Mariano Artigas understood scientific truth as real, but at the same time contextual and partial. Artigas shared some research interests and a general outlook with Pierre Duhem. We summarize the evaluation of Duhem’s thought by relevant authors and demonstrate how the way Artigas understood scientific truth in actual scientific research offers a suitable framework for capturing the realism towards which Duhem tended. This reading of Duhem runs counter to tendencies of the philosophy of science in Duhem’s time which employed expressions (...) that sometimes framed him as a conventionalist. (shrink)

This paper is intended to link the notion of bon sens with the Greek notion of noûs, that exposes the role played by the first notion in the thought of Pierre Duhem and explains the concept of noûs in the thought of Aristotle. Later, it attempts to carry out the explanation of the link that can have both notions.

Les origines de la statique, published in 1905 by physicist and historian of physical theories Pierre Duhem, offers not only a radically new interpretation of the history of statics but also represents a milestone in the methodology of history of science thanks to a particular form of historical reasoning as deployed by the author to justify his hypotheses. This article uses a quantitative analysis of the references contained in the book’s footnotes in order to study the way Duhem validated his (...) assertions. We highlight in particular his relentless will to return to the original texts. This method is one of the reasons why Duhem’s book (and more generally the Duhemian methodology) had such a lasting impact on French epistemology. (shrink)

(2005). Was Pierre Duhem a Precursor of Postmodernism? Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the french tradition issue editor: andrew aitken, pp. 27-38.

One of the difficulties facing the philosopher of science today is the divide between historical epistemology and analytic philosophy of science. For over half a century these two traditions have followed independent and divergent paths. Historical epistemology, which originated in France in the early twentieth century, has recently been reformulated by a number of scholars such as Lorraine Daston, Ian Hacking, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Elaborating novel historical methods, they seek to provide answers to major questions in the field. In the (...) light of this situation, my article examines the cultural barrier that explains the uneasy relationship between the two traditions. This barrier hinges on a number of factors—institutional, political and social—that are bound up with the philosophical issues in question. By resorting both to historical study and logical analysis, the new historical epistemology incites us to move beyond a rather sterile antagonism. (shrink)

Duhem first expounds the holistic thesis, according to which an experimental test always involves several hypotheses, in articles dating from the 1890s. Poincaré's analysis of a recent experiment in optics provides the incentive, but Duhem generalizes this analysis and develops a highly original methodological position. He is led to reject inductivism. I will endeavor to show the crucial role history of science comes to play in the development of Duhem's holism.

Contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is defined by its relativist trend. Its programme often calls for the support of philosophers, such as Duhem, Quine, and Wittgenstein. A critical re-reading of key texts shows that the main principles of relativism are only derivable with difficulty. The thesis of the underdetermination of theory doesn't forbid that Duhem, in many places, validates a correspondence-consistency theory of truth. He never said that social beliefs and interests fill the lack of underdetermination. Quine's idea of (...) a selective revision of hypotheses, as well as the neat incompatibility between holism and conventionalism, openly challenges the principles of relativism. Wittgenstein's work, which is not presented in book-form but rather as a tree, forces us to avoid aphoristic choices that credit any text-excising. This remark allows us to tackle the passages that sociological relativism is based on.Mathematical conventions are not anthropological objects. When Wittgenstein examines the "language-games," he only speaks of the functioning of natural language, not to be confused with scientific formal languages. We then should render the formula "language-game" by "well-defined, explicit and compulsory rules of communication", which is a much less attractive formula for relativism. Consequently, there does not exist a real continuity between the epistemologies of Duhem, Quine and Wittgenstein, and the recent works of the SSK. (shrink)