Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Experiments play a central role in most theories of science as the key mechanism through which theories and hypotheses are corroborated or refuted. Most especially in the work of Karl Popper, the acceptability of a theory – the extent to which it can be conceivably characterized as “scientific” – is determined by its falsifiability, that is, by whether it can be put to the test in an experiment. Experimentation is thus the foremost trial of strength for knowledge claims, and the sociology of science has investigated the particular social practices on which this validating function rests. Despite its centrality to most analytical accounts of the scientific enterprise, experimentation, as a social practice in its own right, has remained largely unexamined by philosophers of science, partly because their emphasis tended to be on theory and theoreticians. Also, it was often assumed – rather than proved – that experiments were fundamentally logical process reducible to a series of analytical steps, and thus capable of determining unambiguously the validity of a knowledge claim if conducted according to formal instructions. In the 1980s the sociology of science began to take a closer look at how knowledge is put to the test under experimental conditions. This investigation was influenced by the groundbreaking historical work of Kuhn (1962) , and received much of its inspiration from ... log in or subscribe to read full text