Gauvain Leconte-Chevillard

The discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in 1965 was soon interpreted as the indication that our Universe had evolved from a superdense state in contradiction with the fundamental assumption of the steady state theory that the density of the Universe is unchanged by its expansion.This theory was indeed abandoned by many of its former...

It might seem impossible to apply Ian Hacking's experimental argument for scientific realism to astrophysical objects; indeed Hacking himself expressed scepticism about extragalactic entities. Such astrophysical antirealism has been the subject of intense debate and is usually seen as an undesired consequence of experimental realism. In this paper,...

Can we apply Ian Hacking's experimental argument for scientific realism to distant stars, black holes or galaxies? At first glance it may seem absurd to talk about experimentation on such astrophysical phenomena and Hacking himself expressed scepticism about extragalactic entities. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that this antirealism about ast...

From 1932 to the end of the 1930s, Eddington voiced several objections against Milne's kinematical theory and the methodology underlying it. This criticism is often interpreted as an opposition between Eddington's epistemological account of physical theories and Milne's rationalist views. Eddington, however, is also often regarded as a rationalist...

The goal of this paper is to examine problems related to the definition of video games. If previous analyses of this issue have focused on the content of this definition, few have investigated the form that such a definition should endorse. I argue that some of the problems encountered by these previous analyses come from the sort of definition mos...

La réalisation de prédictions précises et surprenantes est une pratique essentielle des sciences empiriques et la confirmation de ces prédictions semble représenter l’un de leurs principaux succès théoriques et pratiques. Ainsi de nombreux scientifiques et épistémologues attribuent-ils aux succès prédictifs le pouvoir de confirmer des hypothèses, d...

According to a defense of scientific realism known as the “divide et impera move”, mature scientific theories enjoying predictive success are partially true. This paper investigates a paradigmatic historical case: the prediction, based on Fresnel’s wave theory of light, that a bright spot should figure in the shadow of a disc. Two different derivat...

Dans cet article, le cosmologiste Julien Grain et le philosophe des sciences Gauvain Leconte examinent le pouvoir explicatif et prédictif des hypothèses de multivers.

Realists argue that mature theories enjoying predictive success are approximately and partially true, and that the parts of the theory necessary to this success are retained through theory-change and worthy of belief. I examine the paradigmatic case of the novel prediction of a white spot in the shadow of a circular object, drawn from Fresnel's wav...

On considere souvent que les predictions de nouveaux phenomenes comptent parmi les plus grands succes scientifiques et qu’une bonne theorie est une theorie dotee d’une forte capacite predictive. Mais sait-on reellement comment nous realisons des predictions, et ce que l’on appelle la capacite predictive d’une theorie ? Cet article vise en premier l...