Pierre Duhem
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Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (10 June 1861 – 14 September 1916) French physicist and philosopher of science. At 11 he entered the College Stanislavs and in 1884 he published his first paper which was on electrochemical cells.
Philosophy
Duhem adopted an instrumentalist view of science. He gave his name to the Quine-Duhem thesis, which holds that for any given set of observations there are an innumerably large number of explanations. Thus empirical evidence cannot force the revision of a theory.
It should be cleared up, however, that as popular as the Duhem-Quine thesis may be in the philosophy of science, in reality Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine stated very different theses. Pierre Duhem believed that only in the field of Physics we cannot refute a single individual hypothesis, but a whole theoretical group. He says in no uncertain terms that experimental theory in Physics is not the same as in the case of fields like physiology and certain branches of chemistry. Also Duhem's conception of theoretical group has its limits, since it not all concepts are connected to each other logically. He did not include at all a priori disciplines such as logic and mathematics within these theoretical groups in Physics which can be tested experimentally. Quine, on the other hand, conceived this theoretical group as a unit of a whole human knowledge. Even mathematics and logic can be revised in light of recalcitrant experience, a statement that Duhem never held.
Other works
Duhem is also known for his work in thermodynamics, being in part responsible for the development of what is known as the Gibbs-Duhem relation.
He is also known for much work on the history of science in the Medieval period. This revolved most around the period in Europe from 1200 to the Reformation. This related to his strong Catholic faith as he wished to show the Church had been a positive force on the history of science. He therefore faced some criticism of bias. This criticism had non-religious grounds too as he tended to have a dismissive view of British science as "broad and shallow."
Bibliography
- Les théories de la chaleur (1895)
- Le mixte et la combinaison chimique. Essai sur l'évolution d'une idée (1902)
- L'évolution de la mécanique (1902)
- Les origines de la statique (1903)
- La théorie physique son objet et sa structure (1906)
- Sozein ta phainomena. Essai sur la Notion de Théorie physique de Platon à Galilée (1908)
- Traité de l'énergétique (1911)
- Le Système du Monde. Histoire des Doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, 10 vols., (1913—1959)
References
- Lowinger, Armand, The Methodology of Pierre Duhem Columbia University Press, 1941
- Martin, R. N. D., Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and History in the Work of a Believing Physicist, 1991
- Stoffel, Jean-François, Pierre Duhem et ses doctorands: bibliographie de la littérature primaire et secondaire, Turnhout: Brepols, 1996, 325 p.
- Stoffel, Jean-François, Le phénoménalisme problématique de Pierre Duhem, Bruxelles, Académie royale de Belgique, 2002, 391 p.
See also
- Clausius-Duhem inequality
External links
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