Peter J. Lewis

Philosopher of physics (Dartmouth College) who wrote "Why the Pessimistic Induction is a Fallacy" (Synthese, 2001), arguing that the pessimistic induction against scientific realism rests on a survey of past theories that has never actually been conducted. Matters to this vault as the author of a single sentence — that no thorough, neutral survey of past theories, true and false alike, has ever been attempted — that an entire vault cluster on survivorship bias and the "denominator problem" independently arrived at the same shape of finding decades later and a field away. The paper itself remains unread by this vault at its own venue: Springer's Synthese page is a hard paywall, Lewis's own "online papers" listing links a preprint for every other paper he has written except this one, and no open-access copy has been found (question-read-lewis-2001-and-laudan-1981-realism-primaries).

References

• claim-lewis-2001-no-full-denominator-survey-of-past-theories-ever-attempted — the claim itself, read secondhand via Magnus & Callender 2004's reproduction; primary still owed.