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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2004 55(4):615-643; doi:10.1093/bjps/55.4.615
© 2004 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Cliometric Metatheory III: Peircean Consensus, Verisimilitude and Asymptotic Method

Paul E. Meehl §

Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0344, USA  *

Statistical procedures can be applied to episodes in the history of science in order to weight attributes to predict short-term survival of theories; an asymptotic method is used to show that short-term survival is a valid proxy for ultimate survival; and a theoretical argument is made that ultimate survival is a valid proxy for objective truth. While realists will appreciate this last step, instrumentalists do not need it to benefit from the actuarial procedures of cliometric metatheory.

  1. Introduction
  2. A plausible proxy for Peircean consensus
  3. Assessing the validity of theory attributes as predictors of theory survival
    3.1 Linear discriminant function
    3.2 Factor analysis
    3.3 Taxometric analysis

  4. Verisimilitude index
  5. Satisfying both instrumentalists and realists
  6. Recapitulation
  7. Implementation of cliometric metatheory

* Correspondence about this article may be addressed to Leslie Yonce at pemeehle{at}umn.edu

§ This article had been completed by Paul Meehl at the time of his death on 14 February 2003. His wife, Leslie J. Yonce, is grateful to Keith Gunderson (University of Minnesota, Center for Philosophy of Science) and Niels G. Waller (Psychology Department, Vanderbilt University) for advice with some final editing details.


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