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# The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses

## Details

**Authors** Chamberlin, T. C.

**Year** 1890

**Publisher** Science

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Geology

**Secondary disciplines** Philosophy

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ns-15.366.92) 
10.1126/science.ns-15.366.92

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To contrast three methods of scientific inquiry (the ruling theory, the working hypothesis, and multiple working hypotheses) and to argue for the last in the study of natural phenomena.

### How they did it (methods)

A methodological essay illustrated with geological reasoning, chiefly the origin of the Great Lake basins.

### What they found (results)

Chamberlin argues that a single predominant hypothesis is incompetent when a phenomenon has several causes, because investigators tend to stop at the first effective cause. Using the origin of the Great Lake basins, which he attributes partly to preglacial river valleys, partly to glacial excavation and possibly partly to crustal deformation, he concludes that adequate explanation often involves the coordination of several causes. He holds that this requires the simultaneous use of a full staff of working hypotheses, which gives thoroughness and balance, and that the conflict between hypotheses sharpens the discrimination of evidence.

## Commentary

### In short

The essay treats an explanation as a vantage point that governs what an investigator observes, and it prescribes holding several such vantage points at once so that none fixes the field of evidence. It also treats a complex phenomenon as the joint product of several interacting causes in varying proportion, so that the explanation must coordinate causal relations and not isolate one.

**Patterns it shows** R, P

Shows it makes a difference

**Added** 2026-10-09

**How to cite this** Chamberlin, T. C. (1890). The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses. Science.