Was Whewell an Inductivist?
In: Whewell's CriticsSearch for other papers by Maurice A. Finocchiaro in
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The question of Whewell’s inductivism is clarified by distinguishing several aspects of his work and several meanings of the concept. I focus on the question whether his historical account of the Copernican Revolution is inductivist in the empiricist sense and in Agassi’s sense of evaluative moralism. My analysis shows that his historical interpretations are not empiricist but that they are not really apriorist either, and that his explanationism is a way of combining observation and theory. I also show that his historical interpretations exhibit a subtle awareness of the interaction between truth and error.