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Observation and Experiment in the Natural and Social Sciences

  • Book
  • © 2003

Overview

Editors:
  1. Maria Carla Galavotti

    1. University of Bologna, Italy

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 232)

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Table of contents (24 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. From Throry to Experiment and Back Again

    • Patrick Suppes
    Pages 1-41

  3. NaÏve Probability

    • Paolo Legrenzi
    Pages 43-55

  4. From Theory to Experiments and Back Again ... and Back Again ... Comments on Patrick Suppes

    • LÀszlÓ E. SzabÓ
    Pages 57-62

  5. Emergence and Future of Experimental Economics

    • Reinhard Selten
    Pages 63-70

  6. Rationality in Experimental Economics: An Analysis of Reinhard Selten’s Approach

    • Wenceslao J. Gonzalez
    Pages 71-83

  7. Experiments, Heuristics and Social Diversity: A Comment on Reinhard Selten

    • Roberto Scazzieri
    Pages 85-98

  8. Where do New Ideas Come From? a Heuristics of Discovery in the Cognitive Sciences

    • Gerd Gigerenzer
    Pages 99-139

  9. Comments on Gerd Gigerenzer

    • David Papineau
    Pages 141-151

  10. On the Concept of Discovery Comments on Gerd Gigerenzer

    • Jeanne Peijnenburg
    Pages 153-158

  11. Styles of Experimentation

    • Ursula Klein
    Pages 159-185

  12. On French Concepts and Objects Comments on Ursula Klein

    • Aristides Baltas
    Pages 187-197

  13. Some Comments on “Styles of Experimentation” by Ursula Klein

    • Donald Gillies
    Pages 199-201

  14. Improving “Styles of Experimentation” a Comment on Ursula Klein

    • GÜrol Irzik
    Pages 203-207

  15. Experiments and Thought Experiments in Natural Science

    • David Atkinson
    Pages 209-225

  16. The Advantages of Theft Over Honest Toil Comments on David Atkinson

    • Daniel Andler
    Pages 227-236

  17. Thinking About Thought Experiments in Physics Comment on “Experiments and Thought Experiments in Natural Science”

    • MiklÓs RÉdei
    Pages 237-241

  18. The Dynamics of Thought Experiments A Comment on David Atkinson

    • Michael StÖltzner
    Pages 243-258

  19. An Attempt at a Philosophy of Experiment

    • Giora Hon
    Pages 259-284

  20. An Attempt at a Philosophy of Experimental Error a Comment on Giora Hon

    • Raffaella Campaner
    Pages 285-293
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Keywords

About this book

According to a long tradition in philosophy of science, a clear cut distinction can be traced between a context of discovery and a context of justification. This tradition dates back to the birth of the discipline in connection with the Circles of Vienna and Berlin, in the twenties and thirties of last century. Convicted that only the context of justification is pertinent to philosophy of science, logical empiricists identified its goal with the “rational reconstruction” of scientific knowledge, taken as the clarification of the logical structure of science, through an analysis of its language and methods. Stressing justification as the proper field of application of philosophy of science, logical empiricists intended to leave discovery out of its remit. The context of discovery was then discarded from philosophy of science and left to sociology, psychology and history. The distinction between context of discovery and context of justification goes hand in hand with the tenet that the theoretical side of science can – and should – be kept separate from its observational and experimental components. Further, the final, abstract formulation of theories should be analysed apart from the process behind it, resulting from a tangle of context-dependent factors. This conviction is reflected by the distinction between theoretical and observational sentences underpinning the Hempelian view of theories as nets, whose knots represent theoretical terms, floating on the plane of observation, to which it is anchored by rules of interpretation.

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Bologna, Italy

    Maria Carla Galavotti

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Observation and Experiment in the Natural and Social Sciences

  • Editors: Maria Carla Galavotti

  • Series Title: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48123-5

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2003

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-1251-8Published: 30 April 2003

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-6278-9Published: 22 October 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-0-306-48123-9Published: 18 April 2006

  • Series ISSN: 0068-0346

  • Series E-ISSN: 2214-7942

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 357

  • Number of Illustrations: 8 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, Philosophy of Nature

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