Abstract

This thesis looks at Duhem's work from the perspective of his commitment to making scientific growth rational and continuous and to applying the principle of logical unity, intra- as well as inter-theoretically in physical theory, toward accomplishing this goal. This commitment splits in two parts: the scientific and the metascientific. Scientifically, Duhem seeks to develop an adequate representation for axiomatizing thermodynamics according to potential theory and to use thermodynamics as the new unifying framework for all of physics. His metascientific program seeks to develop the philosophical and methodological requirements for constructing and critically evaluating epistemological conceptions of physical theory which are suitable for implementing his view of scientific growth. ;This thesis proposes an idealized and conjectural framework for articulating his system of philosophical assumptions, goals, values and methods. I call this framework Theory of Science and interpret it as a model of a synthesis of formal and historical approaches to scientific enterprise. ;Having reconstructed and presented an account of the general features and components of Duhem's Theory of Science, this thesis employs it to analyze and clarify several issues of his metascientific program: scientific rationality, scientific change, and the theory of progress. In this context, it is found that Duhem's Theory of Science develops from the assumption of the insufficiency of logical criticism and experimental method, and therefore from the need to appeal to transcendental assumptions and historical critique in order to adequately appraise the problem of scientific rationality. This thesis argues that Duhem's Theory of Science develops a middle ground epistemological conception of physical theory between the foundationalist and the relativist views, a middle ground conception of logical unification/reduction of physical theories between the monistic and the relativist/pluralist views of unification, and a convergence theory of truth as central for his view of scientific growth. In this task, this thesis seeks to clarify some of the philosophical misunderstanding committed--because Duhem's Theory of Science has been grossly neglected by his commentators--against his conception of theoretical physics and the history of science, such as the interpretation of them conventionalistically/pragmatistically and the interpretation of his theory of concept-formation operationalistically