Duhem–Quine thesis

The view that hypotheses cannot be tested in isolation because predictions depend on auxiliary assumptions and background theories. A failed prediction therefore challenges a bundle of claims, not one hypothesis alone.

Pierre Duhem: A French physicist and philosopher who argued that experiments in physics test theoretical systems rather than isolated hypotheses. His analysis of physical experiments supplies the thesis’s original argument about interconnected assumptions.
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory: Pierre Duhem’s book arguing that physical theories organize laws and experiments without being reducible to isolated hypotheses. This work presents the argument that experiments test theoretical systems as wholes.
Naive falsificationism: The view that a single counterexample can straightforwardly refute a scientific theory. The thesis denies that a failed prediction identifies the theory alone as the source of error.
Neptune: The eighth planet from the Sun, discovered in 1846 after astronomers inferred its position from perturbations in Uranus’s orbit. Its prediction and observation illustrate how auxiliary assumptions can be adjusted successfully around a theory.
Theory choice: The process by which scientists decide among competing explanations of the same phenomena. If evidence tests bundles, scientists need grounds for choosing which parts to retain or revise.
Auxiliary hypothesis: An assumption used alongside a main hypothesis to derive testable predictions. Predictions depend on these additional assumptions as well as the hypothesis under test.
Willard Van Orman Quine: An American philosopher whose work challenged sharp boundaries between analytic truths, empirical claims, and scientific theories. Quine extended a related holism from physical theory to knowledge more broadly.
Karl Popper: An Austrian-British philosopher of science who made falsifiability central to his account of scientific testing. Popper’s emphasis on severe tests sharpens the question of what a failed experiment refutes.
Vulcan (hypothetical planet): A hypothetical planet once proposed to explain irregularities in Mercury’s orbit but never observed. The failed search shows how an auxiliary explanation can preserve a theory without resolving an anomaly.
Scientific realism: The view that successful scientific theories describe a mind-independent world, including unobservable entities. Holistic testing raises questions about how evidence warrants belief in particular theoretical claims.

Linked from 7 pages