To determine whether, and to what extent, you are justified in believing a proposition you need to consider all the relevant evidence available to you, not just some part of it. So says the “Requirement of Total Evidence” (RTE). If you violate this you are unreasonable. Are you? Two scientific cases will be presented to defend the answer: Not necessarily. The first involves Newton's argument for universal gravity, the second, Rutherford's argument for his model of the atom. These cases, it will be argued, show something important about the limitations of RTE and about reasonable belief. At the end a way of rethinking RTE will be proposed.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Skokowski, Paul;
(2004)
Structural Content: A Naturalistic Approach to Implicit Belief
(/isis/citation/CBB000410798/)
Article
Mary S. Morgan;
(2019)
Exemplification and the use-values of cases and case studies
(/isis/citation/CBB151505081/)
Essay Review
Harper, William L.;
Staley, Kent W.;
de Regt, Henk W;
Achinstein, Peter;
(2014)
Objective Evidence and Rules of Strategy
(/isis/citation/CBB001500354/)
Article
Leggett, Don;
(2013)
William Froude, John Henry Newman and Scientific Practice in the Culture of Victorian Doubt
(/isis/citation/CBB001201919/)
Book
Broughton, Janet;
(2002)
Descartes's Method of Doubt
(/isis/citation/CBB000201792/)
Book
Maurice A. Finocchiaro;
(2021)
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo: Philosophical, Historical, and Historiographical Essays
(/isis/citation/CBB922757604/)
Article
Dodick, Jeff;
Argamon, Shlomo;
Chase, Paul;
(2009)
Understanding Scientific Methodology in the Historical and Experimental Sciences via Language Analysis
(/isis/citation/CBB001032839/)
Article
Pilpel, Avital;
(2007)
Statistics Is Not Enough: Revisiting Ronald A. Fisher's Critique (1936) of Mendel's Experimental Results (1866)
(/isis/citation/CBB000830396/)
Article
Pablo Ruiz de Olano;
(2023)
Confirmation, or pursuit-worthiness? Lessons from J. J. Sakurai's 1960 theory of the strong force for the debate on non-empirical physics
(/isis/citation/CBB430659500/)
Book
James Elwick;
(2007)
Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences: Shared Assumptions, 1820–1858
(/isis/citation/CBB879149810/)
Article
Stefano Canali;
(2020)
Making evidential claims in epidemiology: Three strategies for the study of the exposome
(/isis/citation/CBB477913919/)
Article
Gimbel, Steven;
(2004)
Restoring Ambiguity to Achinstein's Account of Evidence
(/isis/citation/CBB000410757/)
Book
Christie, Maureen;
(2001)
The Ozone Layer: A Philosophy of Science Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB000102429/)
Book
Achinstein, Peter;
(2005)
Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories and Applications
(/isis/citation/CBB000550211/)
Article
Frank Cabrera;
(2020)
Evidence and Explanation in Cicero's On Divination
(/isis/citation/CBB028919561/)
Book
Achinstein, Peter;
(2010)
Evidence, Explanation, and Realism: Essays in Philosophy of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001023128/)
Article
(2000)
Experiment and Conceptual Change: Evidence, Data Generation, and Scientific Practice: Toward a Reliabilist Philosophy of Experiment
(/isis/citation/CBB000110595/)
Article
McAllister, James W.;
(2003)
Algorithmic Randomness in Empirical Data
(/isis/citation/CBB000340895/)
Book
Taper, Mark L.;
Lele, Subhash R.;
(2004)
The Nature of Scientific Evidence: Statistical, Philosophical, and Empirical Considerations
(/isis/citation/CBB000750947/)
Chapter
Vanderburgh, William L.;
(2009)
Theory Choice in the Historical Sciences: Geology as a Philosophical Case Study
(/isis/citation/CBB001021052/)
Philosophy of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
English Historical Review
Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science
Be the first to comment!