Abstract
This is a philosophical paper about experiments in physical science. Their chief role is not to test theories, nor to generate data, nor to make observations possible. An experimenter will want to do all of those things, but even more important is the need to produce stable phenomena. Very few phenomena occur in nature in any readily discernible way, so it is worth saying that the one role of experiment is to “create phenomena”.
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Notes
More exactly, what he writes is that “all these discoveries cry out for a new terminology that no longer separates what is intimately connected in the development of the individual and of science at large”. Chief among these “discoveries” is this: “experience arises together with theoretical assumptions and not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience”. In the bicentenary year of Kant’s first Critique I find this discovery a trifle jaded. My “new terminology” passes by Feyerabend’s main project of trying to reunite individual and scientific development. This is because I think there is not so much connection between the two.
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Justus von Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon von Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung, Munchen: Lit.-art. Anstatt der J. S. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1863, p.49.
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© 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Hacking, I. (1991). Speculation, Calculation and the Creation of Phenomena. In: Munévar, G. (eds) Beyond Reason. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 132. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3188-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3188-9_5
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