Experimental science

“ The practical procedure and practical assumptions of modern experimental science, since they make thinking essentially and not merely accidentally a process of discovery, seem irreconcilable with both the empirical and transcendental interpretations. ”

“ Experimental science, which in the Opus Tertium (p. 46) is distinguished from the speculative sciences and the operative arts in a way that forcibly reminds us of Francis Bacon, is said to have three great prerogatives over all other sciences:— (1) It verifies their conclusions by direct experiment; (2) It discovers truths which they could never reach; (3) It investigates the secrets of nature, and opens to us a knowledge of past and future. ”

“ The greatest triumph of the scientific revolution was, arguably, the advent of the kind of experimental method that still underlies most science today: the fundamental insight that we could get a better handle on the natural world by manipulating it through experiment was, to a large degree, the most important conceptual leap of the era. ”

“ It is, first of all, necessary to understand the method of experimental science. One of the greatest tasks of the next few generations is to give to the human sciences something of the same certainty, something of the same possibility of accumulating tested knowledge, that has marked the natural sciences since their new start made, let us say, by Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum." ”

“ After this preliminary statement of the results of experimental investigation, we said, "Therefore, it is now regarded as a fundamental truth of physical science, and a fundamental law of Nature, that force, like matter, is never created or destroyed." The proposition is stated as an inference, as an induction from observations, as a result of experimental inquiry into the physical processes of Nature, and as a pure principle of science. ”

“ Great deficiencies remain to be supplied, and many vaguely-known points to be cleared up, nor has an effort even been made as yet to systematize all the groups of results gained. The latter task we propose to attempt here, with the purpose of showing by a remarkable instance the manner of evolving knowledge through the power of the experimental method, the sequent, cumulative, and mutually-supporting character of well-conducted experiments, and their endless wealth of instruction; in a word, the process adopted by eminent men in the great art of wresting her secrets from living Nature. ”

“ Experimental science is of an entirely different sort. We must look upon it as a means of investigation into the field of the infinite and the unknown. If we wish to compare it to some branch of learning that is universally familiar, we may say that an experimental science is similar to learning to read. ”

“ The presumption that biological phenomena may be adequately treated in terms of chemistry and physics takes care of itself so far as strict science is concerned, since its utter futility becomes apparent almost immediately it is put to rigid experimental test. ”

“ Thus, also, the ideas now taking expression as scientific statements of nature's laws originated in a distant age, grew into form with experience and observation and restricted experimental research, until, with the opening of the XIXth century, and with the enormous development of scientific method and of experimental systems, and with the production in marvelous exactness and perfection of every form of instrument of research, quantities came to be exactly measured and the law of persistence of energy could be stated positively and quantitatively. ”

“ We see now that the practice of the experimental method endows with a new vision both the experimenter himself and, through his influence, those who are associated with him in medical science, even if these be not themselves actually engaged in experiment; a new discipline is imposed upon old faculties, as is seen as well in other sciences as in those on which medicine more directly depends. ”

“ The simplicity and precision of the author's experimental methods, his conscientiousness in being sure of one step before he takes the next, and the skill displayed in interpreting and combining his experimental results—all these admirable characteristics have rendered his book instructive and entertaining to those who merely follow from afar the progress of science, while, at the same time, he has furnished a model of precise research and clear exposition to the professed scientist. ”

“ One remarkable feature in the modern progress of biological science has been the application of improved methods of observation and experiment, and the employment in physiological research of the exact measurements employed by the experimental physicist. ”

“ The discoveries which change the method of a science from experimental to deductive, mostly consist in establishing, either by deduction or by direct experiment, that the varieties of a particular phenomenon uniformly accompany the varieties of some other phenomenon better known. ”

“ The processes of the medical art are even now mostly empirical: their efficacy is concluded, in each instance, from a special and most precarious experimental generalization: but as science advances in discovering the simple laws of chemistry and physiology, progress is made in ascertaining the intermediate links in the series of phenomena, and the more general laws on which they depend ”

“ At first it is probable that our principal experimental work must be the illustration of particular branches of science, but as we go on we must add to this the study of scientific methods, the same method being sometimes illustrated by its application to researches belonging to different branches of science. ”

“ Like observation, experimentation has been wonderfully improved of late years. The experimental sciences which make most use of it—experimental physics, chemistry, physiology, pathology, etc.—have made astounding progress. But it is just as important in the case of experiment—or observation under artificial conditions—as of simple observation that it be undertaken and carried out with a sound and clear judgment. Nature can only give a correct and unambiguous answer to the question you put it when it is clearly and distinctly proposed. ”

“ An essential distinction exists between two stages in the process of advancing our knowledge of the laws of physical phenomena; the first stage consists in observing the relations of phenomena, whether of such as occur in the ordinary course of nature, or of such as are artificially produced in experimental investigations, and in expressing the relations so observed by propositions called formal laws. The second stage consists in reducing the formal laws of an entire class of phenomena to the form of a science; ”

“ There are only two modes in which laws of nature can be ascertained--deductively and experimentally; including under the denomination of experimental inquiry, observation as well as artificial experiment. Are the laws of the formation of character susceptible of a satisfactory investigation by the method of experimentation? ”

“ The object of experimental philosophy is the knowledge of nature in general, or more strictly, that of the properties of natural substances, and of the changes of those properties in different circumstances. This knowledge can only be attained by experiment, or observation ”

“ It may be a task, not hopeless, to extract from the past progress of science the elements of an effectual and substantial method of Scientific Discovery. The advances which have, during the last three centuries, been made in the physical sciences;—in Astronomy, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural History, in Physiology;—these are allowed by all to be real, to be great, to be striking ”

“ Anyone conversant with a single branch of Natural Science is aware that experiment, as well as observation, is necessary. Who would expect discoveries in physics, or in chemistry, without laboratories and experiments? Do not botanists investigate the functions of plants by dissection, by microscopic and chemical investigation, and by experiment? ”

“ The legitimate aim of all systematic, exact experiments is to lay a foundation of well-ascertained and closely related facts on which may be developed a superstructure of science to supersede the theoretical speculations which form an important part of the prelude of scientific discovery. ”

“ His contribution to the development of science was abstracting the method of experiment from the concrete problem to see its bearing and importance as a universal method of research. He advocated changing education to include studies of the natural world using observation, exact measurement, and experiments. ”

“ If you could be persuaded that chemistry can make progress without retorts and balances, that a geologist's hammer is a useless incumbrance, or that engineers can build bridges just as well by the rule of thumb as by the knowledge gained in a workshop, then you might believe that physiology also is independent of experiment. ”

“ Yes, science to-day, at the close of this nineteenth century, in the laboratory is discovering and scientifically demonstrating the great, immutable laws upon which the inspired and illuminated ones of all ages have based all their teachings, those who by ordering their lives according to the higher laws of their being get in a moment of time, through the direct touch of inspiration, what it takes the physical investigator a whole lifetime or a series of investigators a series of lifetimes to discover and demonstrate. ”

“ The astronomer, the electrician, the chemist, the mineralogist, the botanist, are constantly called upon to perform manual operations of exceeding delicacy. The progress of all branches of physical science depends upon observation, or on that artificial observation which is termed experiment, of one kind or another; and, the farther we advance, the more practical difficulties surround the investigation of the conditions of the problems offered to us; so that mobile and yet steady hands, guided by clear vision, are more and more in request in the workshops of science. ”

“ But the mode of simplification adopted in physics and chemistry, viz., experiment, or the arranging of simple artificial conditions, is only to a slight extent applicable to biology. The phenomena are not only complex, but they are so delicately balanced that the introduction of our rude hands in the way of experiment often overthrows the equilibrium, destroys the conditions of biological experiment, viz., life, and thus throws the whole subject into the realm of chemistry and physics. But, fortunately, nature has prepared for us an elaborate series of experiments. ”

“ And, although in the study of political economy we can not use that potent method of experiment by artificially produced conditions which is so valuable in the physical sciences, yet, not only may we find, in the diversity of human society, experiments already worked out for us, but there is at our command a method analogous to that of the chemist, in what may be called mental experiment. ”

“ If Nature has really produced imitations of mechanical arrangement by processes unknown to us, it is to be wished that the mode in which they have been produced may be shown, either by means of experiments, or by analogies drawn from that science of which the laws regulate the great proceedings of Nature as they do the narrow operations of our own laboratories. ”

“ That which he gets which is of most worth in his course in a physical laboratory is not a familiarity with the principles of the science, but a training in the methods of investigation in use among physicists, including a knowledge of the use and abuse of experiment and the necessary limits of our knowledge derived therefrom. ”

“ It is a general truth that the physical sciences of light and heat are based upon mechanical conditions of the particles of matter; that the science of chemistry is founded upon physics; that biological phenomena are dependent upon physical and chemical conditions; that psychological subjects are based upon biology; and that biological science cannot progress excepting in proportion to the advance of the sciences on which it is based. ”

“ There was then no occasion for those delicate instruments of precision which are now found in every physical laboratory by means of which the man of science is able to investigate phenomena and determine laws that were quite unknown until a few years ago. ”

“ In one of his later experimental researches he wrote:—
As an experimentalist, I feel bound to let experiment guide me into any train of thought which it may justify; being satisfied that experiment, like analysis, must lead to strict truth if rightly interpreted; and believing also that it is in its nature far more suggestive of new trains of thought and new conditions of natural power. ”

“ The experiments conducted by means of such apparatus, and the handing round of specimens, are not only absolutely essential, oftentimes, to the comprehension of the science to which they belong, but contribute powerfully to fix it in the memory. ”

“ But on the whole, though I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy, this first trial confirmed in me the taste for experimental research in the fields of physics and chemistry. ”

“ Suppose that after refusing to make the first experiment in the study of chemistry he should attempt researches in a realm whose facts required interpretation in the light of the chemical laws he had refused to learn in the laboratory. ”

“ Admitting that in certain cases a single experiment in the laboratory is insufficient to reproduce the phenomenon, yet a series of experiments, each of which would be performed to make clear the action of one of the components of the problem, would represent it in its entirety. ”