Talk:Pierre Duhem

Untitled
This intense religious devotion, combined with a sometimes disagreeable personality, earned him some enemies and he remains relatively obscure for this to today.

The end of the phrase seems somewhat POV to me. Maybe we need a citation here. --Leinad-Z 21:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It probably does need rephrased. I'll think on it.--T. Anthony 15:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Terrible Biography
I removed all of the biography because no sources were quoted and there was a somewhat contradictory biography on the French wikipedia article that can be found here. Needless to say, its expansion box was overlapping with the infobox I added to the right of the page, making the article look aesthetically displeasing too. Hence I decided to remove the biography altogether.

I don't know too much about his life though, so if someone else could write the biography, that would be grand. Also, does anyone know who his influences were and who he influenced? It's not too important of a question, but it will make the infobox appear more complete. --Le vin blanc 16:41, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Confused and confusing
This sentence from the lead paragraph:

In this work he refuted the inductivist claim of Newton and notes that the Principia's law of universal mutual gravitation was deduced from 'phenomena', including Kepler's second and third laws, already refuted by the critical proof-analyses of the German logician Leibniz and then most famously by Kant, following Hume's logical critique of induction.

is perhaps the worst sentence I've ever read. I really don't know where to start. I defy anyone to find an undergraduate who could make a definitely true inference from it (e.g. "the law of gravity must be wrong" or "induction doesn't work"?)

But the next paragraph provides a clue:

As such, the Quine-Duhem thesis is often held to be a refutation of the use of Popper's criterion of falsification as a reliable means of distinguishing science from pseudoscience

"Often held" by whom? This article is a muddled presentation of a muddled (OR) interpretation of someone who, I suspect, deserves much better. Pete St.John (talk) 16:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks to ScienceApologist for recent changes. Many little things (like "oppose" instead of "refute") can make a big difference; so at least we hope. Pete St.John (talk) 18:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Category: Thermodynamicist
There appears a list of thermodynamicists, built from 'categories' in biographies. Perhaps someone knows how to add Pierre Duhem to this list. Thanks. Geologist (talk) 22:30, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Duhem was a Scientist of the Highest Possible Caliber
Upon reading this biography, it actually shocked me. Though only a geologist, I've read two of Duhem's works in thermodynamics, and one on the philosophy of science. Duhem was a scientist of the highest caliber, whose name is spread throughout equations from mathematical physics to chemical engineering. (He truly understood Gibbs, and his works are a delight to read.) Perhaps a physicist could rewrite this article.

Scientists remember Duhem's philosophy for his calm, convincing explanation of why one failed prediction does not overthrow a theory, in contradiction to Popper's principal thesis. Some remarks in this article I vaguely recognize from a book on the structure of science. However, they were presented there as small, personal opinions of his; sentences in his writing presented here in jargon are out of context and, in my opinion, inflated away out of proportion.

Pierre Duhem was out of history's most brilliant scientists. To us, his philosophy is of almost trivial interest. Most scientists aren't aware of his contributions to early scientific history. Scientists are as religious as anyone else, and Duhem's 'catholicism' (though often mentioned) had no effect whatever upon his science, where his famous contributions lay.

Just an opinion. Geologist (talk) 23:27, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Duhem-Quine thesis
Duhem-Quine thesis seems to be something distinct from confirmation holism. I am not sure why the former is redirected to the latter. Tkuvho (talk) 10:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Electrons
I think that Duhem was also sceptical about the existence of electrons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.237.209 (talk) 12:48, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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