Abstract
Newton taught us how to deduce’ a theory from the phenomena, an explanans from one or more of its own explananda, by adding suitable higher level theoretical constraints, such as his own laws of motion. I have demonstrated elsewhere, Dorling (1970, 1973, 1974), that such a form of argument is logically perfectly respectable within first-order predicate logic with identity, and that arguments of this form played a major role in physical discovery in the centuries following Newton.
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Dorling, J. (1995). Einstein’s Methodology of Discovery was Newtonian Deduction from the Phenomena. In: Leplin, J. (eds) The Creation of Ideas in Physics. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 55. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0037-3_6
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