78 found
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  1. The Neglect of Experiment.Allan Franklin - 1986 - Cambridge University Press.
    What role have experiments played, and should they play, in physics? How does one come to believe rationally in experimental results? The Neglect of Experiment attempts to provide answers to both of these questions. Professor Franklin's approach combines the detailed study of four episodes in the history of twentieth century physics with an examination of some of the philosophical issues involved. The episodes are the discovery of parity nonconservation in the 1950s; the nondiscovery of parity nonconservation in the 1930s, when (...)
     
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  2. The Neglect of Experiment.Allan Franklin - 1989 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (2):185-190.
     
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  3. The Neglect of Experiment.Allan Franklin - 1988 - Philosophy of Science 55 (2):306-308.
     
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  4.  66
    Experiment, Right or Wrong.Allan Franklin - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    In Experiment, Right or Wrong, Allan Franklin continues his investigation of the history and philosophy of experiment presented in his previous book, The Neglect of Experiment. Using a combination of case studies and philosophical readings of those studies, Franklin again addresses two important questions: What role does and should experiment play in the choice between competing theories and in the confirmation or refutation of theories and hypotheses? How do we come to believe reasonably in experimental results? Experiment, Right or Wrong (...)
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  5.  23
    Selectivity and Discord: Two Problems of Experiment.Allan Franklin - 2002 - University of Pittsburgh Press.
    Specifically, Allan Franklin is concerned with two problems in the use of experimental results in science: selectivity of data or analysis procedures and the resolution of discordant results.
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  6.  5
    The Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force: Discovery, Pursuit, and Justification in Modern Physics.Allan Franklin - 2016 - Cham: Springer. Edited by Ephraim Fischbach.
    This book provides the reader with a detailed and captivating account of the story where, for the first time, physicists ventured into proposing a new force of nature beyond the four known ones - the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, and gravitation - based entirely on the reanalysis of existing experimental data. Back in 1986, Ephraim Fischbach, Sam Aronson, Carrick Talmadge and their collaborators proposed a modification of Newton’s Law of universal gravitation. Underlying this proposal were three tantalizing pieces of (...)
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  7.  60
    Why do Scientists Prefer to Vary their Experiments?Allan Franklin - 1984 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 15 (1):51.
  8.  33
    Experiment in Physics.Allan Franklin - 2007 - In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  9. Experiment Right or Wrong.Allan Franklin & David Gooding - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1):341-352.
     
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  10.  88
    The Theory-Ladenness of Experiment.Allan Franklin - 2015 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 46 (1):155-166.
    Theory-ladenness is the view that observation cannot function in an unbiased way in the testing of theories because observational judgments are affected by the theoretical beliefs of the observer. Its more radical cousin, incommensurability, argues that because there is no theory-neutral language, paradigms, or worldviews, cannot be compared because in different paradigms the meaning of observational terms is different, even when the word used is the same. There are both philosophical and practical components to these problems. I argue, using a (...)
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  11.  86
    How to avoid the experimenters' regress.Allan Franklin - 1994 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (3):463-491.
  12. Bayesian conditionalization and probability kinematics.Colin Howson & Allan Franklin - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (2):451-466.
  13. The epistemology of experiment. [REVIEW]Allan Franklin - 1984 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (4):381-390.
  14.  12
    Calibration.Allan Franklin - 1997 - Perspectives on Science 5 (1):31-80.
    Calibration, the use of a surrogate signal to standardize an instrument, is an important strategy for the establishment of the validity of an experimental result. In this paper, I present several examples, typical of physics experiments, that illustrate the adequacy of the surrogate. In addition, I discuss several episodes in which the question of calibration is both difficult to answer and of paramount importance. These episodes include early attempts to detect gravity waves, the question of the existence of a 17–keV (...)
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  15.  61
    Maher, mendeleev and bayesianism.Colin Howson & Allan Franklin - 1991 - Philosophy of Science 58 (4):574-585.
    Maher (1988, 1990) has recently argued that the way a hypothesis is generated can affect its confirmation by the available evidence, and that Bayesian confirmation theory can explain this. In particular, he argues that evidence known at the time a theory was proposed does not confirm the theory as much as it would had that evidence been discovered after the theory was proposed. We examine Maher's arguments for this "predictivist" position and conclude that they do not, in fact, support his (...)
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  16. The missing piece of the puzzle: the discovery of the Higgs boson.Allan Franklin - 2017 - Synthese 194 (2):259-274.
    The missing piece of the puzzle: the discovery of the Higgs boson On July 4, 2012 the CMS and ATLAS collaborations at the large hadron collider jointly announced the discovery of a new elementary particle, which resembled the Higgs boson, the last remaining undiscovered piece of the standard model of elementary particles. Both groups claimed to have observed a five-standard-deviation effect above background, the gold standard for discovery in high-energy physics. In this essay I will briefly discuss the how the (...)
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  17.  2
    No Easy Answers: Science and the Pursuit of Knowledge.Allan Franklin - 2005 - University of Pittsburgh Press.
    In _No Easy Answers_, Allan Franklin offers an accurate picture of science to both a general reader and to scholars in the humanities and social sciences who may not have any background in physics. Through the examination of nontechnical case studies, he illustrates the various roles that experiment plays in science. He uses examples of unquestioned success, such as the discoveries of the electron and of three types of neutrino, as well as studies that were dead ends, wrong turns, or (...)
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  18.  67
    What makes a 'good' experiment?Allan Franklin - 1981 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32 (4):367-374.
  19. Ending the Mendel-Fisher Controversy.Allan Franklin, A. W. F. Edwards, Daniel J. Fairbanks, Daniel L. Hartl & Teddy Seidenfeld - 2008 - Journal of the History of Biology 41 (4):775-777.
  20.  47
    It Probably is a Valid Experimental Result: a Bayesian Approach to the Epistemology of Experiment.Allan Franklin - 1988 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 19 (4):419.
  21.  44
    A bayesian analysis of excess content and the localisation of support.Colin Howson & Allan Franklin - 1985 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (4):425-431.
  22.  12
    Discovery, pursuit, and justification.Allan Franklin - 1993 - Perspectives on Science 1 (2):252-284.
    In this article I suggest a tripartite classification of scientific activity; discovery, pursuit, and justification. I believe that such a classification can give us a more adequate description of scientific practice, help illuminate the various roles that evidence plays in science, and may also help to partially resolve differences between “constructivist” and “epistemologist” views of science. I argue that although factors suggested by the constructivists such as career goals, professional interests, utility for future practice, and agreement with existing commitments do (...)
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  23.  44
    The Discovery and Nondiscovery of Parity Nonconservation.Allan Franklin - 1979 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 10 (3):201.
  24. Comment on "the structure of a scientific paper" by Frederick Suppe.Allan Franklin & Colin Howson - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (3):411-416.
    On the basis of an analysis of a single paper on plate tectonics, a paper whose actual content is nowhere in evidence, Frederick Suppe concludes that no standard model of confirmation—hypothetico-deductive, Bayesian-inductive, or inference to the best explanation—can account for the structure of a scientific paper that reports an experimental result. He further argues on the basis of a survey of scientific papers, a survey whose data and results are also absent, that papers which have a rather stringent length limit, (...)
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  25.  5
    Selectivity and the Production of Experimental Results: “Any fool can take data. Its taking good data that counts.” E. Commins.Allan Franklin - 1998 - Archive for History of Exact Sciences 53 (5):399-485.
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  26.  41
    Newton and Kepler, a Bayesian Approach.Allan Franklin - 1984 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 16 (4):379.
  27.  8
    Scientific Explanation and Atomic Physics.Allan Franklin - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (3):481-483.
  28.  79
    Are paradigms incommensurable?Allan Franklin - 1984 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (1):57-60.
  29.  6
    The resolution of discordant results.Allan Franklin - 1995 - Perspectives on Science 3 (3):346-420.
    Experiments often disagree. How then can scientific knowledge be based on experimental evidence? In this paper I will examine four episodes from the history of recent physics: the suggestion of a Fifth Force, a modification of Newton’s law of gravitation; early attempts to detect gravitational radiation ; the claim that a 17-keV neutrino exists; and experiments on atomic-parity violation and on the scattering of polarized electrons and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. In each of these (...)
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  30.  35
    Is failure an option? Contingency and refutation.Allan Franklin - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (2):242-252.
    In this paper I argue, using two case studies of episodes from recent physics against the contingency view advocated by social constructionists. In this view, physics, or science in general, is, in Ian Hacking’s words, not determined by anything. Much of the previous discussion has centered on examples of scientific success. In this paper I argue that experimental evidence and reasoned and critical discussion played the crucial role in the refutation of a previously strongly believed hypothesis, and in the decision (...)
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  31.  75
    How Nancy Cartwright tells the truth.Allan Franklin - 1988 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (4):527-529.
  32.  62
    Fisica y Experimentacion.Allan Franklin - 2002 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 17 (2):221-242.
    In this paper I examine the roles that experiment plays in science. Experiment can test theories, but it can also call for a new theory. Experiment can also provide hints about the mathematical form of a theory. Likewise it can provide evidence for the existence of the entities involved in our theories. Finally, it may also have a life of its own, independent of theory. I will illustrate these roles using episodes from the history of contemporary physics. I will also (...)
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  33. Confronting Nature. [REVIEW]Allan Franklin - 1987 - British Journal for the History of Science 20 (2):234-235.
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  34. Doing Much About Nothing.Allan Franklin - 2004 - Archive for History of Exact Sciences 58 (4):323-379.
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  35. Gravity and technology.Allan Franklin - 2020 - In Andrew Wells Garnar & Ashley Shew (eds.), Feedback Loops: Pragmatism About Science and Technology. Lexington Books.
     
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  36. Henry Cavendish and the Density of the Earth.Allan Franklin - 2023 - In Marius Stan & Christopher Smeenk (eds.), Theory, Evidence, Data: Themes from George E. Smith. Springer. pp. 65-81.
    Contrary to the views expressed in many introductory physics textbooks, Henry Cavendish did not measure G, the gravitational constant contained in Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, F = G m1m2/r2. As the title of his paper states, Cavendish conducted “Experiments to Determine the Density of the Earth (1798).” As discussed below, one can use that measurement to determine G, but that was not Cavendish’s intent. In fact, the determination of G was not done until the latter part of the nineteenth (...)
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  37. The British Society for the Philosophy of Science.Allan Franklin - 1984 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (4).
  38.  1
    What makes a good experiment?: reasons & roles in science.Allan Franklin - 2016 - Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press.
    What makes a good experiment? Although experimental evidence plays an essential role in science, as Franklin argues, there is no algorithm or simple set of criteria for ranking or evaluating good experiments, and therefore no definitive answer to the question. Experiments can, in fact, be good in any number of ways: conceptually good, methodologically good, technically good, and pedagogically important. And perfection is not a requirement: even experiments with incorrect results can be good, though they must, he argues, be methodologically (...)
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  39.  18
    Scientific Explanation and Atomic Physics.Allan Franklin - 1982
  40.  57
    Editors’ Introduction.Allan Franklin & Slobodan Perovic - 2015 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (2):161-162.
  41.  14
    The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation. [REVIEW]Allan Franklin - 2005 - British Journal for the History of Science 38 (2):241-242.
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  42.  34
    Harry Collins, Gravity’s Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 864 pp., $39.00. [REVIEW]Allan Franklin - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (4):647-650.
  43.  62
    Gravity waves and neutrinos: The later work of Joseph Weber.Allan Franklin - 2010 - Perspectives on Science 18 (2):pp. 119-151.
    How does the physics community deal with the subsequent work of a scientist whose earlier work has been regarded as incorrect? An interesting case of this involves Joseph Weber whose claim to have observed gravitational waves was rejected by virtually all of the physics community, although Weber himself continued to defend his work until his death in 2000. In the course of this defense Weber made a startling suggestion regarding the scattering of neutrinos. I will summarize the history of gravity (...)
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  44.  1
    Do Mutants Have to be Slain, or Do They Die of Natural Causes?: The Case of Atomic Parity Violation Experiments.Allan Franklin - 1990 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (2):487-494.
    In Constructing Quarks (1984) Andrew Pickering discussed the early experiments on atomic parity violation performed at Oxford University and at the University of Washington and published in 1976 and 1977. The results disagreed with the predictions of the Weinberg-Salam (W-S) theory of unified electroweak interactions. Another experiment, performed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1978, on the scattering of polarized electrons from deuterons confirmed the theory. Pickering regards the Oxford and Washington experiments as mutants, slain by the SLAC experiment.By (...)
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  45.  46
    Are the laws of physics inevitable?Allan Franklin - unknown
    Social constructionists believe that experimental evidence plays a minimal role in the production of scientific knowledge, while rationalists such as myself believe that experimental evidence is crucial in it. As one historical example in support of the rationalist position, I trace in some detail the theoretical and experimental research that led to our understanding of beta decay, from Enrico Fermi’s pioneering theory of 1934 to George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak’s and Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann’s suggestion in 1957 and 1958, (...)
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  46.  17
    Scientific Explanation and Atomic Physics. Edward M. MacKinnon. [REVIEW]Allan Franklin - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (3):481-483.
  47.  10
    Stillman Drake's "Impetus Theory Reappraised".Allan Franklin - 1977 - Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (2):307.
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  48.  16
    Guest Editors’ Introduction.Allan Franklin & Slobodan Perovic - 2015 - Theoria 30 (2):161-162.
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  49.  32
    Recycling expertise and instrumental loyalty.Allan Franklin - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (4):52.
    In this paper I will examine the history of the first three, of a sequence of five, experiments performed by the Mann-O'Neill collaboration at the Princeton-Pennsylvania Accelerator. The experiments were conducted over a period of four years and measured aspects of K+ meson decay. Each of the experiments was done with essentially the same basic apparatus, with modifications for each of the specific measurements. We will see the increasing expertise of the experimenters as the experiments progressed. The third measurement was (...)
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  50.  1
    Review of F. Rapp: Analytical Philosophy of Technology[REVIEW]Allan Franklin - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34 (2):190-192.
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