Verisimilitude

The Third Period

Bibliographic Data

ID5797570
AuthorsIlkka Niiniluoto (0000-0003-3162-5970, University of Helsinki, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume49
Issue1
Pages1-29
Publication date1998-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/bjps/49.1.1
OpenAlexW2345320150
LanguageEN
Citations received51
References cited59

The modern history of verisimilitude can be divided into three periods. The first began in 1960, when Karl Popper proposed his qualitative definition of what it is for one theory to be more truthlike than another theory, and lasted until 1974, when David Miller and Pavel Trichý published their refutation of Popper's definition. The second period started immediately with the attempt to explicate truthlikeness by means of relations of similarity or resemblance between states of affairs (or their linguistic representations); the work within this similarity approach was summarized in the books of Graham Oddie [1986] and Ilkka Niiniluoto [1987]. During the subsequent third period, studies in verisimilitude have been actively continued, and interesting results and applications have been achieved, but not many dramatic novelties. While it is now obsolete to claim that truthlikeness with reasonable properties cannot be defined at all, there is still a lot of controversy about the best and least arbitrary approach to doing this

Miller · Similarity (geometry · Verisimilitude · Philosophy and History of Science

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