In his 1906 treatise, physicist and philosopher Pierre Duhem articulated what later became known as the underdetermination of physical theory by empirical evidence: because an experimental test of a physical hypothesis necessarily relies upon a dense network of auxiliary assumptions—including the reliability of measuring instruments and the validity of background theoretical principles—an experimental anomaly cannot decisively falsify an isolated hypothesis in physics. Rather, the physicist can deduce only that at least one proposition within the interconnected theoretical cluster is defective, leaving open the choice of which component to revise. Crucially, however, Duhem maintained that this holism was fundamentally domain-specific. Distinguishing physical science from disciplines such as physiology and chemistry, he argued that while physiological experiments can often test discrete, isolated hypotheses directly because biological concepts are grounded in direct qualitative observation rather than abstract mathematical systems, physical hypotheses are inextricably bound to mathematical models that cannot be decoupled from their theoretical scaffolding.
Decades later, W.V.O. Quine radicalized Duhem's thesis into a universal semantic holism. Where Duhem restricted holism to mathematical physics and preserved a sharp demarcation between empirical hypotheses and the foundational rules of formal logic and mathematics, Quine posited that our entire body of knowledge forms an interconnected 'web of belief' whose boundary conditions are experience. In Quine's view, no discipline is immune to underdetermination; confronted with recalcitrant experience, any statement—even the seemingly inviolable laws of arithmetic or classical logic—can be revised to preserve experiential coherence, just as any statement can be held true come what may if sufficiently drastic adjustments are made elsewhere in the web. Consequently, Quine rejected Duhem's epistemological exceptionalism for physiology, as well as the classical positivist division between analytic statements (grounded purely in linguistic meaning) and synthetic statements (grounded in empirical fact).
Based on the passage, which of the following statements can be logically inferred regarding the views of Duhem and Quine? (Select all that apply.)
- Duhem would view altering the foundational rules of mathematics to accommodate an anomalous physical observation as an illegitimate application of holism.Answer
- Quine would accept that an unexpected result in a physiological experiment could, in principle, motivate an adjustment to the principles of formal logic.Answer
- CDuhem held that chemical hypotheses rely on direct qualitative observation to a significantly greater extent than physiological hypotheses do.
- DQuine maintained that working scientists abandon mathematical axioms in response to unexpected data more frequently than they abandon empirical hypotheses.
- EQuine believed that physiological experiments are capable of isolating individual empirical claims without implicating broader theoretical networks.