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Sherlock Holmes, Galileo, and the Missing History of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Neil Thomason
Neil Thomason*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

Much of the history of science is missing much of the time. The missing history I have in mind is not missing because of lost documents or state secrecy. Nor is it missing because it is obscure. I am talking about central episodes in the history of science and absolutely central issues in the logical structure and evidential support of those episodes. In fact, the episodes are so central and well known, and the missing history (once seen) so obvious, that one feels compelled to hold that there must be a widespread systematic bias among historians and philosophers against seeing certain explanatory patterns.

My explanation for this missing history of science is that there is a strong tendency among historians and philosophers of science toward what I will call “Psychological Predictivism” to distinguish it from “Logical Predictivism.” Logical Predictivism is the position that, if an observed phenomenon provides good evidence for a hypothesis, then that hypothesis (plus unproblematic auxiliary hypotheses), predicts the phenomenon.

Type
Part VIII. Historical Case Studies and Methodology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 323 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

This is an earlier version of a much modified (Thomason (forthcoming)). I am particularly grateful to Michael Ellis, Keith Hutchison, Ross Phillips, Brian Ellis, Len O'Neill, Martin Tamny, and the Victorian Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science.

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