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social science subjects > social research > philosophy and the social sciences > philosophy of science > duhem-quine thesis and the social sciences
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duhem-quine thesis and the social sciences  

Definition

  • The so-called Duhem-Quine thesis emerged in the context of Willard Van Orman Quine's challenge to logical positivism/empiricism, first published in his famous “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in 1951. This challenging thesis is called the Duhem-Quine thesis, not the Quine thesis, because Quine in footnotes attributes it to Pierre Duhem (1861–1916), a French theorist of thermodynamics with an in-depth knowledge of the history of science, who popularized the idea behind the thesis in the memorable phrase “saving the phenomena;” that is, any body of observable facts can be sustained by suitably adjusted rival explanations against possible counterexamples. [Source: Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences; Duhem-Quine Thesis and the Social Sciences]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/duhem-quine_thesis_and_the_social_sciences

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