Confirmation holism

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In philosophy of science, confirmation holism, also called epistemological holism, is the view that no individual statement can be confirmed or disconfirmed by an empirical test, but rather that only a set of statements (a whole theory) can be so. It is attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine who motivated his holism through extending Pierre Duhem's problem of underdetermination in physical theory to all knowledge claims. [1][2]

  1. ↑ W. V. O. Quine. 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism.' The Philosophical Review, 60 (1951), pp. 20–43. online text
  2. ↑ Duhem, Pierre. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1954.
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