Damn the Consequences: Projective Evidence and the Heterogeneity of Scientific Confirmation

Abstract

I contrast our own evidence for the hypothesis of organic fossil origins with that available in previous centuries, suggesting that the most powerful contemporary evidence consists in a form of projective support whose distinctive features are not well captured by familiar hypothetico-deductive, abductive, or even more recent and more technically sophisticated (e.g., Bayesian) accounts of scientific confirmation. I suggest that such accounts either misrepresent or ignore something important about the heterogeneous ways in which scientific hypotheses can be supported by evidence, and I go on to suggest that the search for any single such account may be misguided in any case.