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

Abstract

It has been maintained that there is an important asymmetry between the verification and the refutation of a theory in empirical science. Refutation has been said to be conclusive or decisive while verification was claimed to be irremediably inconclusive in the following sense: If a theory T ₁ entails observational consequences O, then the truth of T ₁ does not, of course, follow deductively from the truth of the conjunction

$$ ({{T}_{1}} \to O) \cdot O $$

On the other hand, the falsity of T ₁ is indeed deductively inferable by modus tollens from the truth of the conjunction

$$ ({{T}_{1}} \to O) \cdot \sim O. $$

.

*Portions of the present essay are drawn from earlier publications by the author as follows: A. Grünbaum, The Duhemian Argument, Philosophy of Science 27 (1960) 75–87, and: Geometry, Chronometry and Empiricism, Section 7, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3 (ed. By H. Feigl and G. Maxwell), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962.