Theory and Experiment: Recent Insights and New Perspectives on Their Relation

by Diderik Batens (Editor), Jean-Paul van Bendegem (Editor)

Overview

This is not "another collection of contributions on a traditional subject." Even more than we dared to expect during the preparatory stages, the papers in this volume prove that our thinking about science has taken a new turn and has reached a new stage. The progressive destruction of the received view has been a fascinating and healthy experience. At present, the period of destruction is over. A richer and more equilibrated analysis of a number of problems is possible and is being cru'ried out. In this sense, this book comes right on time. We owe a lot to the scholars of the Kuhnian period. They not only did away with obstacles, but in several respects instigated a shift in attention that changed history and philosophy of science in a irreversible way. A c1earcut example - we borrow it from the paper by Risto Hilpinen - concerns the study of science as a process, Rnd not only as a result. Moreover, they apparently reached several lasting results, e.g., concerning the tremendous impact of theoretical conceptions on empirical data. Apart from baffling people for several decades, this insight rules out an­ other return to simple-minded empiricism in the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789401077941
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	10/14/2011
Series:	Synthese Library , #195
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1988
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.03(d)

Table of Contents

I. Systematic Analyses.- Do Experiments Depend on Theories or Theories on Experiments?.- On Experimental Questions.- II. The Roles of Experiment: Theory Generation and Theory Testing.- Reconstructing Science: Discovery and Experiment.- The Role of Experiment and Theory in the Development of Nuclear Physics in the Early 1930’s.- Empirical Support for the Corpuscular Theory in the Seventeenth Century.- Theory and Experiment in the Early Writings of Johan Baptist Van Helmont.- The Significance of Empirical Evidence for Developments in the Foundations of Decision Theory.- Testing Freudian Hypotheses.- Experiment, Theory Choice, and the Duhem-Quine Problem.- III. The Role of Theoretical Conceptions.- Physical Reality and Closed Theories in Werner Heisenberg’s Early Papers.- Experiment and Theory in Ptolemy’s Optics.- Newton’s and Goethe’s Colour Theories — Contradictory or Complementary Approaches?.- On the Structure of Physics as a Science.- Models and Interpretation in Human Sciences: Anthropology and the Theoretical Notion of Field.- On the Dynamics of Scientific Paradigms.- Breaking the Link between Methodology and Rationality. A plea for Rhetoric in Scientific Inquiry.- Index of Names.