PESSIMISTIC INDUCTION INCOMPATIBLE WITH DEDUCTIVISM

Pentcho Valev wrote:
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/arch.../02/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.

Pentcho Valev