Observation, Experiment, and Scientific Practice

ABSTRACT

Ian Hacking has argued that the notions of experiment and observation are distinct, not even the opposite ends of a continuum. More recently, other authors have emphasised their continuity, saying it is futile to distinguish between them as they belong on a continuum of epistemic activities. I take a middle road by suggesting that in scientific practice, experiment and observation constitute a continuum, but we can identify methodological and pragmatic aspects that define it, as well as various points on it that meaningfully delineate scientific practices. I explain the implications of the location of research projects on the continuum for scientists’ epistemic responsibilities and their ethical and funding concerns.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous referees for their very helpful detailed feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Observation is a preferred technical term in High Energy Physics in this context; even a casual look at publications coming out of ATLAS and CMS collaborations indicates this.

2 Shapere (1982) made this example a focus of his analysis in the context of the notion of direct observation. I discuss his argument in due course.

3 I should note that scientists are only beginning to learn the various ways computer simulations can be used and to discover their methodological ramifications, so it is too early to devise a definitive and thorough epistemic account. The observation/experiment distinction has a much longer history.

4 We could stretch the notion of ‘phenomenon’ to include, for example, early universe objects only very indirectly accessible to us. In that sense, the Big Bang is a phenomenon we can access indirectly.

5 For a recent discussion of the notion of phenomena in science, see Colaço (2020). Note that phenomena can be understood in a richer sense, as effects recorded as data (Bogen and Woodward 1988).

6 The domain of visual observation as a template has been extended to the electromagnetic domain of phenomena with clear consequences for the methodological and also for the pragmatic aspects of certain explorations.

7 Although I will not discuss the point here, I should note that estimates of accessibility as a key for distinguishing observation and experiments are neutral to the question of theory-ladenness.

8 See https://linearcollider.org.

9 We are compelled to stop delineating these practices in terms of the distinction between observation and experiment only if we predicate the delineation on seeking necessary and sufficient conditions for defining them.

10 These experiments work with less accessible, less directly detected phenomena if we think of them in terms of comparative accessibility or even in terms of accessibility potentially enabled by yet non-existent colliders with better precision as we will see shortly. They can be also turned into surrogate labs analogous to star labs when we comb through vast data with various hypotheses – in effect, retrodicting rather than predicting.

11 Although I cannot go into detail here, this view stands in stark contrast to the one pursued by advocates of traditional empiricism. Van Fraassen (1977) famously argued that the target phenomena in scientific investigations are essentially unobservable. If the accessibility of seemingly exotic physical phenomena could be and, given the right conditions in actual investigations, is on a par with naked-eye observations, then the everyday unaided use of the senses to observe phenomena does not have a special, grounding epistemic status. This status is achieved through the deepening interface between background knowledge and improved manipulability.

12 LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.

13 See Currie (2018) on the methodological specificities of the historical sciences, especially on the accessibility of targeted phenomena.

14 This is typically the case with scientific quests for origins, such as the origin of the universe, origin of life, or origin of agriculture.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the project ‘Dynamic Systems in Nature and Society’ (project #179041), funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.