The Philosophy Of Scientific Experimentation

Hans Radder

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822972396
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation focuses on the identification and clarification of philosophical issues in experimental science.Since the late 1980s, the neglect of experiment by philosophers and historians of science has been replaced by a keen interest in the subject. In this volume, a number of prominent philosophers of experiment directly address basic theoretical questions, develop existing philosophical accounts, and offer novel perspectives on the subject, rather than rely exclusively on historical cases of experimental practice.Each essay examines one or more of six interconnected themes that run throughout the collection: the philosophical implications of actively and intentionally interfering with the material world while conducting experiments; issues of interpretation regarding causality; the link between science and technology; the role of theory in experimentation involving material and causal intervention; the impact of modeling and computer simulation on experimentation; and the philosophical implications of the design, operation, and use of scientific instruments.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• About the Contributors
• 1. Toward a More Developed Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation
• 2. The Materiality of Instruments in a Metaphysics for Experiments
• 3. Thing Knowledge: Outline of a Materialist Theory of Knowledge
• 4. Physics, Experiments, and the Concept of Nature
• 5. Experimentation, Causal Inference, and Instrumental Realism
• 6. Technology as Basis and Object of Experimental Practices
• 7. Theory-Ladenness and Scientific Instruments in Experimentation
• 8. Technology and Theory in Experimental Science
• 9. The Idols of Experiment: Transcending the “Etc. List”
• 10. Models, Simulation, and “Computer Experiments”
• 11. Experiments without Material Intervention: Model Experiments, Virtual Experiments, and Virtually Experiments
• 12. Designing Instruments and the Design of Nature
• 13. Varying the Cognitive Span: Experimentation, Visualization, and Computation
• References
• Index