations pertaining to empirical observation in some sort of Des Carteian world.
What Quine and Duhem have managed to do is to call into question where the boundary line of science can be drawn, for with the auxillary assumptions obliquely tested we have a situation in which falsification is demarcated at the line of a system of hypothesis. (virtually infintely many assumptions). Yet, I don't think Duhem Quine have managed to somehow completely annihilate the notion of falsification being unscientific with respect particularly to Quine. On the contrary, I find Duhem to be consistent with science, and I find Quine to be quite an untenable assumption in which everything in existence is called into doubt.
Damoclese
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