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Dynamics of Theory Change: The Role of Predictions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Stephen G. Brush
Stephen G. Brush*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
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Extract

“What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Senator Howard Baker, Watergate hearings, 1973

Why do scientists accept or reject theories? More specifically: why do they change from one theory to another? What is the role of empirical tests in the evaluation of theories?

This paper focuses on a narrowly-defined question: in judging theories, do scientists give greater weight (other things being equal) to successful novel predictions than to successful deductions of previously-known facts? The affirmative answer is called the “predictivist thesis” (Maher 1988).

It is primarily philosophers who are interested in this question, and they have treated it mostly as a normative or logical problem. Can the writings of historians of science tell us how scientists have treated novel predictions in the past? Until recently historians have rarely addressed this point.

Type
Part V. Do Explanations or Predictions (or Neither) Provide More Evidential Support for Scientific Theories?
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 132 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I thank Lindley Darden and Frederick Suppe for valuable criticism of earlier drafts; useful suggestions and comments have been received from Laurie Brown, David Cassidy, Max Jammer, Helge Kragh, Larry Laudan, Edward MacKinnon, Arthur Miller, Helmut Rechenberg, Eric Scerri, and Katherine Sopka. Louis Brown first called my attention to the significance of Mott scattering as a novel prediction of quantum mechanics.

My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the University of Maryland General Research Board.

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