Abstract
This essay is a contribution to the history of methodological thought. I focus on key methodological criteria for successful experimentation, replication and multiple determinations of empirical evidence. Drawing on reports of experiments with viper venom from the late seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries, as well as on present-day methodological thought I examine whether past experimenters regarded repetition, replication, and multiple determinations as criteria for validity; what exactly they meant by this; what they hoped to gain by repeating, varying, triangulating, and replicating; and how relevant these criteria were for them. I also consider if this analysis has implications for current philosophical work on the methodology of experimental practice.
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Notes
Historicist thinking is the project of understanding the present through tracing the past. Note that in the context of the present discussion, “historicism” does not mean “radical context dependence” as an imperative of historical analysis, nor does it mean an acknowledgement of “laws of historical development” (the kind of historicism Popper criticized). Rather, “historicism” refers to the historicist-hermeneutic maxim that “understanding something” means “understanding how it came into being”. Gustav Droysen, Wilhelm Dilthey, and other philosophers of history and knowledge advocated this maxim, according to which historicist philosophy is ultimately concerned with the present. We need to historicize our knowledge in order fully to understand it. [For instructive accounts of different versions of historicism and the development of the historicist maxim, see Beiser (2007), Schnädelbach (1987).]
In the following, I will confine myself to theories of scientific knowledge and method. Note that while we tend to associate the business of epistemology and methodology with professional philosophers, scientists of course also engage in reflections about scientific knowledge and methods. And while the gap between philosophy of science and scientists’ reflections about science appears immense today, before the nineteenth century there was arguably hardly any philosophy of science outside of science. The most detailed reflections on scientific methods and practice in this period can be found in the works of the practitioners themselves, the natural and experimental philosophers.
I am not concerned with the actual experiments that were performed but with the descriptions the practitioners give of their work. The assumption is that these descriptions reflect the methodological concepts and criteria the practitioners had available and were concerned about at a particular time.
Historians of science may fear that in doing so, one will end up distorting the past. But I do not think this is a real problem. I am not projecting present-day concerns into the past; I am using them as a point of orientation, as a means to uncover differences between methodological thought then and now, and as a terminus ad quem.
In the methodological debates about re-doing experiments, a number of terms are used interchangeably. The most common is “replication”, but reproduction and repetition are being used too.
This point is also implied in Collins’s approach but it is not Collins’s main concern. He emphasizes the absence of formal criteria for successful experiments.
Snake venom research is an ideal topic for the analysis of long-term transformations of methodological thought. The question of the nature and working of the venom has been of interest to investigators from antiquity until today. Obviously, since the early modern period, the practices and tools of investigation have as profoundly changed as the conceptions of life, poisons, and body functions. Nevertheless, the key contributions to snake venom research are closely linked. For over 200 years, there was a strong sense of an experimentalist tradition of venom research, and investigators presented their works as contributions to an ongoing endeavor, engaging with and explicitly building on the work of their predecessors.
I give a more detailed account in Schickore (2010).
The original context in Dante’s Divina Commedia is the discussion of the nature of the moon spots. The contributors refer to an arrangement of mirrors that might clarify the issue. But the experiment is only considered, not performed.
These kinds of repetitions resemble the characteristics of “exploratory experimentation” (see Steinle 1996). Note, however, that “exploratory experimentation” is an analyst’s conceptual framework to grasp experimental practices that are not aimed at testing theories but at the generation of concepts. My kinds of repetitions seek to capture the tenets and rules for validating experimental outcomes that the experimenters themselves made explicit.
For details on the controversy, see Schickore (2010).
I should add, though, that this was most likely a rhetorical move. Redi used this strategy several times, quite obviously to ridicule his opponent.
For details on the publication see Knoefel (1984, 267–268).
He added that these experiments had been cruel but that this cruelty was justified because the experiments would eventually benefit mankind.
He reported to his brother that he had been in the process of bringing out the French translation of his book, when “out came this book, full of miracles and resurrections, the product of a chemist, believed here to be a great chemist […] I had to retrace my steps to examine anew this matter; without this no one would have believed the experiments reported in my book” (Knoefel 1984, 269).
Fontana did not in every case specify the mode of instilling the venom. In later chapters, he often simply mentioned that an animal was bitten, but he did not say whether it was bitten by a live snake or whether Fontana had wounded it with the severed head of the viper.
See Buchwald (2006) for practices of dealing with discrepancies before the average became common.
The author of the preface to the French translation—included in the English edition—pointed out that “one of the greatest merits of this work consists, not so much in the rare and numberless discoveries it contains, as in the luminous method with which the very important enquiries that are introduced in it are treated” (Fontana (1781) 1787a, iv). Johann Friedrich Gmelin’s review of Fontana’s treatise, published in 1782, praised Fontana for his patience and care, which were evident from the fact that Fontana repeated his experiments more than six thousand times (Gmelin 1782, for the attribution of authorship, see Dougherty 1988, 89).
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Acknowledgments
I thank the two editors of this special issue for inviting me to contribute to the project. I presented portions of this material to audiences at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) and the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and I am grateful for their feedback. I also thank the two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis for their comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this essay.
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Schickore, J. The Significance of Re-Doing Experiments: A Contribution to Historically Informed Methodology. Erkenn 75, 325–347 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9332-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9332-9