The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation |
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| Authors: | Weber Marcel |
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| Institution: | Science Studies Program and Department of Philosophy, University of Basel, Missionsstrasse 21, 4003, Basel, Switzerland |
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| Abstract: | Going back at least to Duhem, there is a tradition of thinkingthat crucial experiments are impossible in science. I analyseDuhem's arguments and show that they are based on the excessivelystrong assumption that only deductive reasoning is permissiblein experimental science. This opens the possibility that someprinciple of inductive inference could provide a sufficientreason for preferring one among a group of hypotheses on thebasis of an appropriately controlled experiment. To be sure,there are analogues to Duhem's problems that pertain to inductiveinference. Using a famous experiment from the history of molecularbiology as an example, I show that an experimentalist versionof inference to the best explanation (IBE) does a better jobin handling these problems than other accounts of scientificinference. Furthermore, I introduce a concept of experimentalmechanism and show that it can guide inferences from data withinan IBE-based framework for induction. - Introduction
- Duhem onthe Logic of Crucial Experiments
- ‘The Most BeautifulExperiment in Biology’
- Why Not Simple Elimination?
- SevereTesting
- An Experimentalist Version of IBE
- 6.1 Physiologicaland experimentalmechanisms
- 6.2 Explaining the data
- 6.3IBE and the problemof untested auxiliaries
- 6.4 IBE-turtlesall the way down
- Van Fraassen's ‘Bad Lot’ Argument
- IBE and Bayesianism
- Conclusions
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