THE NEW

EXPERIMENTALISM
The Range Of Problems That Beset Contemporary Philosophy Of Science

Popper • Unable to give clear guidance as to when a theory should be held responsible for a
failed test

• Unable to say something sufficiently positive about theories that happen to have
survived tests

Lakatos they were too weak to specify when it was time to abandon a research program in
favour of another

Kuhn worse off in giving a clear answer to the question of the sense in which a paradigm
could be said to be an improvement on the one it replaced

Fayerabend portrayal of rival theories as incommensurable

Bayesian the benefits of scientific theories brought about by previous beliefs.

 'the new experimentalism'
move towards radical theory-dependence at its source

not in observation
v experiment can have a 'life of its own'
independent of large-scale theory.

experimentalists have a range of if scientific progress is seen as the steady build-up of

practical strategies for establishing the stock of experimental knowledge, (cumulative
the reality of experimental effects progress in science) and is not threatened by claims to
without needing recourse to large- the effect that there are scientific revolutions
scale theory involving large-scale theory change.
 ALFARADAY EXPERIMENT

Late in the summer of 1820 reports reached Britain of

Oersted's finding that the magnetic effect of a current-
carrying wire in some way circulates the wire
Alfaraday Experiment and Theory #1

Is it useful or appropriate to regard this accomplishment of

Faraday's as theory-dependent and fallible?
It can be said to be theory-dependent in a very weak sense.

this a refutation of the extreme empiricist idea that facts

must be established directly by the entry of sensory data into
a mind that otherwise knows nothing
Alfaraday Experiment and Theory #2

Faraday's motor effect was not ‘theory-dependent'

an appreciation of it depended on the acceptance of or
familiarity with some version of one of the rival theories.

Nor is it helpful to regard Faraday's motor effect as fallible

because Faraday's motors sometimes do not work
Hertz aimed to produce novel experimental effects
Hertz was able to exhibit this new effect in a controlled way

Hertz had produced his electric waves. That there

were such waves could be demonstrated in a way
that was independent of which general theory was
subscribed to

He set up standing waves and showed that small

spark detectors showed maximum sparking at the
antinodes and no sparking at the nodes of these
waves. This was by no means easily achieved, nor
were the results easily reproduced
 Deborah Mayo on severe experimental testing
which claims are validated by experiment, and identifying just what claims
are borne out and how

a claim can only be said to be

A claim can only be said to be the claim would be
supported by experiment if the
borne out by experiment if it unlikely to pass it if
various ways in which the claim
has been severely tested by it were false
could be at fault have been
experiment
investigated and eliminated
 Snell Refraction and Morning Coffee

experiments to test Snell's law I had two cups of

coffee this morning
and this afternoon I
Because of the wide margins of error they
have a headache
had attributed to their measurements, all of
these alternative laws passed the test.
Perhaps my headache is due to the particularly
that the experiments in question did not strong Vietnamese beer I drank last night
constitute a severe test of Snell's law
conduct controlled experiments that will
serve to eliminate other possible causes

An experiment constitutes support for a claim

only if possible sources of error have been eliminated
 Tacking Paradox
Let us imagine Newton's theory, T, has been confirmed by carefully
observing the motion of a comet, with care being taken to eliminate
sources of error due to attraction from nearby planets, refraction in
the earth's atmosphere and so on.
Newton theory = T
construct theory T' by tacking a statement such as
'emeralds are green' onto Newton's theory
Emeralds are green = T’
Is T' confirmed by the observations of the comet?

the Newtonian prediction would be totally unaltered if

some emeralds were blue and hence T' false
 Einstein and Eclipse Experiments

Einstein's law of gravity, which is a consequence of his general theory of relativity,

was confirmed by them, but the general theory of relativity itself was not

a whole class of theories of space-time of which Einstein's theory is only one,

all of which predict Einstein's law of gravity and hence the results of the eclipse experiments

Consequently, those experiments did not constitute a severe test of Einstein's general theory.
To claim that the eclipse experiments supported Einstein's general theory of relativity is to go
beyond the experimental evidence further than is warranted.
 Einstein and Eclipse Experiments

The situation is different when we consider the more restricted claim that the
eclipse experiments confirmed Einstein's law of gravity

Mayo shows in some detail how alternatives to Einstein's law,

including Newtonian alternatives arising from an inverse square law of attraction between the sun
and photons presumed to have mass, were considered and eliminated.
 Learning from error and triggering revolutions
The growth of scientific knowledge is to be understood as the accumulation and
extension of such laws
experimental error positively identifies an effect not previously known

The difference, according to Kuhn, is that science is in a position to learn constructively from the
'falsifications', whereas astrology was not.
For Kuhn, there exists in normal science a puzzle-solving tradition that astrology lacked.
There is more to science than the falsification of theories.
 Mayo , Popper and Kuhn

Popper’s slogan 'we learn from our mistakes',

falsificationist account did not capture an adequate, positive account of how science learns
from mistakes (falsifications).

Mayo sides with Kuhn here, identifying normal science with experimentation.
Let us note some examples of the positive role played by error detection.

facility of experiment to detect and accommodate error can prove sufficient to

trigger or contribute to a scientific revolution, a decidedly unKuhnian thesis
 the new experimentalist's approach is the denial that experimental results are
invariably 'theory' or 'paradigm'

The reasonableness of this stems from the focus on experimental practice, on how
instruments are used, errors eliminated, cross-checks devised and specimens
manipulated.

It is the extent to which this experimental life is sustained in a way that is independent
of speculative theory.

'Hence we seem to be driven by exhaustion to the Einstein law as the only satisfactory,
no acceptable alternatives

Mayo distinguishes between the general theory of relativity on the one hand and some
more restricted theory of gravity supported by Eddington's experiments on the other
 The new experimentalists can independent of high-level theory.
give an account of progress in science that construes it as the accumulation of
experimental knowledge.

experiment can bear on the comparison of radically different theories, and also how
experiment can serve to trigger scientific revolutions.

distinguish between what has been substantiated by experiment and what is

speculative

experimental knowledge can be vindicated in a way that is independent of high-level

theory
The new experimentalists are right to insist that to see every experiment as an attempt to
answer a question posed by theory is a mistake that underestimates the extent to which
experiment can have a life of its own.

Galileo didn't have a theory about Jupiter's moons to test when he turned his telescope
skywards, and, ever since then, many novel phenomena have been discovered by
exploiting the opportunities opened up by new instruments or technologies.

theory often does guide experimental work and has pointed the way towards the
discovery of novel phenomena
 an important 'life of theory' in science.
The principles of quantum mechanics, employed, for instance, in the refinements of the
electron microscope or even the conservation of energy, used throughout science, are
much more than generalisations from specified experiments.

The new experimentalism has not shown how theory,

some-times high-level theory, can be eliminated from science.
 Match between theory and observation
electron microscope to observe dislocations in crystals
matching of a theoretical prediction with observation can serve to confirm both the theory

These dislocations of atoms in crystalline solids had been predicted on theoretical

grounds in the mid-1930s to account for the strength, ductility and plasticity of solids

In the early 1950s electron microscopes had been developed to a stage that led
some to believe that crystal lattices, and dislocations. In 1956 Jim Menter (1956)
and Peter Hirsch et al. (1956) they identified as exhibiting dislocations

Menter, for instance, applied Abbe's theory of the microscope to the

formation of electron images by crystals, and took the significant match

Hirsch observed his dislocations to move in just the way predicted by the
prevailing theory of dislocations and the fact that his images represented
dislocations
Match between theory and observation
electron microscope to observe dislocations in crystals

the happy match between theory and observation constituted

significant support for the theory.

Would have been likely to occur if the theory were false?

the answer is that they would be very unlikely to occur
Terima kasih

Khoirul Anwar
Warga biasa