ABSTRACT Theoretical underdetermination is a central issue in the Philosophy of Science, having been discussed and debated since the early 20th century. The so‐called “Duhem‐Quine problem” has been used as an umbrella term to refer to a number of problematic features that arise from the lack of a biunivocal correspondence between theory and evidence. However, the now familiar idea that the detection of an empirical phenomenon is inferred from a complex collection of data entails the recognition that not only theories, but also the description of empirical phenomena are underdetermined by evidence. Empirical underdetermination, understood as the underdetermination of evidence (or assumed empirical phenomena) by data, emerges as a major challenge that has yet to be fully recognized and carefully addressed in the philosophy of science. The paper summarizes the distinction between empirical and theoretical underdetermination as it implicitly appears in the literature to date. It presents them as instances of a more general type, both of which arise from the same basic problems, albeit at different levels and with different implications. Important but often overlooked aspects of the empirical/theoretical distinction, the notion of background assumption, and the different roles of evidence will be clarified.

Willard Van Orman Quine ( KWYNE; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American logician and philosopher in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". He held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978. Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. He was famous for h Willard Van Orman Quine ( KWYNE; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American logician and philosopher in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". He held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978. Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. He was… Quine's ontological relativism (evident in the passage above) led him to agree with Pierre Duhem that for any collection of empirical evidence, there would always be many theories able to account for it, known as the Duhem–Quine thesis. However, Duhem's holism is much more restricted and limited than Quine's. For Duhem, underdetermination applies only to physics or possibly to natural science, while for Quine it applies to all of human knowledge. Thus, while it is possible to verify or falsify whole theories, it is not possible to verify or falsify individual statements. Almost any particular statement can be saved, given sufficiently radical modifications of the containing theory. For Quine, scientific thought forms a coherent web in which any part could be altered in the light of empirical evidence, and in which no empirical evidence could force the revision of a given part. O…

Abstract The Duhem–Quine problem is named after Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) and Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000). The problem concerns a “gap” between theory and observation. Though the problem can be given various formulations, in general the issue is that a singular theoretical claim has no direct observational consequences, and thus cannot be conclusively falsified by observation.