Studies On The New Experimentalism

Excessively emphasizing scientific theory which is built on observations, traditional philosophy of science greatly neglects the nature of science as practical activity. The Post-positivist philosophers completely change the principles of verification and neutral-observation, and propose some thesises including"Theory-laden of Observation","Incommensurability of Paradigm"and"the Underdetermination of Theories"that finally give rise to the relativism explanation of science. Rising in 1980s, the New Experimentalism in philosophy of science tries to criticize the representationism, theory-dominated traditional philosophy of science and return to the progress and rationality of science, resorting to philosophical study of scientific experiment.From the perspective of Philosophy of Scientific Practice, this thesis attempts to study the philosophical school of New experimentalism comprehensively and systematically, with the aim of revealing how the New Experimentalism criticizes and goes beyond the traditional philosophy of science, and discerning its problems. Basing on the researching background and characteristic of the New Experimentalism, this thesis is elaborated as followings.Firstly, since the research topics of the New Experimentalism are the scientific experimentation and relevant subjects, this thesis analyses and evaluates the past philosophical study of experimentation at great length from the historic and logic perspective. On this basis, there is a comparison between the New Experimentalism and other approaches of philosophy of science. And then the author identifies the research location and theoretical interest of the New Experimentalism.Secondly, this thesis will structurally anatomize the New Experimentalism from four aspects in turn: including the experimental ontology, epistemology, methodology, and the progress and rationality of science. The section of experimental ontology mainly discusses the research findings of the New Experimentalism concerning the nature of experiment, realism and experimental apparatus; in the section of the experimental epistemology, three research approaches of the New Experimentalism are presented: including"relation between theory and experiment", strategy of"from material to argument"and the materialist theory of knowledge; then the section of experimental methodology analyses the principle of experimental reproductivity and the kinds of vicarious experiment; basing on the former studies, and combining with the location of accounts of the progress of science by the New Experimentalism, also with its proposition of disunity of science, the progress and rationality of science is further elaborated.Lastly, this thesis contends that the New Experimentalism through studies of experimentation brings the great attention of experiment back to the philosophy of science. It is an effective corrigent to the theory-dominated philosophy of science, enormously promoting our understandings of the real science; however, the New Experimentalism also appears somewhat incoherent, and even with some disposition of representationism. Therefore, we suggest that the New Experimentalism should continue to break through the theory-dominated tradition; moreover, it should concern the practice which can lead to the growth of experimental knowledge all the more.