Multiple working hypotheses (Formal statement)
T.C. Chamberlin, Popular Science, 1904
• Distributes the effort and divides the affections.
• Protects against the radical defects of single hypothesis.
• Brings into distinct view every rational explanation of the phenomenon and develops every tenable hypothesis.
• Gives to each of these a due place in the inquiry.
• Makes investigator the parent of family of hypotheses; and so is morally forbidden to fasten affections unduly upon any one.
• Keeps investigator from biasing hypotheses already proposed relative to the investigator’s own creations.
• The investigator proceeds with natural and enforced erectness of mental attitude, knowing that some of the hypotheses will perish and that some may survive.
[From Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, “On multiple Hypotheses,” in On Scientific Thinking,” by Ryan D. Tweney, Michael E. Doherty, and Clifford R. Mynatt, Columbia University Press, New York, 1981.]