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2 - The Life of Theory in the New Experimentalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

By
Alan Chalmers  and
Deborah G. Mayo
Edited by
Deborah G. Mayo  and
Aris Spanos
Deborah G. Mayo
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Aris Spanos
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Summary

Introduction

Deborah Mayo's “error-statistical” account of science and its mode of progress is an attempt to codify and capitalise on the “new experimentalist” approach to science that has made its appearance in the past few decades as an alternative to “theory-dominated” accounts of science. Rather than understanding scientific progress in terms of the replacement of one large-scale theory by another in the light of experiments designed to test them, new experimentalists view progress in terms of the accumulation of experimental discoveries and capabilities established independently of high-level theory. The new experimentalists aspire to an account of science and its mode of progress that evades problems associated with the theory dependence of observation, the underdetermination of theories by evidence, the Duhem problem and incommensurability that have beset the theory-dominant approach. Here is how Mayo (this volume, p. 28) herself characterizes the situation:

Learning from evidence, in this experimentalist philosophy, depends not on appraising large-scale theories but on local experimental tasks of estimating backgrounds, modeling data, distinguishing experimental effects, and discriminating signals from noise. The growth of knowledge has not to do with replacing or confirming or probabilifying or ‘rationally accepting’ large-scale theories, but with testing specific hypotheses in such a way that there is a good chance of learning something – whatever theory it winds up as part of.

Central to Mayo's version of the new experimentalism is her notion of a severe test.

Type
Chapter
Information
Error and Inference
Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science
 , pp. 58 - 87
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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References

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Chalmers, A. (2002), “Experiment and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge,” pp. 157–69 in Gardenførs, P., Wolenski, J., and Kijania-Placek, K. (eds.), In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Kluwer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Chalmers, A. (2003), “The Theory-Dependence of the Use of Theories in Science,” Philosophy of Science, 70: 493–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, A. (2005), “Transforming Atomic Chemistry into an Experimental Science: The Status of Dalton's Theory,” The Rutherford Journal, 1, http://www.rutherfordjournal.org.Google Scholar
Chalmers, A. (2009), The Scientist's Atom and the Philosopher's Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms, Springer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1983), Representing and Intervening, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, B. (1991), The Maxwellians, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Krajewski, W. (1977), Correspondence Principle and Growth of Science, Reidel, Dordrecht.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1989), “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” in Leplin, J. (ed.), Scientific Realism, University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Maxwell, J.C. (1873), A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Vol. 2, Dover, NY (reprinted 1953).Google Scholar
Mayo, D.G. (1996), Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayo, D.G. (2002), “Theory Testing, Statistical Methodology and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge,” pp. 171–90 in Gardenførs, P., Wolenski, J., and Kijania-Placek, K. (eds.), In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Kluwer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Post, H.R. (1971), “Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2: 213–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowland, A., and Hutchinson, C.T. (1887), “Electromagnetic Effects of Convection Currents,” Philosophical Magazine, 27: 445–60.Google Scholar
Will, C.M. (1993), Was Einstein Right? Putting General Relativity to the Test, Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Will, C.M. (1996), “The Confrontation Between General Relativity and Experiment, a 1995 Update,” pp. 239–80 in Hall, G.S. and Pulham, J.R. (eds.), General Relativity: Proceedings of the Forty Sixth Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics, SUSSP Publications, Edinburgh, and Institute of Physics, London.Google Scholar
Will, C.M. (2004), “The Confrontation Between General Relativity and Experiment,” Living Reviews in Relativity, http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-4/title.html.Google Scholar
Worrall, J. (1989), “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds,” Dialectica, 43: 99–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worrall, J. (2002), “New Evidence for Old,” pp. 191–209 in Gardenfors, P., Wolenski, J., and Kijania-Placek, K. (eds.), In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Kluwer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar

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