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That's what Duhem-Quine thesis in the philosophy of sciences is. The thesis is that "it is impossible to test a hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical of
by raincom 6y ago
That's what Duhem-Quine thesis in the philosophy of sciences is. The thesis is that "it is impossible to test a hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical of the hypothesis requires one or more auxiliary/background assumptions/hypotheses".
- whatshisface 6y agoNot exactly. Analytic solutions to simple problems will produce as many predictions as you want from them, and you can test them in a year, two years, or a century from then. These highly approximated calculations, in contrast, will come out one way or the other, depending on how many of which terms you add (this is especially common in quantum chemistry) - and nobody will decide on the "right" way to choose terms until they have an experiment to compare it against. That means that they aren't predicting outcomes, they're rationalizing outcomes.
- raincom 6y agoOf course, that's how two rival paradigms(research programs) 'rationalize' their own testing/outcomes.