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Article ID: CBB847582954

Prismatic Equivalence – A New Case of Underdetermination: Goethe vs. Newton on the Prism Experiments (2016)

Mueller, Olaf L. (Author)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Volume: 24
Issue: 2
Pages: 323-347

DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2015.1132671

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2015.1132671

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Physics Explanation; hypotheses; theories Color theory Light Experiments and experimentation 20th century 19th century 18th century Quine, Willard Van Orman Duhem, Pierre Newton, Isaac Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

Goethe's objections to Newton's theory of light and colours are better than often acknowledged. You can accept the most important elements of these objections without disagreeing with Newton about light and colours. As I will argue, Goethe exposed a crucial weakness of Newton's methodological self-assessment. Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well. If this is correct, then by suggesting an alternative to a well-established physical theory, Goethe developed the problem of underdetermination a century before Duhem and Quine's famous arguments.

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