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Pierre Duhem is Born
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem was born in Paris. His father was Pierre-Joseph Duhem, and his mother, Marie-Alexandrine Fabre. From age 7, Duhem was furnished an upstanding education on grammar, arithmetic, Latin, and catechism. -
Attends School
In 1882 Duhem enrolled at the secular school, Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. There he was in the top of his class in the sciences. When he graduated, he remained the top of his class in France. Duhem completed an unconventional 5th year at the school and, upon graduation, he was offered a position as a chemist-bacteriologist in Louis Pasteur's laboratory. Duhem's passion for theoretical physics caused him to decline this offer and continue to work in his field of choice, physics. -
Publishes The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory
As an experience French physicist and philosopher, Pierre Duhem, posited three major theses: Instrumentalism, the inderdetermination of theories by evidence, and confirmation holism. His theory was similar to Karl Popper's but came well before. His hypothesis was that no hypothesis could ever be tested in isolation, only in conjunction with a major theoretical hypothesis. His book on philosophy, and these thoughts was published in 1908. -
Critique of the Newtonian Method
In 1913, the essay Examen logique de la théorie physique, discuses Duhemian thesis and critiques the inductive method, known to him as the Newtonian Method. He states that one cannot hypothesize about imperceptible bodies and motion that cannot be seen. His claim was that only the observable can be truly hypothesized. He states that the Newtonian method can only be used when the means of knowing are common sense, and in some cases scientists can create hypotheses to disconfirm them as they want. -
Science is Just Theory
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Duhem's Death
In his lifetime, Duhem proved himself a valuable physicist and philosopher. He introduced the idea of falsification, and sought to spread the idea that nothing can truly be hypothesized that is not directly testable, and if it is it is merely a play on another larger theoretical hypothesis. Duhem died before finishing his final works, but his contribution to physics and philosophy will not be forgotten.
