Copernicus and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method of Correspondence Thinking

Ladislas Natanson and Alfred Landé versus Planck’s law, the Boltzmann-Planck-Natanson statistics and the Bose statistics

“…Despite long discussions, we do not have an unquestionable answer to these and similar questions. And while Boltzmann's theorem plays an increasingly important role in the most 44 For the Polish original see , p. 8 & Kokowski 2021 In the terminology developed by the author of the article the hypothetical-deductive method of correspondence-oriented thinking, the hypothetical beings postulated in the context of theory are actually quasi-beings -see Kokowski 1996. In the case under consideration, Natanson saw a striking contradiction between the quasi-entities postulated by wave optics and the new quantum optics, and saw the need to search for a more general theory of optical phenomena with new quasi-entities that would avoid the contradictions of these theories, while preserving the already discovered partial truths -laws of phenomena consistent with the predictions of the hitherto theories; on partial truths in the mathematico-physical sciences, see Costa, French 2003. difficult research today, we are reaffirmed, quite bitterly, in the observation that great generalizations of science, while they are fruitful and beneficial, tend to be the most obscure (translation -M. Kokowski). 45 Natanson 1924b, pp.…”

Copernicus, his Latin style and comments to Commentariolus

“…It has a long tradition stemming from Plato's Timaeos and Ptolemy's Almagestcf. Kokowski 1996; (Platonism 1 : Plato's mathematical abstractionism, Platonism 2 : Plato's mathematico-physical hypotheticism); 2009a (entry "hipoteza"). Three other works are worth mentioning in this context: Zbigniew Jordan (1937, chap. IV "On the applicability of mathematics in natural sciences" (in Polish)); Jardine 1979; Musgrave 1991 ("critical realism").…”

“…• "Instrumentalist" position. Unlike R, C does not really try to convince the readers of the truth of the heliocentric hypothesis sciences to the present day -see Kokowski 1996;2012b, and fn. 5 Birkenmajer 1900, pp.…”

“…199-224;Swerdlow 1973;Swerdlow, Neugebauer 1984. It is a crucial point for understanding Copernicus's achievements that the relationship linking these two theories is analogous to the relationship between the General Theory of Relativity and the Special Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics and Classical Mechanics: all these pairs of theories are linked by correspondence principles of Niels Bohr's type; moreover the same type of relation links Copernicus's theory and Ptolemy's one -see Kokowski 1996;, 2012b rhetorically while this seems to be of primary concern if the paper was intended for the amateurs. What Copernicus defends instead, 155 expressed symbolically, is:…”

The divergent histories of Bose-Einstein statistics and the forgotten achievements of Władysław Natanson (1864–1937)

“…This is not an accidental feature and no anachronism. It is a manifestation of applying the hypothetico-deductive method of correspondence-oriented thinking by researchers of the so-called exact sciences (see Kokowski 1996;2004;2015c). Therefore: a) I do not agree with Jean Bricmon (2015), who -going on footnotes of Thomas S. Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and the sociology of scientific knowledge -declares that there is no scientific method and it is not a problem, and b) I do agree with Elliott Sober (2015), who is sure that the scientific method is not a myth and there are general normative principles that govern every science.…”