This book consists of a collection of essays written between 1965 and
1981. Some have been published elsewhere; others appear here for the
first time. Although dealing with different figures and different
periods, they have a common theme: all are concerned with examining how
the method of hy- pothesis came to be the ruling orthodoxy in the
philosophy of science and the quasi-official methodology of the
scientific community. It might have been otherwise. Barely three
centuries ago, hypothetico- deduction was in both disfavor and disarray.
Numerous rival methods for scientific inquiry - including eliminative
and enumerative induction, analogy and derivation from first
principles - were widely touted. The method of hypothesis, known since
antiquity, found few proponents between 1700 and 1850. During the last
century, of course, that ordering has been inverted and - despite an
almost universal acknowledgement of its weaknesses - the method of
hypothesis (usually under such descriptions as 'hypothetico- deduction'
or 'conjectures and refutations') has become the orthodoxy of the 20th
century. Behind the waxing and waning of the method of hypothesis,
embedded within the vicissitudes of its fortunes, there is a fascinating
story to be told. It is a story that forms an integral part of modern
science and its philosophy.