Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-246sw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-20T18:56:22.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Observations, Experiments, and Arguments for Epistemic Superiority in Scientific Methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2023

Nora Mills Boyd  and
Dana Matthiessen
Nora Mills Boyd*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, Siena College, Loudonville, NY, USA
Dana Matthiessen
Affiliation:
Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, Minneapolis, MN, USA
*
Corresponding author: Nora Mills Boyd; Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues against general claims for the epistemic superiority of experiment over observation. It does so by dissociating the benefits traditionally attributed to experiment from physical manipulation. In place of manipulation, we argue that other features of research methods do confer epistemic advantages in comparison to methods in which they are diminished. These features better track the epistemic successes and failures of scientific research, crosscut the observation/experiment distinction, and nevertheless explain why manipulative experiments are successful when they are.

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 111 - 131
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Both authors contributed equally to the conception and writing of this paper. The author name order does not reflect intellectual priority.

References

Alexander, Henry Gavin. 1958. “The Paradoxes of Confirmation.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 9 (35):227–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/IX.35.227 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bluhm, Robyn, and Borgerson, Kirstin. 2011. “Evidence-Based Medicine.” In The Handbook of Philosophy of Science. Volume 16: Philosophy of Medicine, edited by Gifford, Fred, 203–38. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Bogen, James, and Woodward, James. 1988. “Saving the Phenomena.” Philosophical Review 97 (3):303–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/2185445 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogen, Jim. 2010. “Noise in the World.” Philosophy of Science 77 (5):778–91. https://doi.org/10.1086/656006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Nora Mills. 2023. “Laboratory Astrophysics: Lessons for Epistemology of Astrophysics.” In Philosophy of Astrophysics: Stars, Simulations, and the Struggle to Determine What Is Out There, edited by Boyd, Nora Mills, Baerdemaeker, Siska de, Heng, Keven, and Matarese, Vera, 13–32. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26618-8_2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandon, Robert. 1994. “Theory and Experiment in Evolutionary Biology.” Synthese 99 (1):59–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01064530 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bromham, Lindell. 2016. “Testing Hypotheses in Macroevolution.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 55:47–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.08.013 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell, Donald T., and Stanley, Julian C.. 1963. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.Google Scholar
Climenhaga, Nevin, DesAutels, Lane, and Ramsey, Grant. 2021. “Causal Inference from Noise.” Noûs 55 (1):152–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12300 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, Carl F., and Dan-Cohen, Talia. Forthcoming. “Experimental Artefacts.” British Journal for Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Craver, Carl F., and Darden, Lindley. 2013. In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, Adrian, and Levy, Arnon. 2019. “Why Experiments Matter.” Inquiry 62 (9–10):1066–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2018.1533883 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2011. “The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800.” In Histories of Scientific Observation, edited by Daston, Lorraine and Lunbeck, Elizabeth, 81–114. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Deaton, Angus, and Cartwright, Nancy. 2018a. “Reflections on Randomized Control Trials.” Social Science & Medicine 210:86–90. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953618302132?via%3Dihub CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deaton, Angus, and Cartwright, Nancy. 2018b. “Understanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials.” Social Science & Medicine 210:2–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galison, Peter. 1982. “The Discovery of the Muon and the Failed Revolution against Quantum Electrodynamics.” Centaurus 26 (3):262–316. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0498.1982.tb00666.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, Peter. 1987. How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gooding, David. 1992. “Putting Agency Back into Experiment.” In Science as Practice and Culture, edited by Pickering, Andrew, 65–112. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1983. Representing and Intervening. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1989. “Extragalactic Reality: The Case of Gravitational Lensing.” Philosophy of Science 56 (4):555–81. https://doi.org/10.1086/289514 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halzen, Francis. 2021. “High-Energy Neutrinos from the Cosmos.” Annalen der Physik 533 (11):2100309. https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.202100309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herschel, John Frederick William. 1831. A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and John Taylor.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howson, Colin, and Urbach, Peter. 1989. Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Jacquart, Melissa. 2020. “Observations, Simulations, and Reasoning in Astrophysics.” Philosophy of Science 87 (5):1209–20. https://doi.org/10.1086/710544 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Adrian, and Richard Shaw, J.. 2020. “Data Analysis for Precision 21cm Cosmology.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 132 (1012):062001. https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/ab5bfd CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longino, Helen E. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malik, Saira. 2017. “Observation versus Experiment: An Adequate Framework for Analysing Scientific Experimentation?” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 48 (1):71–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-016-9335-y CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mészáros, Peter. 2017. “Astrophysical Sources of High-Energy Neutrinos in the IceCube Era.” Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 67:45–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikhalevich, Irina. “Intervention and Experiment.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Morgan, Mary S. 2013. “Nature’s Experiments and Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (3):341–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393113489100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John. 2022. “How to Make Possibility Safe for Empiricists” In Rethinking the Concept of Law of Nature: Natural Order in the Light of Contemporary Science, edited by Ben-Menahem, Yemina, 129–59. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96775-8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okasha, Samir. 2001. “What Did Hume Really Show about Induction?” Philosophical Quarterly 51 (204):307–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okasha, Samir. 2011. “Experiment, Observation and the Confirmation of Laws.” Analysis 71 (2):222–32. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anr014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Maureen. 2016. “Histories of Molecules: Reconciling the Past.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 55:69–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.09.002 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perović, Slobodan. 2021. “Observation, Experiment, and Scientific Practice.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 34 (1):1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2021.1978038 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Raimann, Daniel, Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann, Hernan Quintana, Hunstead, Richard, and Wisotzki, Lutz. 2005. “Stellar Populations in a Complete Sample of Local Radio Galaxies.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 364 (4):1239–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09665.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resconi, Elisa, and P-ONE Collaboration. 2021. “The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment.” In Proceedings of 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference—PoS (ICRC 2021), vol. 395. https://pos.sissa.it/395/024/pdf CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roush, Sherrilyn. 2018. “The Epistemic Superiority of Experiment to Simulation.” Synthese 195 (11):4883–906. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1431-y CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schickore, Jutta. 2019. “The Place and Significance of Comparative Trials in German Agricultural Writings around 1800.” Annals of Science 78 (4):484–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2021.1958008 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shadish, William R., Cook, Thomas D., and Campbell, Donald T.. 2002. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Shapere, Dudley. 1982. “The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy.” Philosophy of Science 49 (4):485–525. https://doi.org/10.1086/289075 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spirtes, Peter, Glymour, Clark, and Scheines, Richard. 2000. Causation, Prediction, and Search. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wietfeldt, Fred E. 2018. “Measurements of the Neutron Lifetime.” Atoms 6 (4):70. https://doi.org/10.3390/atoms6040070 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Worrall, John. 2002. “What Evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine?” Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S316–30. https://doi.org/10.1086/341855 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwier, Karen R. 2013. “An Epistemology of Causal Inference from Experiment.” Philosophy of Science 80 (5):660–71. https://doi.org/10.1086/673901 CrossRefGoogle Scholar