Abstract
The goal and the proudest achievement of basic scientific inquiry is the construction of comprehensive theories which enable us to understand large sectors of the world, to predict, to retrodict, to explain what occurs in them. Any theory, however far-reaching and successful, eventually proves wanting in some respects and comes to be replaced by a superior alternative. The search of basic science is unending.
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References
See R. Carnap, “The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts,” in The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, ed. H. Feigl and M. Scriven, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965, pp. 38–76.
G. Holton, The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies, “Subelectrons, Presuppositions, and the Millikan-Ehrenhaft Dispute,” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 25–83 (cf. especially pp. 58–63).
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Hempel, C.G. (1988). Limits of a Deductive Construal of the Function of Scientific Theories. In: Ullmann-Margalit, E. (eds) Science in Reflection. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 110. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2957-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2957-9_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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