Introduction: Some philosophers on the logic of science and classical mechanics

From Mill to Popper

Our ultimate aim in Part II is to understand the sense in which microeconomic studies such as the income maintenance experiments may perhaps be science experiments, or realizations of a rationalist program of social inquiry. To achieve that aim, it will help to first develop a concept of physical science with which to compare our income maintenance examples. Just as in Chapters 2 and 4 we focused on the logics of statistical inference, here we shall consider the logic of classical mechanics experiments. We develop our view of the logic of such experiments by distillation of the views of J. S. Mill, Karl Popper, and Thomas Kuhn on science generally and through close scrutiny of some examples from classical mechanics.

In explaining a feature of his Deductive Method, Mill offers an embryonic rationalist account of science:

On Mill's account, then, one begins (at least on reconstruction) with a set of propositions, deduces some conclusions, and compares the deduced conclusions with observations or perhaps with observed regularities (= “empirical laws”). So on Mill's view, a science experiment seems unproblematic.