Hermann Lotze's Method and Hypothesis

Lotze often wrote for physicians in his early period up to 1852, at age 35. He had a gift for clarifying theoretical issues in the work of Johannes Müller, Jacob Henle, E. F. Weber. Other scientists developed his formulations further, including Hermann Helmholtz, Ewald Hering, and William James. I considered several alternative titles for this chapter: Lotze’s theory of hypotheses, Lotze’s theory of scientific method, and Lotze’s theory of scientific explanation. I address all three topics here. Moreover, I have explored the origin and the reception of these topics. Another theme is allgemeine medicine, meaning “general” in the sense of theoretical considerations in it. Lotze took the idea of quantification in science, for example, from various sources: Weisse, Herbart, and Fries. He used dialectic in the sense of trying various hypotheses, a Hegelian strategy. And he also used a kind of hypothesis-testing in conjunction with thick description of bodily processes. The secondary literature on hypothesis and scientific method today includes works of Gerd Buchdahl and Larry Laudan, however they have more to say about Lotze’s student friends E. F. Apelt and Moritz Schleiden and his contemporaries William Whewell and J. S. Mill. For example, Apelt suggests that Kant’s transcendental dialectic underlies heuristic maxims. I have tried to fill in this gap too.