Friedrich Steinle

Experiments in History and Philosophy of Science

The increasing attention on experiment in the last two decades has led to important insights into its material, cultural and social dimensions. However, the role of experiment as a tool for generating knowledge has been comparatively poorly studied. What questions are asked in experimental research? How are they treated and eventually resolved? And how do questions, epistemic situations, and experimental activity cohere and shape each other? In my paper, I treat these problems on the basis of detailed studies of research practice. After presenting several cases from the history of electricityDufay, Ampre, and FaradayI discuss a specific type of experimentthe exploratory experimentand analyze how it works in concept formation. I argue that a fuller understanding of experiment can only be achieved by intertwining historical and philosophical perspectives in such a way that the very separation of the two become questioable.

Revisiting Discovery and Justification

All Rights Reserved© 2006 SpringerNo part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recordingor otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exceptionof any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being enteredand executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.Printed in the Netherlands.

Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory

The style of investigation exemplified by Goethe’s experiments with color is often undervalued, but has repeatedly proved its worth.

Experiment, Speculation and Law: Faraday's Analysis of Arago's Wheel

Faradays view of the mutual relation of speculative theories and laws of nature implies that there should be a procedure, leading from speculative considerations to a system of facts and laws in which theories do no longer play any role. In order to make out the degree in which Faradays claims correspond to his practice, the way in which he gains an explanation of Aragos effect is analyzed. The thesis is proposed that he indeed has a procedure of leaving theories aside. It is intimately connected with certain methodological guidelines of his experimentation.

Going amiss in experimental research

Introduction Giora Hon, Jutta Schickore, and Friedrich Steinle Error as an object of study Giora Hon Error: The long neglect, the one-sided view, and a typology Jutta Schickore Error as historiographical challenge: The infamous globule hypothesis Learning from error Erez Braun and Shimon Marom Learning without error Giora Hon Living extremely flat: the life of automaton John von Neumanns conception of error of (in)animate systems Concepts and dead ends Hans-Jorg Rheinberger Experimental reorientations Karin Nickelsen and Gerd Grasshoff Concepts from the bench: Krebs and the Urea cycle Friedrich Steinle How experiments make concepts fail: Faraday and magnetic curves Kostas Gavroglu A pioneer who never got it right: James Dewar and the elusive phenomena of cold Instrumental artifacts Wendy Parker Distinguishing real results from instrumental artifacts: The case of the missing rain Jan Frercks Going right and making it wrong: The reception of Fizeaus ether-drift experiment of 1859 Allan Franklin The spectrum of ss decay: continuous or discrete? A variety of errors in experimental investigation Surprise and puzzlement Christoph Hoffmann The scent of filth: Experiments, waste, and the set-up Ursula Klein In the thick of organic matter Epilogue Giora Hon, Jutta Schickore, and Friedrich Steinle

Scientific concepts and investigative practice

Recent philosophy and history of science have seen a surge of interest in the role of concepts in scientific research. Combining philosophical and historical scholarship, the articles in this volume investigate the ways in which scientists form and use concepts, rather than in what the concepts themselves represent. The fields treated range from mathematics to virology and genetics, from nuclear physics to psychology, from technology to present-day neural engineering.

Introduction: History of Science and Philosophy of Science

The four papers and the comment that make up the bulk of this issue of Perspectives on Science, originated in a session organized by Friedrich Steinle for a meeting of the History of Science Society in Denver in 2001. We were struck by the extent to which, in spite of their differences, each of the papers managed to surmount some of the obstacles that beset the delicate, and sometimes difacult, relationship between history of science and philosophy of science. The authors have reworked their papers to highlight the intimate interactions in their work between detailed history of science and some core issue(s) in philosophy of science. The papers deal with different historical episodes and the authors speak from distinctively divergent viewpoints, but each of them develops speciac ways of intertwining historical and philosophical work in ways that improve both the historical studies and the philosophical analysis. This is an accomplishment of no small importance. Attempts to bring historical and philosophical studies of science into close contact with one another have a relatively long history. During an important formative period for the philosophy of science in the nineteenth century, many authors, perhaps most notably William Whewell, sought to base general accounts of science on serious studies of its history (see The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon their History, 1840). Although the history and the philosophy of science have often proceeded in considerable independence of one another, ever since Whewell’s groundbreaking work there have been notable attempts to provide a historical footing for general philosophies of science. One need only think of Duhem or Mach or, since the 1960s, Hacking, Kuhn, Lakatos, Latour, and Laudan—and many more. Recently, however, mainstream history of science and mainstream philosophy of science have gone in different directions. History of science

Newton’s Colour-Theory and Perception

The germ of Newton’s theory of colour, which he first published in 1672 and 1675, is already to be found in one of his earliest notebooks, the Certain Philosophical Questions,1 which dates from 1664/65. Although I shall not discuss the relevant entries in it in detail, I do want to emphasize one important point: in the manner of thinking which leads Newton to his theory, even at this very early stage, we can distinguish three different kinds of enquiry, which for him are inextricably interwoven: the observation of colours in physical phenomena; considerations of the physiological processes of the optic nerves; and the explanation of the observed phenomena in terms of light-corpuscles and their mechanical behaviour. He makes free use of all three of these lines of enquiry, and sometimes switches suddenly from one to the other.2 Although in this notebook none of them seems to be dispensable for his theory, it is perhaps only natural that in the course of drawing up such private notes he does not say anything about their relative importance or their specific roles. In his published papers, however, he becomes more explicit in this respect, particularly when he is intent on denying his reliance on this or that kind of mechanistic explanation.3 As has often been observed, however,4 these declarations are sometimes at odds with his actual procedure, not only in developing but also in presenting his theory. Consequently, if we are to deal with the question of the relative importance of the three elements of colour perception, physiological considerations and mechanistic explanations — and doing so is a matter of particular importance in connection with the subsequent criticism of Goethe and Hegel — we have first to take a close look at the role which each of them actually plays within Newton’s theory.

Newton’s Rejection of the Modification Theory of Colour

When dealing with modification theories of colour one has to take account of three different theses,1 all of which were discussed during the second half of the seventeenth century: (N): Colours are original and connate properties of light. By interaction with material media, with prisms for example, they are not generated, but only separated from one another. Before such interactions, they are contained in light in a confusedly intermingled manner. (MT): Colours are not original properties of light. They are generated in particular interactions with material media by certain modifications which matter causes in light. (P): Colours are generated by the admixture of darkness to light or, more generally, by the interaction of light and darkness, mediated by material media.