---
title: "Peter J. Lewis"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Peter J. Lewis"
aliases: ["Peter Lewis"]
first_seen: "2026-10-31T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["pessimistic induction","denominator problem","base-rate fallacy","Larry Laudan"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


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.