In many cases the issue of what precisely the problem is, and what the attributes of a ‘good’ explanation would be, receive as much criticism and conjecture as do trial solutions.

This last type of problem resembles stage 1 of the inductivist scheme, but only superficially. For an unexpected observation never initiates a scientific discovery unless the pre-existing theories already contain the seeds of the problem.

mathematical abstractions; fiction; art; morality; shadow

Since solipsism, and an infinity of related theories, are logically consistent with your perceiving any possible observational evidence, it follows that you can logically deduce nothing about reality from observational evidence.

Prediction – even perfect, universal prediction – is simply no substitute for explanation.

One thesis of this book is that, slowly but surely, depth is winning.

And this implies that the earlier the events in terms of which we explain something, the better the explanation, so that ultimately the best explanations of all are in terms of the initial state of the universe.

Thus solipsism, far from being a world-view stripped to its essentials, is actually just realism disguised and weighed down by additional unnecessary assumptions – worthless baggage, introduced only to be explained away.

If the Inquisition had seriously tried to understand the world in terms of the theory they tried to force on Galileo, they would also have understood its fatal weakness, namely that it fails to solve the problem it purports to solve. It does not explain planetary motions ‘without having to introduce the complication of the heliocentric system’.