Experimenter

“ A very simple experiment, that succeeds in many cases even with unpractised persons, will serve to illustrate this. The experimenter thinks, say, of the number four, and then waits, his hands quietly resting on the table, until he feels that the table makes the first inclination to announce the number thought of. ”

“ We see then that there are two excellent reasons for conceiving the notion of experiment so broadly. In the first place it becomes possible thereby to comprehend under one head the infinite complications and gradations which are possible in the consciousness of the experimenter, from the most random restlessness and the most blindly instinctive adaptations, to the most clearly conscious testing of an elaborate theory; in the second, it serves to bring out the radically tentative tendency which runs through the whole cosmos. ”

“ If, now, we can introduce the scientific method of original research and experiment into our workshops; if, instead of one experimenter, there may be dozens of wide-awake, observing, and energetic men in search of scientific and mechanical truth ”

“ When the sitters wish to make a report of an experiment, it is indispensable to intrust one of the experimenters with the task of taking notes of the incidents as they occur. This experimenter ought to form one of the circle. ”

“ Only in education, never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing. ”

“ On most branches of experimental inquiry, a few men in each age—perhaps but for a few ages in succession—have pursued for a longer or shorter portion of their life, a system of experiment and observation. But on the subject of food or diet all men in all ages have been practical experimenters, and not for a few years only, but during their entire life. ”

“ No man need give; they’re proved by science.”
Theories formed by experimenters with lenses.
Returning to Grosseteste and experimental method we may note his mention in the same treatise upon comets of “those who reflect and experiment in natural phenomena and form their opinions from their experiments without foundation [Pg 443] of reasons.” ”

“ Experiment after experiment gave the same result, and I knew, and shrank even as the thought passed through my mind, that in the work I had to do there must be elements which no laboratory could furnish, which no scales could ever measure. ”

“ You may make many mistakes, but one experiment will correct the other; and while you are storing up in your own mind knowledge which lifts you far above this little world, or enables you to look deep below the outward surface of life, you may add your little group of facts to the general store, and help to pave the way to such grand discoveries as those of Newton in astronomy, Bunsen and Kirchhoff in spectrum analysis, and Darwin in the world of life. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We bring the matter to the test or actual experiment. We make certain experiments, seriatim, upon each of the items that lie within the sentient sphere, and we note the effect which each experiment has upon that portion of the contents which is not meddled with. ”

“ But to say that physical experiment is either the test, or source, or guide of that other part of philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to look in external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or that we can only infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely distinct. ”

“ When we have thus brought together the requisites, both material and intellectual, for a particular experiment, it may sometimes be desirable that before the instruments are dismounted and the observers dispersed, we should make some other experiment, requiring the same method, but dealing perhaps with an entirely different class of physical phenomena. ”

“ To carry it into effect, there needs only an immediate appeal on a sufficiently large scale, to experiment; reason has done her part, when experiment does hers, nature will not refuse to sanction the whole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 method of observation and experiment, by which such great results are obtained in science, is identically the same as that which is employed by every one, every day of his life, but refined and rendered precise. If a child acquires a new toy, he observes its characters and experiments upon its properties; and we are all of us constantly making observations and experiments upon one thing or another. ”

“ Of course, the saying at once suggests the question, What is an experiment? In a certain way, all people, whether fools or wise men, are constantly making experiments. The education of the infant is thoroughly experimental from the very first, only in a haphazard and unconscious way. The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity. All successful action is successful experiment, in the broadest sense of the term, and every mistake or failure is a negative experiment, which deters us from repetition. ”

“ Living and working amongst the appliances of his laboratory, letting his thoughts play freely around the phenomena, incessantly framing hypotheses to account for the facts, and as incessantly testing his hypotheses by the touchstone of experiment, never hesitating to push to their logical conclusion the ideas suggested by experiment, however widely they might seem to lead from the accepted modes of thought, he worked on with a scientific prevision little short of miraculous. ”

“ The circumstances of the experiment are so arranged that the phenomenon which we wish to observe or to exhibit is brought into prominence, instead of being obscured and entangled among other phenomena, as it is when it occurs in the ordinary course of nature. To exhibit illustrative experiments, to encourage others to make them, and to cultivate in every way the ideas on which they throw light, forms an important part of our duty. ”

“ A reaction had set in, led by Galileo, Gilbert, and the whole modern school of experimental philosophers, lasting down to the present day:—men who teach that the only right way of investigating Nature is by experiment and observation. ”

“ It must next be admitted that when it is said that the world is constructed by experiment, the conception of experiment is taken very widely and in a way that extends far beyond the conscious experiment of the scientist who is fully aware of what he does and what he wants, and precisely controls all the conditions. ”

“ It was thought that the temper of the really scientific man, so patient in research, so accurate and conscientious, so slow to dogmatize, so deferential to others, might be fostered by experimental science in the schools, acquiring "knowledge at first hand," making experiments, looking with great respect at balances, weighing and measuring, and giving an account of results. ”

“ Experiments must be the foundation of theory. With them the beginner should learn to observe, reflect, and judge; from them he should himself unfold the general chemical relations and truths; he should himself discover, and in this way by his own efforts, along with manual dexterity, acquire an intellectual possession also. Every experiment and every fact observed therein will thus be to him a conquest, and will incite to new exertion. ”

“ By these simple experiments, a child may acquire a general knowledge of solution, evaporation, and saturation, without the formality of a lecture, or the apparatus of a chemist. In all your attempts to instruct him in chemistry, the greatest care should be taken that he should completely understand one experiment, before you proceed to another. The common metaphorical expression, that the mind should have time to digest the food which it receives, is founded upon fact and observation. ”

“ Now in the matter of experiment for the proof of the thesis that changes in the habits of an animal cause the changes observed in their hair, it is at once seen that, ex hypothesi, no one can impose and work with such calculated conditions as are ordained by experiment, strictly so-called. ”

“ In observation we watch for causes; in experiment we work for effects. We may thus define experiment as the act of making phenomena occur for the purpose of watching for effects. In experiment there is much which is merely observation. In fact experiment is observation in which the phenomenon is artificially produced. For the sake of definiteness, however, any observation which involves a manipulation of circumstances, may be designated as experimental. ”

“ The vocation of the true experimentalist is the incessant correction and realization of his insight; his experiments finally constituting a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul. ”

“ EXPERIMENT. We may now consider the great advantages which we enjoy in examining the combinations of phenomena when things are within our reach and capable of being experimented on. We are said to experiment when we bring substances together under various conditions of temperature, pressure, electric disturbance, chemical action, &c., and then record the changes observed. Our object in inductive investigation is to ascertain exactly the group of circumstances or conditions which being present, a certain other group of phenomena will follow. ”

“ Likewise, your own person has had the honor of serving as material for another experiment, equally important—an experiment whose effect on your body is similar to that of the first one on the air-fleet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Experiment is the observation of that which happens when we intentionally bring natural objects together, or separate them, or in any way change the conditions under which they are placed. Scientific experiment, therefore, is scientific observation performed under accurately known artificial conditions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore I have made it an invariable rule to experiment with non-professional mediums, only on condition that they bind themselves to experiment with no other than my own circle as long as our series of experiments lasts. ”

“ An experiment belongs under what we called "general psychology", and a test under "differential psychology", since the first outcome of a test is to show how the individual differs from others in a certain respect. ”

“ Before performing an experiment, the student is advised to review those topics presented in the text which have a bearing upon the experiment, so that a clear conception may be gained of the relationship between the laboratory work and that of the class room. The student should endeavor to cultivate the power of observation and to grasp the principle involved in the work, rather than do it in a merely mechanical and perfunctory way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation. ”