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The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation

Weber, Marcel

In: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2009, vol. 60, no. 1, p. 19-49

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    Title
    • The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation
    Author
    • Weber, Marcel. Science Studies Program and Department of Philosophy, University of Basel, Missionsstrasse 21, 4003, Basel, Switzerland
    Document Type
    • Postprint
    Language
    • English
    Published in
    • The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2009, vol. 60, no. 1, p. 19-49. Oxford University Press
    Other Version
    Classification
    • Philosophy
    OAI-PMH Identifier
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:299958
    Summary
    Going back at least to Duhem, there is a tradition of thinking that crucial experiments are impossible in science. I analyse Duhem's arguments and show that they are based on the excessively strong assumption that only deductive reasoning is permissible in experimental science. This opens the possibility that some principle of inductive inference could provide a sufficient reason for preferring one among a group of hypotheses on the basis of an appropriately controlled experiment. To be sure, there are analogues to Duhem's problems that pertain to inductive inference. Using a famous experiment from the history of molecular biology as an example, I show that an experimentalist version of inference to the best explanation (IBE) does a better job in handling these problems than other accounts of scientific inference. Furthermore, I introduce a concept of experimental mechanism and show that it can guide inferences from data within an IBE-based framework for induction. Introduction Duhem on the Logic of Crucial Experiments ‘The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology' Why Not Simple Elimination? Severe Testing An Experimentalist Version of IBE 6.1Physiological and experimental mechanisms 6.2Explaining the data 6.3IBE and the problem of untested auxiliaries 6.4IBE-turtles all the way down Van Fraassen's ‘Bad Lot' Argument IBE and Bayesianism Conclusions