Circles without circularity

Martin Carrier

pp. 405-428

in: James BROWN, Jürgen Mittelstrass (eds), An intimate relation, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

Conventionalism, though forced upon us by Duhem’s thesis, leaves us with the stark realization that theory determines observational meaning, that no independent source of the meaning of observation terms is available, and that testing as ‘consulting the facts’ plays a relatively less distinguished role in science than we would have wished (Butts 1976, p. 48).