The Falsifiability of Theories: Total or Partial? A Contemporary Evaluation of the Duhem-Quine Thesis

Abstract

Chapter examines the claim, promulgated by F.S.C. Northrop in the 1940s, that there is an important asymmetry between the verification and the refutation of empirical hypotheses in the sense that refutation is thought to be conclusive or decisive, while verification is held to be irremediably inconclusive. Duhem, however, and later Quine, contested this claim and argued that a given observational consequence is not deduced from the corresponding empirical hypothesis alone but rather from the conjunction of this hypothesis and the relevant body of auxiliary assumptions. Grünbaum, in contrast, shows that this contention is untenable when taken non-trivially.