Transitional Arguments
In epistemology, transitional arguments attempt to show that a particular explanation is better than another because it is able to make sense of a transition from old to new. That is, if explanation b can account for the problems that existed with explanation a, but not vice versa, then b is regarded to be the more reasonable explanation. A common example in the history of science is the transition from pre-Galilean to Galilean understandings of physical motion.
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Famous quotes containing the words transitional and/or arguments:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“When I am convinced of any principle, it is only an idea which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)