Is Science Cumulative? a Physicist Viewpoint

Abstract

In view of the facts that when a recipe has been found working it will continue to work and that, in physics, the equations of superseded theories usually remain useful, the statement made by some epistemologists that science is not cumulative is difficult to understand. Some might try to relate its validity to a “principle” according to which, to be “really scientific” a theory must be such that the set of its basic laws does not explicitly refer to us and the predictions we issue. But it will be shown that if this principle is consistently adhered to quantum physics must be taken to be a non-scientific theory. Since this conclusion is absurd the “principle” should be rejected, and science viewed as cumulative.