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Miraculous Success? Inconsistency and Untruth in Kirchhoff’s Diffraction Theory

Saatsi, Juha and Vickers, Peter (2010) Miraculous Success? Inconsistency and Untruth in Kirchhoff’s Diffraction Theory. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Kirchhoff’s diffraction theory is introduced as a new case study in the realism debate. The theory is extremely successful despite being both inconsistent and not even approximately true. Some habitual realist proclamations simply cannot be maintained in the face of Kirchhoff’s theory, as the realist is forced to acknowledge that theoretical success can in some circumstances be explained in terms other than truth. The idiosyncrasy (or otherwise) of Kirchhoff’s case is considered.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Saatsi, Juha
Vickers, Peter
Additional Information: Paper forthcoming (2010) in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Keywords: Kirchhoff, Scientific Realism, Predictive Success, No Miracles, Pessimistic Induction, Inconsistency
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics
General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
Depositing User: Dr Peter Vickers
Date Deposited: 01 Apr 2010
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:19
Item ID: 5240
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics
General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
Date: June 2010
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/5240

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