ДЮГЕМ ПЬЕР

Duhem Pierre-Maurice-Marie (1861–1916)

French physicist, professor at Bordeaux University, also studied history and the philosophy of science. In his physics he embraced energism and mathematical formalism. In his philosophical works he supported the Poincaré conventionalism and the principle of economy of thought advanced by Mach, and claimed that the history of science consisted only of different, mutually exclusive theories possessing no inner continuity. His one-sided, metaphysical explanation of relativism, the relativity of knowledge, led him into idealism and agnosticism (see Idealism, Physical).

Main work: Le système du monde, published in 10 vols., 1913–59, many of them posthumously.