Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T21:04:01.862Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prediction, Accommodation, and the Logic of Discovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Patrick Maher
Patrick Maher*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is widely believed that if a piece of evidence for a theory was known at the time the theory was proposed, then it does not confirm the theory as strongly as it would if the evidence had been discovered after the theory was proposed. I shall call this view the predictivist thesis. Those who have endorsed it include Leibniz (1678), Huygens (1690, preface), Whewell (1847 vol. 2, p. 64f.), Peirce (1883), Duhem (1914, ch. II, §5), Popper (1965, p. 241f.), Lakatos (1970, p. 123), and Kuhn (1977, p. 322). On the other hand, the thesis has been rejected by a number of philosophers, including Mill (1872 bk. III, ch. 14, §6), Keynes (1921, p. 305), Rosenkrantz (1977, p. 169f.), Horwich (1982, pp. 108-117) and Schlesinger (1987). Others, while not rejecting the predictivist thesis, nevertheless regard the justification of the thesis as problematic; these include Hempel (1966, p. 38) and Gardner (1982).

Type
Part IX. Interpreting Scientific Inference
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 272 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This paper was written during my tenure as a fellow with the Michigan Society of Fellows. It is based on research supported by the National Science Foundation under grant SES-8708168.

References

Campbell, R. and Vinci, T. (1982), “Why are Novel Predictions Important?”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63: 111–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, R. and Vinci, T. (1983), “Novel Confirmation”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34: 315–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duhem, P. (1914), La Théorie Physique: Son Objet, Sa Structure. Second edition. Paris: Marcel Rivière & Cie. Translated by Wiener, P.P. as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1954).Google Scholar
Gardner, M.R. (1982), “Predicting Novel Facts”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33: 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell-Mann, M. and Ne’eman, Y. (eds.) (1964), The Eightfold Way. New York and Amsterdam: W.A. Benjamin.Google Scholar
Hempel, C.G. (1966), Philosophy of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Horwich, P. (1982), Probability and Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huygens, C. (1690), Traite de la Lumiere. Leiden: Pierre vander Aa. Translated by Thompson, S.P. as Treatise on Light, London: Macmillan (1912).Google Scholar
Ihde, A.J. (1964), The Development of Modern Chemistry. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Kelly, K.T. (1987), “The Logic of Discovery”, Philosophy of Science 54: 435–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keynes, J.M. (1921), A Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T.S. (1977), The Essential Tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1970), “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”, in (Lakatos and Musgrave 1970, pp. 91-196).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds.) (1970), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. London: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, G.W. (1678), “Letter to Herman Conring”, in (Leibniz 1969, pp. 186-191).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, G.W. (1969), Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. Loemker, L.E. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Mill, J.S. (1872), A System of Logic. Eighth edition. London: Longmans, Green and Co..Google Scholar
Peirce, C.S. (1883), “A Theory of Probable Inference”, in (Peirce 1883, pp. 126-181).Google Scholar
Peirce, C.S. (ed.) (1883), Studies in Logic. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Popper, K.R. (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Popper, K.R. (1965), Conjectures and Refutations. Second edition. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Rosenkrantz, R.D. (1977), Inference, Method and Decision. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, G.N. (1987), “Accommodation and Prediction”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65: 33–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H.A. (1955), “Prediction and Hindsight as Confirmatory Evidence”, Philosophy of Science 22: 227–230. Reprinted in Simon (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H.A. (1977), Models of Discovery. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whewell, W. (1847), The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Second edition. London: Parker.Google Scholar