Instrumental epistemology and the holistic view of science at Pierre Duhem

Abstract

The scientific and philosophical work of Pierre Duhem dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. Rational mechanics prevailed and seemed to rest on unshakable foundations. Pierre Duhem was among the first to understand some of the major challenges of themodynamics. He worked hard and linked scientific research to the history of philosophy. Duhem adhered to scientific positivism, and in his opinion, science should be limited to presenting empirical laws, and the subject Mattar of science is formed by linking abstract, rational representation _theory_ with experimentally proven hypotheses. However, this is an unrealistic position with regard to theories that should be satisfied with the interpretation of facts, and we will find that Duhem pushes positivism to an extreme position called instrumentalism and it is not possible to judge a hypothesis in isolation from its theoretical context, which can be managed in the case of implement. Rather, it is the theoretical basis to which the hypothesis belong and depends on it. However, according to the theoretical, this applies to its theory. Also, we find Duhem often denouncing the mistake of assimilating scientific experience, especially in the field of physical sciences. Scientific experience is not part of the interpretation that theory, and it is far from ordinary experience. So Duhem begins to Trans form the charateristic notion of positivism in order to theory. Duhem stated the physical experiment is not just an observation of a phenomenon. He describes the laboratory experiment from a realistic perspective and explains the huge distances between observation this distance. Duhem concluded that the physical experminat is the accurate o serrations of a group of phenomena, accompanied by the interpretation of these phenomena; This interpretation replaces the concrete empirical data already gathered by observation with abstract and symbolic representations that corresponding to them by virtue of the physical theories accepted by an observer.Duhem does not adhere to the way that science boils down to the mathematiczation of nature and defends that science boils down to the deductive method against science which claims to be inductive. It is based on the apparent difference between exact mathematics and observations that are often seen by mistrust and show that the relationship between reality and mathematical language is complex.