Michael Faraday's “Historical Sketch of Electro-Magnetism” and the Theory-Dependence of Experimentation

Cobb, Aaron D.

doi:10.1086/605792

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Less frequently addressed is the role of experiments, which are essential at least for the first step. Exceptions are Steinle (1997) and Cobb (2009). Several studies of conceptualization show that it does not follow a hypothetico-deductive procedure.…”

Section: Conceptualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After Steinle and Burian, other instances of EE have been studied such that a more comprehensive picture about its range and features emerges. EE is mostly analyzed in life-science (Franklin, 2005;Burian, 2007;Elliott, 2007;O'Malley, 2007;Colaço, 2018) and in physics, Cobb (2009); Karaca (2013Karaca ( , 2017; Panoutsopoulos (2019). Further examples can be found in Steinle (2016) (326ff).…”

Section: Summarizing Literature On Exploratory Experimentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus EE is also instrumental after an astonishing discovery has been made. This is the case of Ampere's and Faraday's reaction to Oersted's discovery of electromagnetic interaction as discussed by Steinle (1997Steinle ( , 2016 and Cobb (2009). Also O'Malley (2007) finds that beyond a mere discovery, broad studies lead to "novel theoretical frameworks as well as challenges to old" ones (347).…”

Section: [C] Exploring New Parameters: 'Systemizing Astonishing Disco...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Classifying exploratory experimentation – three case studies of exploratory experimentation at the LHC

Mättig

2022

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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Along three measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a high energy particle accelerator, we analyze procedures and consequences of exploratory experimentation (EE). While all of these measurements fulfill the requirements of EE: probing new parameter spaces, being void of a target theory and applying a broad range of experimental methods, we identify epistemic differences and suggest a classification of EE. We distinguish classes of EE according to their respective goals: the exploration where an established global theory cannot provide the details of a local phenomenon, exploration of an astonishing discovery and exploration to find a new entity. We find that these classes also differ with respect to the existence of an identifiable target and their impact on the background theory. The characteristics distinguish EE from other kinds of experimentation, even though these different kinds have not yet been systematically studied. The formal rigor and precision of LHC physics facilitates to analyze concept formation in its early state. In particular we emphasize the importance for nil–results for conceptualization and argue that conceptualization can also be achieved from nil–results only.

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Section: Conceptualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Summarizing Literature On Exploratory Experimentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: [C] Exploring New Parameters: 'Systemizing Astonishing Disco...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Classifying exploratory experimentation – three case studies of exploratory experimentation at the LHC

Mättig

2022

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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“… For further discussion of Michael Faraday's experimental work, see Cantor ; Cobb ; Gooding 1991; Romo and Doncel ; Tweney ; and Williams .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hope as an Intellectual Virtue?

Cobb¹

2015

The Southern J of Philosophy

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Hope is a ubiquitous feature of human experience, but there has been relatively little scholarship within contemporary analytic philosophy devoted to the systematic analysis of its nature and value. In the last decade, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of hope and, in particular, its role in human agency. This scholarly attention reflects an ambivalence about hope's effects. While the possession of hope can have salutary consequences, it can also make the agent vulnerable to certain kinds of personal risk. The pervasiveness of hope is not a sign of its quality; only a well-tuned hope can be a virtue. Recently, Nancy Snow has argued that hope can be an intellectual virtue. Framing her account as a contribution to regulative epistemology, she contends that the intellectual virtue of hope can (i) motivate the pursuit of important epistemic ends, (ii) create dispositions that enable the successful pursuit of these aims, and (iii) generate a method for enduring intellectual projects. In this paper, I provide a critical appraisal of Snow's account of hope as an intellectual virtue. One important implication of this critique is that hope can function as an intellectual virtue only to the extent that it has benefitted from the correcting and perfecting influence of other cognitive excellences.

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“… 5 At around the same time as Steinle, the notion of “exploratory experimentation” was also used by Richard Burian (Burian 1997) and earlier by Rose-Mary Sargent (Sargent 1995). More recently, exploratory experimentation has received more attention from philosophers of science; see, e.g., Franklin 2005; Burian 2007; Elliott 2007; Marcum 2007; O'Malley 2007; Waters 2007; and Cobb 2009.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Strong and Weak Senses of Theory-Ladenness of Experimentation: Theory-Driven versus Exploratory Experiments in the History of High-Energy Particle Physics

Karaca¹

2013

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ArgumentIn the theory-dominated view of scientific experimentation, all relations of theory and experiment are taken on a par; namely, that experiments are performed solely to ascertain the conclusions of scientific theories. As a result, different aspects of experimentation and of the relation of theory to experiment remain undifferentiated. This in turn fosters a notion of theoryladenness of experimentation (TLE) that is too coarse-grained to accurately describe the relations of theory and experiment in scientific practice. By contrast, in this article, I suggest that TLE should be understood as an umbrella concept that has different senses. To this end, I introduce a three-fold distinction among the theories of high-energy particle physics (HEP) as background theories, model theories and phenomenological models. Drawing on this categorization, I contrast two types of experimentation, namely, "theory-driven" and "exploratory" experiments, and I distinguish between the "weak" and "strong" senses of TLE in the context of scattering experiments from the history of HEP. This distinction enables to identify the exploratory character of the deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering experimentsperformed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) between the years 1967 and 1973-thereby shedding light on a crucial phase of the history of HEP, namely, the discovery of "scaling", which was the decisive step towards the construction of quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD) as a gauge theory of strong interactions.

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Michael Faraday's “Historical Sketch of Electro-Magnetism” and the Theory-Dependence of Experimentation

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

Classifying exploratory experimentation – three case studies of exploratory experimentation at the LHC

Classifying exploratory experimentation – three case studies of exploratory experimentation at the LHC

Hope as an Intellectual Virtue?

The Strong and Weak Senses of Theory-Ladenness of Experimentation: Theory-Driven versus Exploratory Experiments in the History of High-Energy Particle Physics

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