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# The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses

## Details

**Authors** Chamberlin, T. C.

**Year** 1965

**Publisher** Science, 148(3671), 754–759 (reprint of the 1890 essay)

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Geology

**Secondary disciplines** Philosophy

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.148.3671.754) 
10.1126/science.148.3671.754

## In authors' words

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

To contrast the ruling theory, the working hypothesis and the method of multiple working hypotheses as ways of conducting inquiry.

### How they did it (methods)

Methodological essay illustrated with the origin of the Great Lakes basins.

### What they found (results)

Chamberlin argues that attachment to a single explanation biases the search for facts, and that keeping a family of rival explanations, each developed in full, counters partiality. Most phenomena, he holds, have several interacting causes, as with the Great Lake basins, where river valleys, glacial excavation and crustal deformation each have support and none suffices alone; the investigator should ask how much each contributed.

## Commentary

### In short

A classic essay arguing that investigators should hold several competing explanations at once rather than commit to one, because most natural phenomena have more than one interacting cause.

### Response

Holding several rival hypotheses at once is a perspectives claim: the same body of facts reads differently from each, and the investigator's attachment to one view distorts what is seen. The emphasis on several interacting causes and on apportioning each one's contribution is a relationships claim. The essay is a methodological argument, not an empirical test. The record cites the 1965 reprint of the 1890 essay, and the findings were taken from a reprint text, not the Science page.

**Patterns it shows** R, P

**Added** 2026-10-26

**How to cite this** Chamberlin, T. C. (1965). The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses. Science, 148(3671), 754–759 (reprint of the 1890 essay).