lecture six

Question 1

The Duhem/Quine thesis

Answer 1

• a theory cannot be conclusively falsified, because we cannot rule
out that some part of the test situation, other than the theory
under test, is responsible for a false prediction

Question 2

Incommensurability, who made it?

Answer 2

• scientific paradigms are radically different, and cannot be
compared with each other
• Kuhn discusses three types of incommensurability

Question 3

what are the three types of incommensurability?

Answer 3

1) observational: observation is theory-laden and therefore you
cannot use observation as a common ground to compare
different theories.
2) semantic: the language of one paradigm cannot be translated
into that of another paradigm and this makes it very difficult to
compare different theories (e.g., mass in Newtonian and
Einsteinian physics
3) methodological: the methods to evaluate and compare results
are different between paradigms, and proponents of rvial
paradigms do not agree on which problems are important to
solve

Question 4

what is the primacy of significance thresholds?

Answer 4

• it is absurd to conclude one thing if the result of an experiment gives p
= 0.051 and the exact opposite if it were 0.049.