&HPS1
Thursday, 11 October - Saturday, 13 October 2007
Center for Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh

Thematic Session

Scientific Experimentation
Moderator: Bill Newton and Jutta Schickore

It is a commonplace that experimentation is one of the core activities of science. Yet historians as well as philosophers of science ignored the topic of experimentation for the better part of the 20 th century. Only in the 1980s, they began to concern themselves with experiments and their roles in knowledge generation. However, so far, there is little exchange between the two fields. Historical studies have concentrated on the material culture, the institutional settings, and the uses of experiment. The ‘New Experimentalism’ in philosophy began as a contribution to ongoing debates about Scientific Realism and moved on to questions about models, mechanisms, and causal strategies, almost always focusing on cases from recent science.

This session seeks to bring together historical and philosophical perspectives on experimentation, emphasizing the historical development of epistemically significant aspects of experimental practice. Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Scientists’ changing concepts of instruments, experiments, and scientific objects and their impact on scientific methodology

• The changing nature of experimental reports

• Conceptions of the causes and meanings of error and imperfection in experimental practice and their development Specific epistemological challenges arising from the ‘Big Science’ projects that are so typical for the 20 th century (e.g. challenges to traditional conceptions of justification and epistemological individualism)

We also welcome contributions on the history of history and philosophy of science. Why was it that early 20 th-century philosophers of science were little interested in the nature and role of experimentation? How convincing are their arguments against the philosophical significance of experiments? And can recent philosophers of science provide adequate and satisfying responses to these challenges?