On The Ideological Origins Of The Underdetermination Thesis

In the early20thcentury, the French physicist Pierre Duhem published his work“The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory” which stated that experiments does notconclusively confirm the theory for it is often examined as a whole. After that, this kindof holistic relationship between evidence and theory which raised by Dehum wasexpanded from merely physics to the entire body of human knowledge by Willard VanOrman Quine. Quine wrote in his book “From a logical point of view” that the wholescience is underdetermined by empirical experience, and it is insufficient to make anadequate choice among competing theories. Such kind of holistic way of reasoning iscalled as the underdetermination thesis(UDT), also known for “Duhem-Quine thesis”,which reflects the underdetemination of theory by empirical data. This topic has beenfrequently used by the post-positivist as one of the basic arguments against theverificationism that the evidence can confirm the theory since its birth. This holisticcognitive and method system based theory tends to oppose the rationality of sciencegradually. In order to resist this kind of view and other irrational thinking caused bywhich, it is necessary to clarify its theoretical basis and ideological origins of theunderdetermination thesis.There is a similar point between UDT and epistemology: they both question thecertainty of human knowledge(scientific theories). And so forth, tracing its ideologicalorigins can goes back to the question of the certainty of knowledge posed by skeptism.So the first two parts of the first chapter focus on the “underdetermined” feature in thediscussion of skeptism which is seen as an indirect source of the generation of UDT. Onthe other hand, since the underdetermination thesis involves the relationship betweenevidence and theory, which is also the core issue of philosophy of science, this papertakes this problem as another important clue. Through specific analysis and discussion onthe problem of induction, conventionalism and holism and their connection with theunderdetermination thesis, this paper draws some key points that led to the generation ofUDT. The paper is divided into four main parts: The first part starts from Descartes’research of a solid foundation of human knowledge and derive the “underdetermined”feature is skeptical arguments; in the second part, the paper analyzes the Hume’s questionon the causal connection and inductive reasoning, then turns to look into the relationshipbetween experience and theory, and investigate the predicament of “HumeanUnderdetermination” which derived from the problem of induction; the third part mainlyintroduces the empirical conventionalism advanced by Poincare. Through his analysis,Poincare pointed out that there are compositions that beyond empirical experience whichare agreed by scientists. This idea is seen just as the direct source of UDT; Part IV dealswith the research and theory of Quine who clearly and definitely expresses theunderdetermination thesis. We put the thesis back to Quine’s philosophy doctrine andideas to make it clear how it is combined between the proposal of UDT and his holismtheory as well as his criticism on the traditional empiricism.In the end, the paper draws some brief assessments and considerations on UDTbased on the analysis of the four chapters above. UDT wakes up our awareness that theempirical evidence is not adequate enough to determine a theory decisively. We nowhave new perspective regarding the relationship between theory and empirical experience.The existing epistemology and methodology in science should seek for a better solutionon the criteria of theory choice and come up with some solutions from the point of therelationship between theory and data under the threat of UDT; meanwhile, we shouldalso notice the irrationality of UDT and defend the rationality of science more reasonablyon the basis of reconsidering of the critics posed by UDT. It is the topic and the point ofview that are the innovations of this paper. Since the underdetermination thesis has beenrarely discussed from the perspective of its origin in China, this article hopes to make itclear how it is developed and to do some thinking on defending the rationality of science.