Песимистичната индукция несъвместима с дедуктивизма

If past scientific theories are found to be false, all theories - past, current and future - are false ("pessimistic induction"). This inductive argument separately introduced by Putnam and Laudan is popular among philosophers of science but it is incompatible with deductivism. Consider Einstein's 1905 light postulate:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ "...light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

By a theory I shall mean the deductive closure of the postulate, that is, the set of all its consequences deduced validly and in the absence of false or absurd auxiliary hypotheses. If the light postulate is true, then all its consequences are true, and IN THIS SENSE the theory is absolutely true.

If Einstein's 1905 light postulate is false, then its antithesis, the equation c'=c+v given by Newton's emission theory of light, is true. This can easily be seen on close inspection of the Michelson-Morley experiment:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive … Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support for the light postulate of special relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

Therefore the respective theory (the set of all consequences of the antithesis, c'=c+v, deduced validly and in the absence of false or absurd auxiliary hypotheses) is absolutely true in the sense that all its conclusions are true.

Clearly if "theory" is properly defined the pessimistic induction is unjustified. The transition from Newtonian to relativistic mechanics was either a transition from absolutely false to absolutely true or a transition from absolutely true to absolutely false.

Пенчо Вълев
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