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The logic of scientific puzzles

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Summary

Puzzle-solving, like several other everyday activities, appears in a more sophisticated and ramified form in the realm of natural science. Improving on Thomas Kuhn's rudimentary account of puzzles in science, this paper formulates logical and functional criteria for the occurrence of scientific puzzles, and examines the two-fold nature of their solutions. Then, with the aid of erotetic logic, puzzle-posing questions are identified, their presuppositional relations to scientific theory and explanations are explored, and a new tool for history of science research (sub-puzzle analysis) is developed.

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Literatur

  1. E.g.,Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), vol. 8, p. 1660, ‘puzzle’ entry § 2, and etymology. Also cf. Webster'sNew International Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1960), p. 1925, ‘pose’ entry.

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  23. E. G., see Kuhn, SSR, p. 39.

  24. E.g., Carl Hempel,Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 246–247, and 334–335.

  25. Kuhn, SSR, p. 39.

  26. Sometimes this is presented in explanatory form, as e.g. in Newton's theoretical derivation—explanation of the velocity of sound in air as 979 ft/sec,Principia [Motte-Cajori trans.], vol. I, p. 378.

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  29. Cf. Charles Webster, “The Discovery of Boyle's Law”,Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 2 (1965), 474ff.

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  31. Boyle,New Experiments, p. 36.

  32. Boyle,New Experiments, p. 16.

  33. Boyle,Defense, p. 161.

  34. For a preliminary application to this problem see T. R. Girill, “The First Law of Elasticity”,American Journal of Physics, 40 (January, 1972), 16–20.

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Girill, T.R. The logic of scientific puzzles. Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 4, 25–40 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801063

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