The British Society for the Philosophy of Science

Experiment as Intervention
Author(s): J. E. Tiles
Source: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 463-
475
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Society for the Philosophy of
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Brit.
J.
Phil. Sci.
44 (1993), 463-475
Printed in Great Britain
Experiment
as Intervention
J.
E. TILES
1 Introduction
2 Aristotelian and Baconian
Conceptions of Empirical
Science
3
Conceptions of
Nature and the
Policy of
Intervention
4 Interventionism and
Astronomy
5
Players
and
Spectators
I INTRODUCTION
There are two fundamental
respects
in which modern
science, the science
which has
developed
since the time of
Galileo, differs from its classical
antecedents. One is its use of mathematics to articulate its
theories;
the other is
its use of
experiment
to establish its claims. The attention of those who
study
science as a
phenomenon-philosophers,
historians,
sociologists-has
shifted
back and forth between these two fundamental characteristics. Or
perhaps
what has shifted is the
visibility
or
audibility
of those who are drawn toward
the one characteristic or the other. In
any
case it has become fashionable
again
in such circles to talk about
experimentation
after a
period
in which
those, who
are
prone
to
identify
modern science with the use of
'experimental method',
were hard to hear above the voices of those who believe that science is
'theory
driven.
Prominent in the recent rise of interest in
experiment
is Ian
Hacking,
who
has stressed an
aspect
of
experimentation,
which has not received much
attention since the time of Francis Bacon. This is the
respect
in which modern
science intervenes in nature to further its
inquiries-the respect
in which it
relies
on,
as well as
generates,
new forms of human artifice.'
Hacking's
claims
about the
significance
of intervention have been received in some
quarters
with a mixture of
incomprehension
and
hostility.
The aim here is to come to a
better
understanding
of the role which
experiment plays
in modern science
by
examining
the issues and
attempting
a
diagnosis
of the cause of the resistance
to
speaking
of intervention when
discussing
scientific
experimentation.
See
Hacking [1983],
Part B, passim.
Bachelard advanced a similar thesis when he stressed the
role of
'phenomeno-technology.'
A citation in
English
translation is Bachelard
[1984], p.
1 3.
See also Tiles
[1984], chapters
2 and 4.
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464
J.
E. Tiles
2 ARISTOTELIAN AND BACONIAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRICAL
SCIENCE
Experiment
has a role in
pre-Galilean
science,
but there is an
important sign
that it is not
quite
the same role that we
assign
to
experiment.
Kuhn remarks
on a
difficulty,
which scholars
commonly
encounter when
dealing
with
early
scientific
texts,
in
establishing
whether a
reported experiment actually
took
place.
Some
experiments clearly
were
performed;
some were
nothing
more
than
"'thought experiments",
the construction in the mind of
potential
experimental
situations the outcome of which could
safely
be foretold
from
previous experience' (Kuhn [1977], p. 42).
What is curious is that
the line between the two kinds seems not to have mattered
very
much,
so that texts will
frequently
leave it unclear whether
they
are
describing
a
thought experiment
or an actual
experiment.
For us these two kinds of
'experiment'
have their own
quite
distinctive roles and different
epistemic
values,
and this
easy-going
attitude to the distinction is
apt
to seem
strangely
benighted.
If one can stand
sufficiently
inside the
pre-Galilean perspective
on
experi-
ence and
science,
it is
possible
to
appreciate why
this distinction should not
seem so
important.
Recourse to
experiment
is
simply
recourse to
experience.2 It
is
'through' experience, according
to
Aristotle,
that humans
acquire
art
(techne)
and science
(episteme). Accumulating experience
is
largely
a matter of
holding
in habit what one has done and
holding
in recall what one has
observed and heard others
report.
What constitutes science,
on the other
hand,
is a
grasp
of the
systematic
structure
(katholou, according
to the
whole)
which it is
possible
to discern in
experience,
the structure which makes it
possible
to
explain why things
are the
way they
are. Such
explanations
are the
vehicle of
teaching
and
learning,
which is
why
the
ability
to teach is a
sign
of
the
mastery
of a
science (Aristotle,
981b 6).
To follow an
explanation pupils
must
grasp
the
system
which
things display.
This
grasp
is
acquired through having
their attention drawn to
things
which
they
must in some sense
already
know
(Aristotle, 71a 25-30), through
a
process
which Aristotle called 'induction
(epagoge)'.
Teachers with
imaginitive
pupils
can
expect
them to recall the
necessary particulars (one
case is
frequently enough)
from their
experience.
These
particulars
serve to illustrate
and
thereby
to induce in the
pupils
a
grasp
of the
principle.
Where
pupils' imaginations
cannot be relied
upon,
an actual concrete
'experience'
will do as a substitute for a lack of
imagination. Experiment
in this role
2 Both words derive from the same Latin root, experiri,
which
suggests, 'making
a trial of
it'; cf.
The
Oxford English Dictionary
under
'experience'.
French continues to
get by
with one word,
'experience',
where
English
marks off
experience
under controlled conditions with the word
'experiment'.
The word,
'empeiria',
translated
'experience'
from Aristotle's Greek also has an
etymology suggesting
the
making
of a trial.
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Experiment as Intervention 465
of illustration is like that in much of school and
undergraduate teaching
today;
it does not matter
greatly
whether the
pupils
come into contact
with the
actuality,
so
long
as
they
know what it is that is
supposed
to be
observed.'
This model of
teaching
and
learning pervades
ancient and medieval
conceptions
of
knowledge.
The attitude of someone
seeking
to
supplement
an
incomplete grasp
of some natural
phenomenon
is
very
much that of the
pupil.
Prior to
Galileo,
Kuhn
observes,
experiments
were conducted
only
to
'demonstrate a conclusion known in advance
by
other means' or to 'determine
a detail
required
for the extension of
existing theory' (Kuhn [1977], p. 43).
The
attitude taken to
phenomena throughout
is that of minimal interference. The
most which a
respectful
student,
whether of a learned doctor or of Nature
Herself,
was
expected
to
do,
whether in
thought
or in
deed,
was to
arrange
things
so that the
phenomena
will be most
readily
manifest. A
good example
(cited by
Kuhn
[1977], chapter
3,
n.
11)
of this
pre-Galilean
sense of
'experiment' appears
in Canto 2 of Dante's
Paradiso,
where
Beatrice,
to
reinforce an
argument,
invites Dante to consider an
'experiment.
. . ever the
fountainhead of science.' There is no clear indication that Dante is
expected
to
do
anything
more than think out the
consequences
of
arranging
mirrors and a
lamp
as Beatrice
suggests.
To
say
this was characteristic of science before Galileo is not to claim that
everything changed
when Galileo
appeared
on the scene. A
rigorous
observance of the distinction between
thought experiments
and actual
experiments
did take hold in the seventeenth
century,
but it did not take hold
all of a sudden. The
light
dawned
gradually
and some of modern science's
heroes fell under less than full illumination. Pascal's
reported
'experiences'
in
the field of
hydrostatics
were
severely
criticized
by
Robert
Boyle.
Some of
Pascal's
experiments appeared
to be
humanly impossible
to
perform;
others
involved refinements of craft and
engineering
to which he
plainly
did not have
access. Recent
attempts
to
repeat experiments,
which Pascal had described
vividly,
encountered
difficulties,
which taxed modern
technology,
and when at
last
successful,
encountered
noteworthy phenomena
which Pascal left
unremarked
(Koyr6
[1968], pp.
149-53;
Kuhn
[1977], pp. 44-5).
Likewise
the
disputes,
which have occurred since
Koyr6
called into
question
the
picture
3 Nothing
illustrates this better than the movement to
equip
schools in the U.K. with
computer
simulations of
experiments
in order to obviate the inconvenience of the
laboratory
class. From
the
perspective
of
learning
the
principles
of science, the
only perspective
toward
experiment
adopted
in the ancient and medieval world, these
'teaching-aids'
are
perfectly adequate,
but
from the
perspective
of
learning
the methods of modern
science,
they represent
a
throughly
reactionary development. (This
issue is
quite separate
from and does not at all bear on the use of
computers
to create 'simulations', which are a
hybrid
of concrete
experiments
and
thought
experiments.)
This is a
very positive development,
which
may
well
place
us
historically
at the
beginning
of new
period
of science
differing
as much from science
pre
19 50s as modern science
differs from its classical antecedents.
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466
J.
E. Tiles
of Galileo as the first
great exponent
of the
experimental method,4
are the result
of Galileo's
participation
in the older tradition with its laxer attitudes to the
difference between actual and
imagined experimentation.
What we think of as the
enlightened
attitude to
experimentation
did not
arise
initially
in the sciences which has been
pursued
since classical times
(astronomy,
harmonics, mathematics,
optics,
and
statistics),
but rather in a
handful of
enquiries
devoted to
heat,
chemical
change, electricity
and
magnetism, phenomena
which were
largely ignored
in classical and medieval
times. In texts from the newer 'Baconian sciences' as Kuhn calls
them,
scholars
cease to have trouble
telling
the actual from the
imagined,
when recourse is
had to
'experiment'.
And it is here that
investigations
first become imbued with
the
policy
of interventionism recommended
by
Bacon. Nature was no
longer
the arena where the student needed to do
nothing
more than to find a
good
vantage point.
Under Bacon's
urgings
the student of Nature was to
participate
actively,
to
force things
into
previously
non-existent
configurations
in order to
see how
they
behaved;
'the secrets of nature reveal themselves more
readily
under the vexations of art than when
they go
their own
way' (Bacon [1905],
p. 289).
Our
understanding
of the Aristotelian idea of science is still
shaped by
the
polemics
which
helped
to break its
hegemony.
It is common to have the
impression
that science
finally got underway
because students of nature were
for the first time
prepared
to
open
their
eyes
and examine the
phenomena
first
hand. This
entirely
overlooks the role of
experience
in the foundation of
Aristotelian science. The
aim,
of
course,
was not
merely
to know what is the
case,
but to understand
why
it is the case. But one cannot ask
why
it is the case
until one knows that it is the case
(Aristotle,
93a
19)
so observation had to
come before science. What
changed, although
it did not
change
all at
once,
was the
assumption
that the
experience through
which
understanding
arose
was
unproblematic
and
required
no
special
effort or
preparation
to
acquire.
The Baconian
policy
has become
ingrained
in our scientific
culture,
but its
operations
and effects tend to
pass
unremarked.
Anglophone philosophers
write as
though
science meets
experience only
in
'observation';
an
activity
in
which,
when it takes
place,
the facts are all manifest. The
designs
and
techniques,
which
permit
the facts to manifest
themselves,
receive little
attention,
but
they
in the end determine whether an observation is worth
anything.
It is also
easy
to
forget
that Bacon's
policy
is not the
only
or the most
obviously
sensible
way
to deal with nature.
Surely
interference is as
likely
as
not to obscure the natural behaviour of
phenomena.
How can we
possibly
4
See
Koyr6 [1978].
See also
Koyre [1968], pp.
82-88 for two illustrations of
experiments
which
Galileo
reports,
but which
appear
on closer examination to have been carried out in his
imagination. Koyr6,
however, was
prone
to assess whether an
experiment
had been carried out
without himself
trying
the
experiment.
For a vindication of one of Galileo's
questioned reports
see MacLachlan [1973].
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Experiment
as Intervention
467
learn the
principles
which
govern
the action of natural bodies if we do not let
nature take its course?
3
CONCEPTIONS OF NATURE AND THE POLICY OF INTERVENTION
One
might
be
tempted
to see this non-interventionist attitude as underwritten
by
the Aristotelian world-view in which a
plurality
of natures each manifests
itself
spontaneously,
and
explain
the
appeal
of the Baconian
policy
as a
part
of
the result of the shift to a
corpuscularian
world-view.
According
to the latter all
natural
phenomena
are the result of the action of
relatively
few
principles,
but
because of the
complexity
of the
configurations
of the bodies
through
which
they
act on observable
phenomena (on
a
multiplicity
of levels from micro- to
macro-), they
afford few immediate clues to the correct account of these
principles.
If the action of one force or law cannot be observed because of the
interference of another
(e.g.
if the behaviour of a
falling body
is liable to the
influence of air
resistance),
then it makes sense to create the conditions
(a
vacuum)
in which one can be studied in isolation from the other. Now
obviously
a world
view,
in which a vacuum is not a
logical impossibility (as
it
was for Aristotelians and Cartesians
alike),
is an
important
factor in
motivating
this
particular experiment.
Kuhn
suggests,
however,
that in
general corpuscularianism
with its vision of hidden microstructure
'provided
a
rationale for
experiment
as no form of Aristotelianism or Platonism could have
done'
(Kuhn [1977], p. 55).
Now
although
it is true that Aristotelians did not
practice
or advocate
experimentation
in the
spirit
of
Bacon,
it is far from clear that what stood in the
way
was a
conception
of scientific
explanation
which
called,
as did Aristotelian
science,
for the
specification
of formal causes or natures. It is true that
'only
data
provided by
the natural course of events'
[ibid.]
were
regarded
as relevant
to such
explanations,
but this involves an additional and
independent
assumption
about the natural course of events. An Aristotelian nature will
manifest itself
spontaneously, providing
conditions are not unfavourable and
providing
there is no other natural
body acting
in such a
way
as to thwart it's
realization. It would be
quite possible
for an Aristotelian to view the natural
world not as a harmonious order
where,
typically,
natural bodies manifest
their
natures, but as a
great
field of
pent-up potential
in which conditions for
the full
spontaneous development
of a nature are
rarely
at hand and where the
limited action
managed by any
one
body
forever limits the fulfilment of the
natures of other bodies. Under this view the student of nature would have to
intervene to create
artificially
the conditions under which a
given
nature could
take its course. It would not be
enough
to collect observations about what does
take
place,
it would need well established facts about what would take
place
if
...,
before the
explanatory programme
could
get underway.
This
picture
of an Aristotelian with a less
complacent outlook on the
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468
J.
E. Tiles
accessibility
of the
phenomena,
which it is his task as natural scientist to
explain,
is not
unrecognizable
as a
portrait
of Francis Bacon himself. Bacon's
conceptual apparatus
is
arguably
closer in form to that of
Aristotle,5
for whom
Bacon
professed
disdain,
than it is to the
corpuscularians
like
Boyle,
who
professed
to admire Bacon. And
Boyle
in turn bears witness to the fact that a
commitment to a
corpuscularian
outlook does not
necessarily
bear
directly
upon,
and is therefore
questionably
relevant
to,
one's commitment to
experimental activity.
Boyle
was both a
practical
chemist and a theoretical
atomist,
yet
there was
curiously
little contact between these two
aspects
of his work. His chemical
researches,
though very
fruitful, never
brought
to
light any convincing support
for atomism... Nor did his
corpuscular
beliefs lead to
any
solid chemical
conclusions
(Toulmin
and Goodfield
[1965], pp. 199-200].
The shift to an
experimental
outlook did
require
a
change
in the
way people
conceived
nature;
not however a shift in the
way they thought
of its
constituents,
nor a shift in the forms of
explanation
which
they sought,
but a
shift in the attitude which
they
took to the
epistemological
value of what met
the
eye.
Nature came to be
regarded
as
having
hidden
depths,
not
necessarily
depths
to be
plumbed by techniques
of micro-observation
(although
this idea
figured prominently)
but
depths
of unrealized
potential
which needed the
manipulation
of
phenomena,
the 'vexations of art' to
bring
to the surface of
actuality.
What motivated this more
forcefully
than a
change
in
conceptions
was a
change
in what was seen as the aim of scientific
inquiry.
Whether
prophetically
or
simply
as a
sounding
box for a
rising
social
class,
whose
economic
position depended
on manufacture informed
by
new
techniques,
Bacon
gave
voice to a new
conception
of the
goal
of
science,
Again
there is another
great
and
powerful
cause
why
the sciences have made but
little
progress;
which is this.
It
is not
possible
to run a course
aright
when the
goal
itself has not been
rightly placed.
Now the true and the lawful
goal
of the sciences
is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and
powers (Bacon [1905], p. 280).
Bacon even went so far as to make successful
application
a criterion of truth.
It
may
be that there are some on whose ears
my frequent
and honourable
mention of
practical
activities makes a harsh and
unpleasing
sound because
they
are
wholly given
over in love and reverence to
contemplation.
Let them bethink
themselves that
they
are the enemies of their own desires. For in nature
practical
results are not
only
the means to
improve well-being
but the
guarantee
of
truth.
s My
source for this claim is an extensive
unpublished study
of Bacon
by Mary
Tiles,
who is also
responsible
for
urging
that Kuhn's
suggestion
about the
conceptual
roots of the
experimental
impulse
stood to be
challenged.
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Experiment
as Intervention
469
The rule of
religion
that a man show his faith
by
his works holds
good
in natural
philosophy
too. Science also must be known
by
works. It is
by
the witness of
works,
rather than
by logic
or even observation,
that truth is revealed and
established. Whence it follows that the
improvement
of man's mind and the
improvement
of his lot are one and the same
thing (Bacon [1964], p. 93).
Now the
change
in the
conception
of nature, which this
change
in the
goal
of
science
required
and which in turn made
experimentalism possible
as a
scientific
outlook,
had to do not with the structure of nature or of the
proper
way
to
explain
it,
but with where to draw the
boundary
between what is
natural and what is
not,
and hence what is relevant and what is not relevant to
observe. Aristotle had taken it that human artifacts did not
qua
artifacts have a
nature. The material out of which
they
are
made,
e.g.
wood,
might
retain-the
vexations of art not
withstanding-all
or a
part
of its nature. But an
artifact,
as
such,
is the antithesis of a natural
object
and
not, therefore,
something
that it is
the
job
of a natural
philosopher
to
study (Aristotle,
192b
12-23).
In an
artefact the effects of human action
merge
with what it is that the
investigator
is
trying
to understand and create a case
quite
unlike that where human action
contributes
only
to the observer's
being
in a favourable
position
to observe. It is
this
way
of
drawing
the line between man and nature
which,
as Bacon
saw,
needed to be overthrown. The first
aphorism
of the Parasceve
puts
it this
way.
Nature exists in three
states, .
. . either she is
free,
and
develops
herself in her own
ordinary course;
or she is forced out of her
proper
state
by...
the violence of
impediments;
or she is constrained and moulded
by
art and human
ministry.
The
first state refers to the
species
of
things;
the second to monsters; the third to
things
artificial. For in
things
artificial nature takes orders from man and works under
his
authority;
without man, such
things
would never have been
made...
Natural
history
is therefore threefold. It treats of the
liberty
of
nature,
or the errors
of
nature, or the bonds of nature: so that we
may fairly
distribute it into
history
of
Generations,
of
Pretergenerations,
and of
Arts;
which last I also call Mechanical or
Experimental history (Bacon [1905], p. 403).
4
INTERVENTION AND ASTRONOMY
It is this
particular
Baconian
theme,
which
Ian
Hacking
has
recently
revived,
by calling
attention to the
way
in which the mature forms of natural sciences
are built on
phenomena
which do not occur
naturally:
electrical
apparatus,
steam
engines,
new chemical
compounds
and
prepared samples
of
pure
chemicals. The
recognition
of this
important
fact about science is
enshrined,
Hacking
maintains
([1983], pp. 224ff),
in the custom of
referring
to
crucial,
experimentally
created,
phenomena
as
'effects',
e.g.
the
'photoelectric
effect'
and the common
practice
of
naming
them after the scientists who first
produced
and stabilized
them, e.g.
the
Compton effect,
the Zeeman
effect,
the
Josephson effect, etc.
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470
J.
E. Tiles
To those who see little or no
significance
in the word 'effect' or in the
presence
of human contrivances
among
what scientists count as natural
phenomena,
Bacon's merits as an
early propagandist
on behalf of modern
science lie
mainly
in the
encouragement
which he
gave
to the use of human
ingenuity
in the collection of data. What Bacon should be remembered
for,
they
will
reply,
is his
advocacy
of the search for new
techniques
and
instruments of observation. Bacon did indeed call for the
development
of such
instruments and Kuhn counts the
increasing
instrumentation of scientific
activity
as
'perhaps
the most
striking'
. . .
'novelty
of the Baconian movement'
([1977], p. 40).
But the issue is whether all that makes modern science
'experimental'
is the conscious
adoption
of instrumental means to
generating
observations.
There is little doubt that
some,
who write on the idea of an
experimental
science,
do
regard
this as the essence of the
enterprise.
To take but one
example,
E.
G.
Boring,
who
published
a
history
of
experimental psychology
in
1929 considered
experiment
to consist in 'a careful selection of crucial
conditions of observation'
(Boring [1929], p. 14). By
this token the ancient
Greek astronomers Aristarchos and Erastosthenes counted for him as
experimentalists (ibid.),
and the innovation in modern
science,
to which the
word
'experimental'
refers,
must
by implication
consist in the inclusion of the
use of instruments
among
the
options
from which scientists can select
the crucial conditions of observation.
By
the same token the instruments of
Tycho
Brahe,
which
provided Kepler
with data so
precise
that the orbit of Mars
could not be
fudged, qualify astronomy
as a modern
experimental
science
even before the use of the
telescope.
For convenience we can refer to this
gloss
on the notion of
experiment
in
science as 'instrumental-observationist' and the idea advanced
by Hacking
as
'interventionist.' We
may
infer that Kuhn will not be drawn toward the
instrumental-observationist
position
because
(if
for no other
reason)
what it
says
about
astronomy
subverts Kuhn's account in which the
experimental
outlook
developed
not in the established 'classical sciences' such as
astronomy,
but in the newer fields which he
designates
'Baconian.' But the issue at stake is
not
primarily historiographical.
The interventionist claim echoes certain
themes-widely stigmatized
as 'idealist'6-about
the human contribution to
the
objects
of
knowledge.
The instrumental-observationist is able to
present
human involvement as confined to the conditions of observation and not
tangled up
in the
object
of scientific
study.
In this
regard astronomy
serves to do more than threaten Kuhn's division of
the
sciences; it stands as the most serious obstacle to the idea that the
meddling
with nature found in the successful sciences of our
day
is
anything
more than a
6
Realism has become
identified,
in
many
cases not
consciously
so, with a view of the human
knower as
entirely
detached and
separate
from, the
object
of
knowledge.
This has made
Hacking's
claim to be a robust realist
very puzzling
in some
quarters.
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Experiment
as Intervention
471
matter of convenience. Whatever astronomers have done on earth it has not
affected the motion of
any heavenly body by
even a hair's breadth. Of course
not,
but one can
point
to
respects
in which what is studied
by today's
astronomers are
elaborately produced
artefacts from the raw natural
influences which arrived on Earth from distant astronomical
phenomena.
To
which the instrumental-observationist will
reply
that 'what is studied' here
refers to the data of observation not to the
subject-matter
of
astronomy,
and
nothing
which an astronomer does
reconfigures
the
phenomena
which
constitute the
subject-matter
of his
study.
Behind this instrumental-observationist
response
is an assumed line
separating
the
object
studied from the data used in that
study.
And with the
latter
sufficiently separated
from the
former,
any
sense,
in which data
(which
the instrumental-observationist allows are
subject
to the vexations of
art)
are
studied,
does not affect what is claimed about the
subject
matter of the science.
It is
open
to the interventionist to
challenge
the basis on which that line is
drawn. Is the
electromagnetic
radiation
arriving
on earth not an
integral part
of an astronomical
phenomenon
which extends in both
space
and time far
beyond
the
region
of the heavens where for the sake of convenience it is
assigned
that location in an astronomer's
catalogue?
To be sure we cannot
reach such
regions
and
bring
the
necessary
forces to bear which would alter
their
general
course. To that extent we cannot be said
fully
to understand what
is
happening
in those
regions.
Even where we base our
understanding
on the
manipulation
of concrete models
(as
is done in wave tanks which simulate
geological processes),
we remain
ignorant
of factors which
may only emerge
when the
process
is 'scaled
up.'
The
understanding
which modern
astronomy
has reached rests on its
ability
to
transform,
in order to
interrogate,
a
tiny
peripheral part
of the
phenomena
which it studies. Until it could do even
that,
it did not count as an
'experimental'
science.
The Baconian
point
is not that a
properly
conducted science studies
only
human
products
and human
interventions,
but that it must
study
a
range
of
phenomena
which include those
products
and
interventions,
if it is to achieve
full
understanding
of
purely
natural
objects
and natural events.
Any
line
which
places
natural
phenomena
on one side and human
activity
on another
implicitly
locates human
beings
outside of nature.
Any
close examination of
the
line,
which is used to mark the difference between the
subject
matter of the
science and its
data,
reveals a
profound dependence
on
technology,
that is on
how stable are the outcomes of the uses of certain artifacts and on how well
they
are assumed to be understood. This is
only
to
say
that
every
such line is a
historical and cultural
product.
Kuhn illustrates this
point
well with the
following
observation on the
history
of
thermometry.
Many
of the
early experiments involving
thermometers read like
investigations of
that new instrument rather than
investigations
with it. How could
anything
else
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472
J.
E. Tiles
have been the case
during
a
period
when it was
totally
unclear what the
thermometer measured? ... Before the thermometer could become
unquivocally
a
laboratory
instrument rather than an
experimental subject,
thermometric
reading
had to be seen as the direct measure of
'degree
of
heat,'
and sensation had
simultaneously
to be viewed as a
complex
and
equivocal phenomenon
dependent upon
a number of different
parameters...
As Heathcote and McKie
have
brilliantly
shown,
the last
stages
in the
development
of the
concepts
of
specific
and latent heat
display
intuited
hypotheses constantly interacting
with
stubborn
measurement,
each
forcing
the other into line.7
Of course the instruments used in one branch of science are
frequently
not the
former
experimental subjects
of that science. Astronomers
help
themselves to
technology
stabilized in other fields of
endeavour, but the lines between the
disciplines
are as much historical and cultural
products
as are the lines
between instruments and
phenomena.
The
techniques
for the
analysis
of
electromagnetic
radiation
may
not
strictly
be the work of
astronomy,
however
much
astronomy may
have motivated some of that
development.
But a
great
part
of the
image
of
astronomy
as a non-interventionist
enterprise
rests on
artificially separating
it from astronomical
physics. Integral
to his
working
out
an
understanding
of astronomical
phenomena
Newton outlined an
experi-
ment for
placing
a new
heavenly body
into orbit around the earth
(Newton
[1687], pp. 550-2).
That we lacked the
technology
to
carry
out this
experiment
until less than three decades
ago
should not obscure the fact that
the Newtonian science of the heavens was
sufficiently
interventionist to
propose
and
eventually carry
out a
significant
modification to the
heavenly
bodies which revolve around our
planet.
5
PLAYERS AND SPECTATORS
To the extent that
philosophers
of science in the wake of
positivism
have
ignored
or
suppressed
the Baconian theme
recently
revived
by Hacking, they
have treated 'observation and
experiment'
in one breath as
though
the latter
marked
nothing
more than
unusually
elaborate
preparations
for the former.
To this extent
philosophy
of science has remained Aristotelian. The assumed
cognitive relationship
between scientists and the
subjects
of their sciences are
still what Aristotle took them to be: sense
perception (aisthesis)
and
glorified
intellectual
perception,
theoria,
a word whose Greek
etymology suggests
the
position
of a
spectator
in the threatre. Where no
assumptions
are made about
cognitive relationships,
science is
represented by
the
linguistic ghosts
of
human
representational
activities,
i.e. 'theories' construed as bodies of
statements divided into observation statements and theoretical statements
7
Kuhn
[1977], pp. 218-9; the reference is to
Douglas
McKie and N. H. de V.
Heathcote, The
Discovery of Specific
and Latent
Heats, London
[1935].
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Experiment
as Intervention 473
proper.
The
problem
is
always
to form a stable
conception
of how the two
interact and are constrained
by something exerting
an influence from
outside,
viz.
'experience'
or
'nature',
never to understand how a human
being
acts to
stabilize his
experience,
his
relationship
with nature.
In
general epistemology
the situation is similar.
Philosophers
have not been
quick
to
exploit
the similarities
between,
e.g.
the
pattern
of reflective
thought
exhibited
by experimental
method and the
pattern
of unreflective behaviour
by
which a child constructs a world of stable
objects during
the
early years
of its
life. It is not that there is an aversion to
using
models based on reflective
thinking. Hypothetico-deductive
models
of,
e.g. language acquisition
are
plentiful.
The aversion seems rather to be to
counting
human
activity
as
part
of
what constitutes
knowledge.
Human knowers continue to be
thought
of
exclusively
as on the
receiving
end of causal
influences,
and
working only
to
organize
a
representation
of those
influences,
never
initiating
them,
never as
having
a
grade
of
knowledge
insofar as
they
control,
through
their
responses,
what causal influences
they
will
undergo.
Thus old
problems
return in new
forms.
Solipsism
is revived in a
'methodological'
form
(Fodor [1981], Chapter
9).
Descartes' evil demon becomes a band of alien neuroscientists
systemati-
cally stimulating
the
peripheral
nerve
endings
of an unfortunate victim
sustained in a vat of nutrient solution somewhere near
Alpha
Centauri
(Nozick, [1981], Chapter 3).
Seventy-six years ago John Dewey
traced the traditional
problems
of
perception
back to the hold on the Western mind of what he called 'the
spectator
notion of
knowledge' (Dewey [1917], p. 41).
In a British
Academy
lecture
published something
over a decade
ago
M. F.
Burnyeat [19 79]
made a
painstaking comparison
between the
chapter
of
analytic epistemology
written
in the first half of this
century
and the ancient relativist and
sceptical
tradition
from
Protagoras
to Sextus. Beneath the
logic
of the
arguments
he saw the
working
of a model of the human
perceptual apparatus,
which he
expressed
in
terms
remarkably
similar to
Dewey's 'spectator
notion': the senses as
open
(and ideally)
unobstructed windows
through
which the mind looks out
upon
the world.
The transformation of the role of
experiment
between classical and modern
science,
which has been traced
here,
suggests
a factor which
may explain
the
hold this model has on the
way philosophers
are
prone
to conceive
knowledge.
What marks the shift to moden science is that
'experiment'
has come to have
more than a
pedagogic
function."
Pedagogy shaped
the classical
conception
of
knowledge;
the classical
pedagogue expected
his
pupils
to sit
quietly,
listen
8 Kuhn uses this criterion to
distinguish
the use of instruments in mechanics in the seventeenth
century
from their use in the Baconian sciences: '...
excepting
the
pendulum,
the instruments
of mechanics were
predominantly
tools for
pedagogic
demonstration rather than for
research,'
Kuhn, p.
49.
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474
i.
E. Tiles
and,
where
necessary,
observe. The classical
pedagogue
had authoritative
knowledge
to
transmit;
for that he
required
a
receptive,
not an
inquiring,
audience. The classical
pedagogue
had a
position
in a structure of
authority,
a
structure which it was his role to
maintain;
for that he
required
a
passive,
rather than an
active,
audience. If one wonders where the
'spectator
notion'
acquires
its hold on the
philosopher's
mind,
it
may only
be
necessary
to recall
that
philosophers perform
far more the taks of the classical
pedagogue
than
they
do the tasks of
experimental
scientists.
Department of Philosophy
University of
Hawaii at Manoa
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