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Born Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem
Pierre Duhem was born in Paris, France to Alexandrine Fabre and Pierre-Joseph Duhem. Named after his father, he was the eldest of their four children. He was brilliant at a very young age, entering the College Stanislavs at the age of just eleven years old! There, he studied and exceled in the science, mathematics, Latin, and Greek subjects. -
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Ecole Normale Superieure
In 1882, Pierre Duhem moved his studies to Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he made remarkable strides in his scientific career and made waves. He published his first paper in 1884 on electrochemical cells and submitted his first doctoral thesis in 1884 on thermodynamic potential in phsyics and chemistry. His thesis confronted and refuted the earlier thesis of another physicist, Marcellin Berthelot, who in turn, arranged for Duhem's thesis to be rejected. -
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Faculte des Sciences at Lille
Despite his first thesis rejection, Pierre Duhem moved forward. He took up a teaching position, Maitre de Conferences at the Faculte des Sciences at Lille, France in 1887. His lecture focuses were on hydrodynamics, elasticity, and acoustics. In 1888, he had already begun on his second thesis, which was a mathematical work on magnetism, which was accepted! -
Duhem's Stance on Falsifiability - philosophy of science
Duhem's greatest involvement in the philosophy of science was his judgement of falsifiability. "When certain consequences of a theory are struck by experimental contradiction, we learn that this theory should be modified but we are not told by the experiment what must be changed. It leaves to the physicist the task of finding out the weak spot that impairs the whole system" (Duhem, 1906). Duhem, Pierre (1906). La théorie physique: son objet et sa structure (in French). Chevalier & Rivière. -
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Philosophy of Science
Duhem's thesis, "La théorie physique" (published 1906), addresses theories under investigation and is addressed in the video by Prof. Michela Massini. She explores Duhem's contributions to the philosphy of science; "No scientific hypothesis can ever be tested in isolation, but only in conjunction with other main theoretical hypotheses plus some auxiliary ones" (Duhem, 1908) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA7ez9PtRnI Duhem, P. (1908) The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. New York: Athenium -
Death
Pierre Duhem died on September 14, 1916 in Cabrespine, France.