On the Success of Scientific Theories

[watchamadoodle]

3) If past experience (potentially non-existent if history is bunk) is consistent with a proposition, that proposition is true.

I'll go out on a limb and choose 3) today.
Science is successful because science has been successful.

I think that is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy if you aren't careful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_shar...er_fallacy

Maybe you need to say that the theory has been successful - not true , because it successfully predicted new experimental results in the past? Then you apply inductive reasoning to say that this theory will probably be successful in the future too?

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Perhaps this points to a deeper problem in that the binary values true and false tend to gut anything we can say about actual theories because accuracy of predictions (demonstration) is a gradated property, not a binary one. Perhaps that points to the No Miracles argument being phrased in terms of "more successful theories.... than less successful theories," and then the litmus of success is demonstrability as Ben suggests.

That sounds like a more practical approach IMO.