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As will be shown in this study, the Deductive Model constitutes the formal basis upon which both the logical empiricist and Popperian conceptions of science and scientific progress are built. It is here introduced in its most familiar form: as a model of explanation and prediction.

Logical empiricism is an outgrowth of logical positivism, in which the verifiability principle was put forward as a criterion for distinguishing meaningful statements from meaningless pseudo-statements. For logical positivism, if any proposition or statement were not in principle conclusively verifiable by experience, it was to be considered meaningless, or, at best, tautological. Along this line then it was intended that meaningful statements include the pronouncements of science, while excluding those of metaphysics, ethics, and theology.

The considerations of the previous chapter indicate that the logical positivist and logical empiricist views can be seen as attempting to demarcate (meaningful) science from (meaningless) non-science on the basis of verifiability and confirmability respectively. Popper’s demarcation between science and non-science, on the other hand, is on the basis of falsifiability. For Popper, if there is no conceivable way that a statement can be shown to be false, while it might still be considered meaningful, it is not scientific but ‘metaphysical.’

As mentioned in Chapter 1, both Popper and the empiricists advocate the use of the Deductive Model as a model of the explanation of particular occurrences. But the empiricists go one step further and suggest its employment as a model of the explanation of laws by higher-level theories.

Logical empiricism is an outgrowth of logical positivism, in which the verifiability principle was put forward as a criterion for distinguishing meaningful statements from meaningless pseudo-statements. For logical positivism, if any proposition or statement were not in principle conclusively verifiable by experience, it was to be considered meaningless, or, at best, tautological. Along this line then it was intended that meaningful statements include the pronouncements of science, while excluding those of metaphysics, ethics, and theology.

One criticism of Popper’s view that is suggested in the writings of Thomas Kuhn is that in actual science a theory is never rejected unless there is another theory to take its place. Imre Lakatos recognises a problem of this sort, but does not follow the path indicated by Kuhn, for he sees it as implying that theory change is an irrational process which can be analysed solely from within the realm of (social) psychology. The alternative Lakatos thus chooses is to develop further Popper’s conception in the context of the Deductive Model in an attempt to “escape Kuhn’s strictures and present scientific revolutions not as constituting religious [] conversions but rather as rational progress.”

The development of the logical empiricist and Popperian conceptions of scientific progress in terms of the Deductive Model has shown each to suffer a serious drawback: the empiricist view affords no conception of theory conflict, and the Popperian view provides no consistent conception of progress itself. Nevertheless, the intuitive notions motivating each of these philosophies of science, considered independently of the model, appear quite sound. One is still inclined to admit that, in some sense, succeeding theories do subsume their rivals, and that, in spite of this, such theories conflict with one another. Thus we might accept, for example, a description of theory succession in which the superior theory is said to explain both what its rival is able to explain, as well as certain of those states of affairs which are considered anomalous to the rival. But the problem here lies in the failure of the Deductive Model, and consequently the failure of both the empiricist and Popperian conceptions of science, to provide an account of this sort of phenomenon. And, as regards the employment of the model itself, we may add to this the problem of meaning variance, and the very question as to whether scientific theories have the form of universal statements, as the model suggests.

Gestalt-switch diagrams have perhaps most often been used as paradigmatic examples of entities which can be perceived in completely different ways without their changing, and without there being a change in the perceiver’s physical relation to them. N. R. Hanson, pursuing Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning seeing and ‘seeing as,’ has employed gestalt-switch figures in this sort of way in considering cases relevant to the philosophy of science. In the chapter of his book entitled ‘Observations,’ for example, he has followed this line of thought, suggesting that where “Tycho and Simplicius see a mobile sun, Kepler and Galileo see a static sun.”

In being based on the Deductive Model, the Popperian and empiricist views of science take scientific laws and theories to be statements of the form: for all , if has the property , then has the property . The first step is conceptually to delineate a universe of ’s having property , and then it is to be empirically determined whether such ’s also have property . A number of these ’s are thus to be observed and found either to have or not to have this property. There is no middle way – on this view either the predicate is applicable or it is not, and if not, the law or theory is considered false.

The conception of science and scientific progress presented in the previous chapter may be further explicated with the help of an example taken from the physics of gases. Though the presentation of this example will for the most part follow the actual development of gas theory, it is not intended to constitute the basis of an historical analysis, but to be a coherent reconstruction capturing the essence of the conceptual moves in this development.