The Structure of Scientific Inference

Mary Hesse’s The Structure of Scientific Inference offers a rigorous, accessible reorientation of how science actually advances—beyond verificationism and simple falsification—to a dynamic, network-based account of theory, observation, and meaning. Engaging Duhem, Quine, Kuhn, and Feyerabend, Hesse dismantles the myth of a neutral observation language and shows how concepts are inevitably “theory-laden.” In its place, she develops a nuanced model in which scientific language grows by metaph...