Exploratory experiments

Philosophy of Science 72 (5):888-899 (2005)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

Similar books and articles

Why Thought Experiments are Not Arguments.Michael A. Bishop - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (4):534-541.
Empirical thought experiments: A trascendental-operational view.Buzzoni Marco - 2010 - Epistemologia. An Italian Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33:05-26.
Reconsidering Experiments.Lydia Patton - 2011 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (2):209-226.
Experiments and thought experiments in natural science.David Atkinson - 2001 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 232:209-226.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
1,697 (#5,981)

6 months
196 (#14,684)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Laura Franklin-Hall
New York University

Citations of this work

Why experiments matter.Arnon Levy & Adrian Currie - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (9-10):1066-1090.
Mixtures and Psychological Inference with Resting State fMRI.Joseph McCaffrey & David Danks - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3):583-611.

View all 56 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The Logic of Scientific Discovery.Karl Popper - 1959 - Studia Logica 9:262-265.
Representing and Intervening.Ian Hacking - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (4):381-390.
Representing and Intervening.Ian Hacking - 1987 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 92 (2):279-279.
How Experiments End.Peter Galison - 1988 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (3):411-414.

View all 9 references / Add more references