Abstract

The Duhem-Quine thesis, associated with confirmatory holism, can be seen as a strong argument against the efficiency of crucial experiments and the falsificationist criteria and, consequently, the thesis would play an essential role in explaining the evolution of scientific theories. Another consideration, would question the degree of influence that the facts have in the process of contrastation, which is a criticism of the search for neutral sensitive data of theory as the ultimate basis of the statements with meaning. In the present essay we will expose some details of the thesis showing how it allows to go through several episodes of science and its philosophy and shed light on some of its problems.