Tradition
Experiment
Overview
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Experiments vary greatly in goal and scale but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results. There also exist natural experimental studies.
A child may carry out basic experiments to understand how things fall to the ground, while teams of scientists may take years of systematic investigation to advance their understanding of a phenomenon. Experiments and other types of hands-on activities are very important to student learning in the science classroom. Experiments can raise test scores and help a student become more engaged and interested in the material they are learning, especially when used over time. Experiments can vary from personal and informal natural comparisons (e.g. tasting a range of chocolates to find a favorite), to highly controlled (e.g. tests requiring complex apparatus overseen by many scientists that hope to discover information about subatomic particles). Uses of experiments vary considerably between the natural and human sciences.
Experiments typically include controls, which are designed to minimize the effects of variables other than the single independent variable. This increases the reliability of the results, often through a comparison between control measurements and the other measurements. Scientific controls are a part of the scientific method. Ideally, all variables in an experiment are controlled (accounted for by the control measurements) and none are uncontrolled. In such an experiment, if all controls work as expected, it is possible to conclude that the experiment works as intended, and that results are due to the effect of the tested variables.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Experiment is discussed.
On the contrary, the real order of experience begins by setting up a light, and then shows the road by it, commencing with a regulated and digested, not a misplaced and vague course of experiment, and thence deducing axioms, and from those axioms new experiments: for not even the Divine Word proceeded to operate on the general mass of things without due order. Let men, therefore, cease to wonder if the whole course…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
This is already known to be the case with the first of the sciences we have mentioned, astronomy; that it is not generally recognised as true of the others, is probably one of the reasons why they are not in a more advanced state. § 4. If what is called pure observation is at so great a disadvantage, compared with artificial experimentation, in one department of the direct exploration of phenomena, there is another…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it; names the idea
Of course, judging an educational experiment by the pupil’s ability to “keep up” with the system the experiment is trying to improve, is of very little value. The purpose of the experiment is not to devise a method by which the teacher can teach more to the child in the same length of time, or even prepare him more pleasantly for his college course. It is rather to give the child an education which will make him a…
John Dewey, Schools of to-morrow
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
"We have three that try new experiments, such as themselves think good. These we call Pioneers or Miners. "We have three that draw the experiments of the former four into titles and tables, to give the better light for the drawing of observations and axioms out of them.
Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Now on what condition is the use of hypothesis without danger? The firm determination to submit to experiment is not enough; there are still dangerous hypotheses; first, and above all, those which are tacit and unconscious. Since we make them without knowing it, we are powerless to abandon them. Here again, then, is a service that mathematical physics can render us.
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Experiment
Related ideas
- Francis Bacon
- Book of Optics
- Geology
- Philosophy
- Placebo
- Counterexample
- Correlation
- Ibn al-Haytham
- Ad hoc
- Sociology
- Archaeology
- Medicine
- Measurement
- Meteorology
- Hypothesis
- Number
- Null hypothesis
- Psychology
- Ptolemy
- Political science
- Statistics
- Science
- Social science
- Scientific method
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.