Scientific experiment

“ Analysis of this crude kind does no more than give us our bearings. If we are to lay out the facts with scientific accuracy, we must carry actions into the laboratory, and examine them under experimental conditions. We do this by way of the ‘reaction experiment.’
§ 55. The Reaction Experiment.—The reaction experiment comes to us, of all unlikely things, by the road of astronomy. In the old days, before electrical instruments were invented, astronomers used to time the passage of a star across the meridian of their observatory by means of the eye-and-ear method. ”

“ In the earlier stage of physical research, all observation and experiment lead forward to general results, which gain ready acceptance because they may be said to be involved in scientific procedure itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In their numerous writings on mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, it is interesting to remark that the solution of a problem is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by an instrumental observation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But any new fact, however microscopic, any new investigation, whether it concerns a planet or an atom, any new experiment in which a law of nature is made more palpable and convincing, finds with us a ready welcome. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We bring the matter to the test of 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The aim of an experiment of illustration is to throw light upon some scientific idea so that the student may be enabled to grasp it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We look, therefore, anxiously toward the pathological investigations of the time, and we deeply deplore the well-meaning but misguided zeal which is at present placing such grave obstacles in the way of the only means by which true science can advance—namely, direct 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some intelligent beings in this vaster cosmos or supra-universe, in which we are but a molecule, have began an experiment which is a common one in chemistry, an experiment in which one or two electrons in each atom are torn away, resulting, as you already know, in the formation of a new element. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Physics and chemistry arc generally spoken of as the experimental sciences, but physiology is also now in the highest sense an experimental science, while, for delicacy and difficulty of operation and consummate contrivances for dealing with obscure and complex phenomena, the physiological laboratory has precedence of all the workshops of experiment. ”

“ In every department of science, when prosecuted far enough, these two great steps of investigation must succeed each other. The laws of phenomena must be known before we can speculate concerning causes; the causes must be inquired into when the phenomena have been 128 reduced to rule. In both these speculations the suppositions and conceptions which occur must be constantly tested by reference to observation and experiment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 further 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. ”

“ Nature, in Physics,—as in its changing department, i.e. the varying phenomena of the Human Race, in History. The first, Physics, when all its a priori elements have been distinguished, completed and perfected in their several forms by the higher Reason, will be limited to Experiment; and receive from Reason the Art of rightly comprehending the significance of Experiment, and the knowledge how Nature is to be again interrogated. ”

“ When it treats of inorganic matter, it is subdivided into chemistry, anatomy, medicine, mineralogy and geology. The principles of natural philosophy rest upon observation and experiment. Observation is the noticing of natural phenomena at they occur, without any attempt to influence the frequency of their occurrence. Experiment consists in putting in action causes and agents, over which we have control, for the purpose of noticing their effects. ”

“ By the invention of the accurate balance, and by patient weighing of the matters which they submitted to experiment, by the invention of hypotheses or guesses at truth, which were carefully tested by experiment, the majestic science of modern chemistry has come forth from the confused and mystical studies of the alchemists. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Experiments [292] of this class—those in which measurement of some kind is involved—are the proper work of a physical laboratory. In every experiment we have first to make our senses familiar with the phenomenon; but we must not stop here—we must find out which of its features are capable of measurement, and what measurements are required in order to make a complete specification of the phenomenon. We must then make these measurements, and deduce from them the result which we require to find. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The experiments were said to have been made with care, and many precautions taken to shut out all chances of any error, but not all the precautions required in a matter of such exceeding delicacy; and we are bound not to receive the evidence afforded as the true expression of a fact without much further investigation. All experience,—setting aside the experiment named,—is against the supposition that pounded or dissolved flint could by any artificial means be awakened into life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In any science which admits of an unlimited range of arbitrary experiments, an experimentum crucis may always be obtained. Being able to vary all the circumstances, we can always take effectual means of ascertaining which of them are, and which are not, material. Call the effect B, and let the question be whether the cause A in any way contributes to it. We try an experiment in which all the surrounding circumstances are altered, except A alone: if the effect B is nevertheless produced, A is the cause of it. ”

“ A still simpler experiment, which may be performed by anyone with the greatest ease, may serve as a further illustration of the profound nature of the change in the properties of bodies brought about by chemical combination, and it will also serve as the occasion of directing attention to a remarkable circumstance that invariably characterizes such changes, and one that should always be present in our minds when we are considering them. ”

“ 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. ”