This stood in contrast to what he called the single ruling theory, which encouraged scientists to find supporting data and not challenge it with difficult tests.
[12] Peirce held that, as a matter of research method, an explanatory hypothesis is judged and selected[13] for research because it offers to economize and expedite the process of inquiry,[14] by being testable and by further factors in the economy of hypotheses: low cost, intrinsic value (instinctive naturalness and reasoned likelihood), and relations (caution, breadth, and incomplexity) among hypotheses, inquiries, etc.
[20] Dewey's development of the concept of the working hypothesis emerged from his contextualist epistemology in which absolute truth is unobtainable and replaced by "warranted assertability".
[21] Thus, Dewey noted:[20] The history of science also shows that when hypotheses have been taken to be finally true and hence unquestionable, they have obstructed inquiry and kept science committed to doctrines that later turned out to be invalid.In Dewey's view, the working hypothesis is generated, not directly as a testable statement of, but instead in order to "direct inquiry into channels in which new material, factual and conceptual, is disclosed, material which is more relevant, more weighted and confirmed, more fruitful, than were the initial facts and conceptions which served as the point of departure".
Given its success (the working hypothesis), he (the social scientist) may restate his world from this standpoint and get the basis for further investigation that again always takes the form of a problem.
And he must recognize that this statement is only a working hypothesis at the best, i.e., he knows that further investigation will show that the former statement of his world is only provisionally true, and must be false from the standpoint of a larger knowledge, as every partial truth is necessarily false over against the fuller knowledge which he will gain later (p. 370).For Putnam, the working hypothesis represents a practical starting point in the design of an empirical research exploration.
This experiment involves confronting the global skeptic position that we, in fact, are all just brains in vats being stimulated by a mad scientist to believe that our reality is real.
[26] Materials scientists Hosono et al. (1996) developed a working hypothesis about the nature of optically transparent and electrically conducting amorphous oxides.
As a result, working hypotheses are generally organized using sub-hypotheses, which specify in more detail the kinds of data or evidence needed to support the hypothesis.
But among justifiable hypotheses we have to select that one which is suitable for being tested , experiment.Consequently, to discover is simply to expedite an event that would occur sooner or later, if we had not troubled ourselves to make the discovery.