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Pierre Duhem is born
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem was born in Paris, in a modest neighborhood. His parents Pierre-Joseph and Marie-Alexandrine Fabre both of which shared a love of learning especially his father. -
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early education
Starting at the age of seven Pierre received private lessons in grammar, arithmetic, Latin and catechism. At the age of eleven he entered the College Stanislas, by 1882 he had finished his studies with honors in Latin, Greek, science, and mathematics.
Reference: History of Pierre Duhem. New World Encyclopedia March2019. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pierre_Duhem -
first paper published and submitted his docotral thesis
In 1884 Duhem enrolled in the Ecole Normale Superieure to study pure science this same year he published his first paper on electrochemical cells. He also submitted his doctoral thesis in this same year on thermodynamic potentials in physics and chemistry. -
Even though he was known as one of the origonal philosophers of science he never lost his passion for phyics. This love of physics led to the development of the Gibbs-Duhem Equation
Gibbs-Duhem Equation relates to the thermodynamic relationship expressing changes in the chemical potential of a substance in terms of changes in temperature and pressure of the system.
Reference Ariew, Roger, Pierre Duhem, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University 2018. -
The aim and structure of physical theory published
The book details Duhems ideas on the scientific method. Duhem poses three major theories in this book Instrumentalism, The underdetermination of theories by evidence, and confirmation of holism. "A physical theory is not an explanation; it is a system of mathematical propositions whose aim is to represent as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible a whole group of experimental laws." (Duhem 1954, 19). -
death of Pierre Duhem
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Duhem-Quine thesis
https://youtu.be/-klqI4d_wbY
In the 1950's Duhems work resurfaced and was argued against by Quine resulting in this thesis. This theory explains how predictions from a hypothesis typically requires background assumptions that many other hypotheses are correct. You cannot make a prediction based off of just one hypothesis but must use several different methods.
