The Grand Pessimistic Induction

Abstract

After decades of intense debate over the old pessimistic induction (Poincaré, 1905/1952), it has become clear that it has at least three problems. First, it commits the fallacy of biased statistics. Second, it erroneously groups together past theories from different fields of science, in which scientific revolutions occurred at different frequencies. Third, it overlooks the fact that some components of past theories were preserved. I argue that these three problems entitle us to construct what I call the grand pessimistic induction that since the old pessimistic induction has infinitely many hitherto hidden problems, the new pessimistic induction (Stanford, 2006) also has infinitely many hitherto hidden problems.