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The New Experimentalism, Topical Hypotheses, and Learning from Error

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Deborah G. Mayo
Deborah G. Mayo*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Extract

Following a period during which philosophers of science focused on theory to the near exclusion of experiment, a number of philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have, in one way or another, turned their attention to experimentation, instrumentation, and laboratory practices. Considerable work in philosophy of science of the last decade reflects this surge of interest in experiment, as promoted by Ackermann, Cartwright, Franklin, Galison, Giere, Hacking and others. Where has this movement taken us and where do we still have to go?

In asking this question, my focus is on that subset of the experimentalist movement whose members, following Ackermann (1989), I dub the “New Experimentalists”. Although their agendas differ, members of this group share the core thesis that aspects of experiment might offer an important, though largely untapped, resource for addressing key problems in philosophy of science.

Type
Part VII. Statistics and Experimental Reasoning
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 270 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

This research was supported by an NSF award in Studies in Science, Technology and Society. I gratefully acknowledge that support.

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