This article outlines a philosophy of science in practice that focuses on the engineering sciences. A methodological issue is that these practices seem to be divided by two different styles of scientific reasoning, namely, causal-mechanistic and mathematical reasoning. These styles are philosophically characterized by what Kuhn called ?disciplinary matrices?. Due to distinct metaphysical background pictures and/or distinct ideas of what counts as intelligible, they entail distinct ideas of the character of phenomena and what counts as a scientific explanation. It is (...) argued that the two styles cannot be reduced to each other. At the same time, although they are incompatible, they must not be regarded as competing. Instead, they produce different kinds of epistemic results, which serve different kinds of epistemic functions. Moreover, some scientific breakthroughs essentially result from relating them. This view of complementary styles of scientific reasoning is supported by pluralism about metaphysical background pictures. (shrink)

This article briefly presents and characterizes a relatively young (nineteen-nineties) trend in methodology, the theory of science – and philosophy, called “the new experimentalism”. The fundamental problem is determined by the question about the value of the new experimentalism and experimental grounds of scientific knowledge in empirical sciences. In the first part of the article, the previous (old) experimentalism is presented. First of all, the history of the experimental method is outlined and the definitions of experiment, object, phenomenon, and of (...) the carried out and analyzed observation are provided. It is shown why the main proposition of experimentalists – “determining a fact based on sensory experience” is fallacious. The second part describes the way in which the representatives of the new experimentalism try to identify and characterize those factors of an experiment that guarantee the objectivity of its result; demonstrate that results are not only determined by psychological, historical, sociological or economic factors but also that they exist in nature as real objects and events. A correct and reliable analysis of the experiment and its results may – according to the new experimentalists – contribute to this conclusion. Therefore, the important role and value of the experimental foundation of social activity in general, and in particular, for the natural sciences, is rightly noted. (shrink)

This book addresses key conceptual issues relating to the modern scientific and engineering use of computer simulations. It analyses a broad set of questions, from the nature of computer simulations to their epistemological power, including the many scientific, social and ethics implications of using computer simulations. The book is written in an easily accessible narrative, one that weaves together philosophical questions and scientific technicalities. It will thus appeal equally to all academic scientists, engineers, and researchers in industry interested in questions (...) related to the general practice of computer simulations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a key question in the history and philosophy of medicine, namely how scholars should treat the practices and experimental hypotheses of modern life science laboratories. The paper seeks to introduce some prominent historiographical methods and theoretical approaches associated with biomedical research. Although medical scientists need no convincing that experimentation has a significant function in their laboratory work, historians, philosophers, and sociologists long neglected its importance when examining changes in medical theories or progress (...) in scientific knowledge. The reason appears to have been the academic influence of the then dominant tradition in the history of ideas, but was also due to a misconception of what could usefully be termed the view on “historical ontology.” During the last two decades, there have been many books and research articles that have turned towards the subject, so that the study of experimental practice has become a major trend in the contemporary history and philosophy of medicine. A closer look at the issue of laboratory research shows that concepts in medicine and the life sciences cannot be understood as historically constant, free-standing ideas, but have to be regarded as dependent on local research settings. They often carry particular “social memories” with them and thus acquire important ethical implications. (shrink)

Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening is often credited as being one of the first works to focus on the role of experimentation in philosophy of science, catalyzing a movement which is sometimes called the “philosophy of experiment” or “new experimentalism”. In the 1980s, a number of other movements and scholars also began focusing on the role of experimentation and instruments in science. Philosophical study of experimentation has thus seemed to be an invention of the 1980s whose central figure is Hacking. (...) This article aims to assess this historical claim, made by Hacking himself as well as others. It does so first by highlighting how a broader perspective on the history of philosophy reveals this invention narrative to be incorrect, since experimentation was a topic of interest for earlier philosophers. Secondly, the article evaluates a revision of this historical claim also made by some philosophers of experiment: the rediscovery narrative, which frames Hacking and others as having rediscovered the work of these earlier authors. This second narratives faces problems as well. Therefore we develop a third narrative which we call the contextualist narrative. Rather than considering experimentation in an essentialist manner as a fixed research object that is either present or not in the work of specific authors, experimentation should be addressed through a narrative that asks in what way it becomes a philosophical problem for certain authors and for what purpose. Such contextualization enables a repositioning of Hacking’s philosophy of experiment in relation to the specific debates in which he intervened, such as the realism-antirealism debate, the Science Wars and the debate on incommensurability. (shrink)

The 1980s, it is often claimed, was the decade when experimentation finally became a philosophical topic. This was the responsibility, the claim continues, of one particular movement within philosophy of science, called “new experimentalism.” The aim of this article is to complicate this historical narrative. We argue that in the 1980s, the study of experimentation was carried out not by one movement with one particular aim but rather in a diverse and open-ended way by people with different aims and backgrounds. (...) We then argue that from the late 1990s onward, this diversity disappeared and made room for disciplinary divisions—questions concerning experimentation became philosophical, others sociological, and so on. The reason for this, we claim, was that science and technology studies, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of science took over aspects of the 1980s study of experimentation. In this way, we argue, these elements became institutionalized, whereas others were forgotten. The importance of this process of institutionalization is illustrated by means of a discussion of other, similar approaches to the philosophy of experimentation that have not been able to ensure continuity because they did not find an institutional home. (shrink)

El presente escrito se propone presentar el modelo de tres niveles del conocimiento científico (datos, fenómenos y teorías) desde los recientes resultados de la filosofía de la ciencia obtenidos por dos perspectivas filosóficas particulares: el nuevo experimentalismo y el enfoque semántico de las teorías. Para ello contrasta los planteamientos principales de estas dos perspectivas con el modelo de dos niveles del conocimiento científico (observación y teoría) del positivismo lógico, que dominó el panorama de la filosofía de la ciencia en las (...) primeras seis décadas del siglo XX. (shrink)

Amedeo Giorgi has published a review article devoted to Phenomenology as Qualitative Research: A Critical Analysis of Meaning Attribution. However, anyone reading this article, but unfamiliar with the book, will get a distorted view of what it is about, whom it is addressed to, what it seeks to achieve and how it goes about presenting its arguments. Not mildly distorted, in need of the odd correction here and there, but systematically misrepresented. The article is a study in misreading. Giorgi misreads (...) the book's mise en scène; he misreads its narrative arc; he misreads individual arguments; he misreads short, simple passages; he misreads the philosophy of the science literature; he misreads his own data; he misreads the title; he misreads the blurb; he misreads the acknowledgements. In addition, there are serious failures of scholarship (ironically, he demonstrates how unacquainted he is with the relevant literature at the very moment he is accusing me of being ill‐informed). In this reply, I provide several examples of these errors, but my primary aim is to understand why Giorgi's misreading is as ubiquitous as it is. To this end, I explain his mistakes by reference to the hermetic epistemology within which he is confined. (shrink)

Psychological research has shown that cognitive illusions, of which visual illusions are just a special case, are systematic and pervasive, raising epistemological questions about how error in all forms of research can be identified and eliminated. The quantitative sciences make use of statistical techniques for this purpose, but it is not clear what the qualitative equivalent is, particularly in view of widespread scepticism about validity and objectivity. I argue that, in the light of cognitive psychology, the ‘error question’ cannot be (...) dismissed as a positivist obsession, and that the concepts of truth and objectivity are unavoidable. However, they constitute only a ‘minimal realism’, which does not necessarily bring a commitment to ‘absolute’ truth, certainty, correspondence, causation, reductionism, or universal laws in its wake. The assumption that it does reflects a misreading of positivism and, ironically, precipitates a ‘crisis of legitimation and representation’, as described by constructivist authors. (shrink)

Psychological research has shown that cognitive illusions, of which visual illusions are just a special case, are systematic and pervasive, raising epistemological questions about how error in all forms of research can be identified and eliminated. The quantitative sciences make use of statistical techniques for this purpose, but it is not clear what the qualitative equivalent is, particularly in view of widespread scepticism about validity and objectivity. I argue that, in the light of cognitive psychology, the ‘error question’ cannot be (...) dismissed as a positivist obsession, and that the concepts of truth and objectivity are unavoidable. However, they constitute only a ‘minimal realism’, which does not necessarily bring a commitment to ‘absolute’ truth, certainty, correspondence, causation, reductionism, or universal laws in its wake. The assumption that it does reflects a misreading of positivism and, ironically, precipitates a ‘crisis of legitimation and representation’, as described by constructivist authors. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce the notion of horizon for scientific practice (HSP), representing limits or boundaries within which scientists ply their trade, to facilitate analysis of scientific discovery and progress. The notion includes not only constraints that delimit scientific practice, e.g. of bringing experimentation to a temporary conclusion, but also possibilities that open up scientific practice to additional scientific discovery and to further scientific progress. Importantly, it represents scientific practice as a dynamic and developmental integration of activities to investigate (...) and analyze the natural world. I use the discovery of the clotting factor, thrombin, and the experiments conducted by the Johns Hopkins physiologist, William Howell, on the enzymatic nature of thrombin to illustrate the notion of HSP. In a concluding section, I compare the notion of HSP to other notions for scientific practice proposed in the history and philosophy of science literature. (shrink)

A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin’s DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental series and the accumulative evidence from the series was adequate to justify the hypothesis (...) by persuading the virology community of its veracity. The notion of crucial experiment is also discussed in terms of experimental series. (shrink)

A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin's DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental series and the accumulative evidence from the series was adequate to justify the hypothesis (...) by persuading the virology community of its veracity. The notion of crucial experiment is also discussed in terms of experimental series. (shrink)

Does Allan Franklin’s study of atomic parity-violation experiments provide convincing evidence against social constructivism? According to Franklin (1990a, p. 2), “when questions of theory choice, confirmation, or refutation are raised they are answered on the basis of valid experimental evidence… [and] there are good reasons for belief in the validity of that evidence.” Franklin asserts that social constructivists take the opposite position: “They would say that it is not the experimental results, but rather the social and/or cognitive interests of the (...) scientists, that must be used in the explanation.” Having set up the contrasting positions, he then asks the reader, “which of us is telling the more plausible story?” (Franklin 1990b, p. 163). Consistent with his evidence model, he proposes to discriminate between the two opposed positions by consulting historical evidence. He describes the results of two different sets of experiments on atomic parity-violations, and assesses the extent to which the experimental data match predictions based on the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. (shrink)

ArgumentIn the theory-dominated view of scientific experimentation, all relations of theory and experiment are taken on a par; namely, that experiments are performed solely to ascertain the conclusions of scientific theories. As a result, different aspects of experimentation and of the relations of theory to experiment remain undifferentiated. This in turn fosters a notion of theory-ladenness of experimentation (TLE) that is toocoarse-grainedto accurately describe the relations of theory and experiment in scientific practice. By contrast, in this article, I suggest that (...) TLE should be understood as anumbrella conceptthat has different senses. To this end, I introduce a three-fold distinction among the theories of high-energy particle physics (HEP) as background theories, model theories, and phenomenological models. Drawing on this categorization, I contrast two types of experimentation, namely, “theory-driven” and “exploratory” experiments, and I distinguish between the “weak” and “strong” senses of TLE in the context of scattering experiments from the history of HEP. This distinction enables identifying the exploratory character of the deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering experiments – performed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) between the years 1967 and 1973 – thereby shedding light on a crucial phase of the history of HEP, namely, the discovery of “scaling,” which was the decisive step towards the construction of quantum chromo-dynamics as a gauge theory of strong interactions. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose an account that accommodates the possibility of experimentation being exploratory in cases where the procedures necessary to plan and perform an experiment are dependent on the theoretical accounts of the phenomena under investigation. The present account suggests that experimental exploration requires the implementation of an exploratory procedure that serves to extend the range of possible outcomes of an experiment, thereby enabling it to pursue its objectives. Furthermore, I argue that the present account subsumes the notion (...) of exploratory experimentation, which is often attributed in the relevant literature to the works of Friedrich Steinle and Richard Burian, as a particular type of experimental exploration carried out in the special cases where no well-formed theoretical framework of the phenomena under investigation exists. I illustrate the present account in the context of the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, where the long-sought Higgs boson has been discovered in 2012. I argue that the data selection procedure carried out in the ATLAS experiment illustrates an exploratory procedure in the sense suggested by the present account. I point out that this particular data selection procedure is theory-laden in that its implementation is crucially dependent on the theoretical models of high energy particle physics which the ATLAS experiment is aimed to test. However, I argue that the foregoing procedure is not driven by the above-mentioned theoretical models, but rather by a particular data selection strategy. I conclude that the ATLAS experiment illustrates that, contrary to what previous studies have suggested, there are cases of experimentation in which exploration serves to test theoretical predictions and that theory-ladenness plays an essential role in experimentation being exploratory. (shrink)

Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means (...) to deal with confounding factors. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists, but also some comparative disadvantages. The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means (...) to deal with confounding factors. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists, but also some comparative disadvantages. The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means (...) to deal with confounding factors. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists, but also some comparative disadvantages. The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

El presente escrito se propone presentar el modelo de tres niveles del conocimiento científico (datos, fenómenos y teorías) desde los recientes resultados de la filosofía de la ciencia obtenidos por dos perspectivas filosóficas particulares: el nuevo experimentalismo y el enfoque semántico de las teorías. Para ello contrasta los planteamientos principales de estas dos perspectivas con el modelo de dos niveles del conocimiento científico (observación y teoría) del positivismo lógico, que dominó el panorama de la filosofía de la ciencia en las (...) primeras seis décadas del siglo XX. (shrink)

Philosophers of science diverge on the question what drives the growth of scientific knowledge. Most of the twentieth century was dominated by the notion that theories propel that growth whereas experiments play secondary roles of operating within the theoretical framework or testing theoretical predictions. New experimentalism, a school of thought pioneered by Ian Hacking in the early 1980s, challenged this view by arguing that theory-free exploratory experimentation may in many cases effectively probe nature and potentially spawn higher evidence-based theories. Because (...) theories are often powerless to envisage workings of complex biological systems, theory-independent experimentation is common in the life sciences. Some such experiments are triggered by compelling observation, others are prompted by innovative techniques or instruments, whereas different investigations query big data to identify regularities and underlying organizing principles. A distinct fourth type of experiments is motivated by a major question. Here I describe two question-guided experimental discoveries in biochemistry: the cyclic adenosine monophosphate mediator of hormone action and the ubiquitin-mediated system of protein degradation. Lacking underlying theories, antecedent data bases, or new techniques, the sole guides of the two discoveries were respective substantial questions. Both research projects were similarly instigated by theory-free exploratory experimentation and continued in alternating phases of results-based interim working hypotheses, their examination by experiment, provisional hypotheses again, and so on. These two cases designate theory-free, question-guided, stepwise biochemical investigations as a distinct subtype of the new experimentalism mode of scientific enquiry. (shrink)

In this article I suggest a tripartite classification of scientific activity; discovery, pursuit, and justification. I believe that such a classification can give us a more adequate description of scientific practice, help illuminate the various roles that evidence plays in science, and may also help to partially resolve differences between “constructivist” and “epistemologist” views of science. I argue that although factors suggested by the constructivists such as career goals, professional interests, utility for future practice, and agreement with existing commitments do (...) enter into pursuit, it is experimental evidence that is decisive in justification. I illustrate this with two case studies from the history of contemporary science, experiments on atomic parity violation and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions and the fifth force in gravity. I also answer some of the criticisms offered of my earlier account of the episode of atomic parity violation. (shrink)

This paper is about the remarkable explosion in the literature on thought experiments since the 1980s. It enters uncharted territory. The year 1986 is of particular interest: James R. Brown presents his Platonism about thought experiments for the first time in Dubrovnik, and in Pittsburgh John D. Norton shares his empiricist approach with participants in what was probably the 20th century’s very first major conference on thought experiments. It was the time when philosophy of science had taken a pluralistic turn, (...) and the paper develops the notion that this is a key factor in the outburst of discussions about thought experiments in the 1980s. (shrink)