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Entering New Fields: Exploratory Uses of Experimentation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Friedrich Steinle
Friedrich Steinle*
Affiliation:
University of Göttingen
*
†Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Georg-August-Universität, Humboldtallee 11, 37073 Göttingen, Germany; e-mail: fsteinl@gwdg.de.
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Abstract

Starting with some illustrative examples, I develop a systematic account of a specific type of experimentation—an experimentation which is not, as in the “standard view”, driven by specific theories. It is typically practiced in periods in which no theory or—even more fundamentally—no conceptual framework is readily available. I call it exploratory experimentation and I explicate its systematic guidelines. From the historical examples I argue furthermore that exploratory experimentation may have an immense, but hitherto widely neglected, epistemic significance.

Information

Type
Symposium: Patterns in the Interrelation of Experiment, Instrumentation, and Theory
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S65 - S74
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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