Pierre Duhem’s Followers (18)

Pierre Duhem

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Philosophy, Science, History

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Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (French: [pjɛʁ moʁis maʁi dy.ɛm] was a French physicist, mathematician, historian and philosopher of science. He is best known for his work on chemical thermodynamics, for his philosophical writings on the indeterminacy of experimental criteria, and for his historical research into the science of the European Middle Ages. As a scientist, Duhem also contributed to hydrodynamics and to the theory of elasticity.

Duhem's views on the philosophy of science are explicated in his 1906 work The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. In this work, he opposed Newton's statement that the Principia's law of universal mutual gravitation was deduced from 'phenomena', including Kepler's second and third laws. Newton's claims in th Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (French: [pjɛʁ moʁis maʁi dy.ɛm] was a French physicist, mathematician, historian and philosopher of science. He is best known for his work on chemical thermodynamics, for his philosophical writings on the indeterminacy of experimental criteria, and for his historical research into the science of the European Middle Ages. As a scientist, Duhem also contributed to hydrodynamics and to the theory of elasticity.

Duhem's views on the philosophy of science are explicated in his 1906 work The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. In this work, he opposed Newton's statement that the Principia's law of universal mutual gravitation was deduced from 'phenomena', including Kepler's second and third laws. Newton's claims in this regard had already been attacked by critical proof-analyses of the German logician Leibniz and then most famously by Immanuel Kant, following Hume's logical critique of induction. But the novelty of Duhem's work was his proposal that Newton's theory of universal mutual gravity flatly contradicted Kepler's Laws of planetary motion because the interplanetary mutual gravitational perturbations caused deviations from Keplerian orbits. Since no proposition can be validly logically deduced from any it contradicts, according to Duhem, Newton must not have logically deduced his law of gravitation directly from Kepler's Laws.

Duhem's name is given to the under-determination or Duhem–Quine thesis, which holds that for any given set of observations there is an innumerable large number of explanations. It is, in essence, the same as Hume's critique of induction: all three variants point to the fact that empirical evidence cannot force the choice of a theory or its revision. Possible alternatives to induction are Duhem's instrumentalism and Popper's thesis that we learn from falsification.

As popular as the Duhem–Quine thesis may be in the philosophy of science, in reality, Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine stated very different theses. Pierre Duhem believed that experimental theory in physics is fundamentally different from fields like physiology and certain branches of chemistry. Also, Duhem's conception of the theoretical group has its limits, since not all concepts are connected to each other logically. He did not include at all a priori disciplines such as logic and mathematics within these theoretical groups in physics which can be tested experimentally. Quine, on the other hand, conceived this theoretical group as a unit of a whole human knowledge. To Quine, even mathematics and logic must be revised in light of recalcitrant experience, a thesis that Duhem never held.

A quote of Duhem on physics:

A theory of physics is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which have for their aim to represent as simply, as completely and as exactly as possible, a group of experimental laws. ...more

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Average rating: 4.24 · 152 ratings · 12 reviews · 123 distinct works

	The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory 4.34 avg rating — 61 ratings — published 1906 — 46 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo by Pierre Duhem, Edmund Doland (Translator), Chaninah Maschler (Translator) 4.03 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 1908 — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds by Pierre Duhem, Roger Ariew (Editor) 4.41 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1985 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science 4.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1996 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	مصادر الفلسفة العربية by Pierre Duhem, أبو يعرب المرزوقي (Translator) 4.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2005	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History of Physics before Einstein 3.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Evolution of Mechanics really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1980 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mixture and Chemical Combination: And Related Essays (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 223) by Pierre Duhem, Paul Needham (Translator) liked it 3.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2002 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Le système du monde I: La cosmologie hellénique 1, tome 1 (HR.HORS COLLEC.) 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1997 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Le système du monde II: La cosmologie hellénique 2, tome 2 (HR.HORS COLLEC.) 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1965 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Pierre Duhem (?)

“A physicist decides to demonstrate the inaccuracy of a proposition; in order to deduce from this proposition the prediction of a phenomenon and institute the experiment which is to show whether this phenomenon is or is not produced, in order to interpret the results of this experiment and establish that the predicted phenomenon is not produced, he does not confine himself to making use of the proposition in question; he makes use also of a whole group of theories accepted by him as beyond dispute. The prediction of the phenomenon, whose nonproduction is to cut off debate, does not derive from the proposition challenged if taken by itself, but from the proposition at issue joined to that whole group of theories; if the predicted phenomenon is not produced, the only thing the experiment teaches us is that among the propositions used to predict the phenomenon and to establish whether it would be produced, there is at least one error; but where this error lies is just what it does not tell us... In sum, the physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses; when the experiment is in disagreement with his predictions, what he learns is that at least one of the hypotheses constituting this group is unacceptable and ought to be modified; but the experiment does not designate which one should be changed.”
― Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory

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Pierre Duhem’s Followers (18)

Pierre Duhem

Combine EditionsPierre Duhem’s books

Combine Editions
Pierre Duhem’s books