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Workshop „Generating Experimental Knowledge”

14–16 June 2007, IZWT, Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Programme; Abstracts

supported by
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Cologne
Max Planck Institut for the History of Science, Berlin
Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Generating experimental knowledge: An outline

Discussions of experiment have been around for three decades and taken various directions. Ever since Latour and Woolgar’s study of Laboratory Life (1979), with its emphasis on the “social construction of scientific facts”, aspects of communication and social dynamics have formed an important focus of studies of experiment and laboratory practice. The scope and richness of these studies reaches from the 17th century to the present, from the early modern air pump to particle physics, from problems of witnessing to the emergence of local languages of experimental communities (Shapin & Schaffer, Pickering, Galison, among others). Building on the Edinburgh “Strong Programme”, this strand of research has culminated in the bold claim that an “experimenters’ regress” is omnipresent and can only be resolved socially (Collins). Cultural dimensions of experimentation have been analyzed in great detail, ranging from the rhetoric of experiment to its use in disseminating and promulgating research activities (Cantor, Hochadel). The materiality of experiment and the role of instruments have been studied from cultural, social, institutional and technological perspectives, as well as the requirements of bodily training and material practice, and the importance of time, space, and place (Rieß, Sibum, Heering, Staubermann, Müller). Focusing on the life sciences, the closely knit dynamics of experimental systems has been brought to the fore (Rheinberger). The 19th century “experimentalization of life” has been analyzed in its cultural, social, and institutional dimensions and its complex relation to changing urban life (Dierig, Schmidgen, Lachmund). As a result, we now have a rich picture of the settings and culture(s) of experiment, of its social, institutional, and historical ramifications – of the “Mangle of practice” (Pickering). Indeed, the picture owes much of its richness and contours to a new attention to experimental practice, as opposed to ready-made presentations of experimental results, and to scientists’ own presentations of their doing.

However, one of the key features of experiment has attracted significantly less attention: knowledge. The immensely successful turn towards “practice and culture” has often been taken as a turn away from genuine problems of knowledge. Issues such as the type(s) of knowledge pursued and eventually obtained though experiments, the dynamics of experimentation and its capacity to generate knowledge, the role of intervening and manipulating for the validity and extension of our knowledge claims, to name but a few, have only rarely been treated in a differentiated manner. From an epistemological perspective, the New Experimentalism, so distinctly kindled by Hacking’s and Cartwright’s 1983 challenges, has not been pursued very intensely. This is not surprising, given the general development in the historiography of science, away from an exclusive focus on knowledge and towards higher sensitivity to context. Nevertheless, given that it is (and always has been) the explicit aim of most experiments to provide knowledge about the object experimented upon, the scant attention that is paid to experimental knowledge indicates a significant deficiency in our understanding of experiment. To be sure, the problem of experimental knowledge has never been completely neglected, but the various existing strands of studies are much thinner than those focusing on the broader context, and do by no means provide a coherent account. There have been various studies from the perspective of cognitive science and from the logic of causal reasoning (Gooding, Nersessian, Renn, Woodward, Graßhoff). Attempts have even been made to grasp the dynamics of experimental knowledge generation with artificial intelligence models (Simon, Gooding, Graßhoff). Questions regarding the variety and meanings of experimental error have been addressed from both philosophical and historical perspective (Mayo, Hon, Schickore, Allchin), and experimenters’ strategies of distinguishing ‘real’ results from instrumental artifacts been listed (Franklin). Starting from hands-on replications of experiments, the concept of ‘practical knowledge’ and its possible meanings have come under scrutiny (Sibum, Sichau). A particular historical tradition of “experimental history” has been identified, in contrast both to natural history and experimental philosophy (Klein). Epistemic uses of experiment different from theory testing have been analyzed and exhibited, and the formation of concepts and structuring tools been emphasized (Klein, Steinle, Burian, Feest). Many of these studies bring together historical and philosophical analysis. However, what we have is still a rather disparate and varying picture. As recent collections readily show (Gooding, Pinch & Schaffer 1989, Heidelberger & Steinle 1998, Radder 2002), there is no close connexion between the various argumentative and analytic strands, and only occasional links to the cultural and social studies of experiment. The organizers of the workshop are presently pursuing some of the themes in the context of an international cooperation (funded by the German-Israeli Foundation for Research and Development, GIF), and have realized that it is now time to bring various strands of research together and to aim for a wider view.
The aim of the workshop is to bring experimental knowledge to the limelight. We use the expression “experimental knowledge” as a catch phrase, referring loosely both to the variety of knowledge and skills required to conduct experiments and to the knowledge claims generated by experiments. It is an underlying premise of this workshop that experimental knowledge is a crucial element of experimentation and that without an understanding of this element, analyses of experimentation provided by cultural, social, and material studies will remain deficient. Through discussing, linking and complementing various approaches, fundamental issues of our understanding of experimental knowledge will be addressed. While historical and epistemological considerations will be the main focus of interest, we aim to integrate the rich results of social and cultural studies of experiment. The workshop should make clear that the turn towards practice and culture does not necessarily mean a turn away from knowledge.


There are several perspectives from which the problem of experimental knowledge may be approached. One may ask, for example, what are the various types of questions experimenters are pursuing in their work? How do these questions shape their activities of designing, constructing, running, evaluating, and communicating their experiments? Epistemic goals vary widely, but how does experimental practice change relative to the aims of establishing a law vs. testing a theory, elaborating a model vs. finding a numeric parameter, searching for correlations (or causal relations) vs. exploring the potentials of an instrument? Furthermore, the question arises as to how and in what ways do the various aspects and elements of experiments relate to experimental knowledge? Or, in the first instance, what elements of experiments pertinent to knowledge generation should we distinguish? For example, what kinds of (experimental) knowledge are implied in experimental objects, in instruments, in experimental procedures, or in entire experimental systems? Are there specific types of ‘experimental’ knowledge, different both from explicit propositional knowledge and genuinely implicit (tacit) knowledge? To mention yet another aspect, the ‘standard view’ of experiment often implicitly equates scientific knowledge with scientific theory. But what about concepts and the language in which the experimental setup is conceived in the first place? What kind of knowledge is incorporated in these concepts, and how are concepts revised or new ones formed in the course of experimental activity? Hacking’s claim that “concepts have memories” is pertinent to the dynamics of experimental research, but it needs close attention and thorough elaboration. The dynamics of knowledge generation in experimental systems, the variety of possible experimental errors, and the characteristics and implications of attempts to exclude them provide further topics.

Placing experimental knowledge center stage may help to bring these various aspects together and thus to create a more integrated view on experiment than hitherto achieved. It may not only open new perspectives on old problems (such as the pertinent, never resolved question of the theory-ladeness of experiments), but also, and more importantly, show and explicate a much closer connexion between experimenters’ epistemic guidelines, their practical, material considerations, and the cultural and institutional settings within which they work.


The organisers:

  • Friedrich Steinle (Wuppertal)
  • Uljana Feest (Berlin)
  • Giora Hon (Haifa)
  • Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin)
  • Jutta Schickore (Bloomington, IN)


List of speakers (alphabetic order)

  1. Hanne Andersen (Aarhus Universitet, Denmark): ”Experiment and conceptual change”
  2. Theo Arabatzis (University of Athens, Greece): ”Experimenting on Hidden Entities: the Fusion of Representation and Intervention?”
  3. Martin Carrier (Universität Bielefeld): "Understanding Experimentation in Applied Research"
  4. Thomas Dohmen (Haifa University, Israel): ”The Dynamics of Knowledge Generation: Comparison, Variation and Optimization in Experimentation”
  5. Igal Dotan (MPIWG Berlin): ”Evolutionizing Aging: Problems, Programs, Progress”
  6. Moritz Epple (Universität Frankfurt/M): ”Adjusting mathematics and experimental systems: Episodes from early aerodynamics”
  7. Uljana Feest (MPIWG Berlin): ”Concepts as Tools in the Experimental Generation of Knowledge in Psychology”
  8. Catherine Goldstein (CNRS, Paris): "How to generate mathematical experimentation, and is it mathematical knowledge?"
  9. Gerd Grasshoff (Universität Bern): ”Causal reasoning and experimentation”
  10. Francesco Guala (University of Exeter, UK): “What Do Experimental Economists Know?”
  11. Giora Hon (Haifa University, Israel): (introduction, comment) and ”Generating Experimental Knowledge: the invention and development of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM)”
  12. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (MPIWG Berlin): (introduction, comment)
  13. Jutta Schickore (University of Indiana at Bloomington, USA): ”'Pretensions, Defects, and Excellencies:' Test Objects for Microscopes"
  14. Gregor Schiemann (Universität Wuppertal): "Experimental knowledge and the theory of producing it: Hermann von Helmholtz"
  15. Christian Sichau (Deutsches Museum, München): ”How can an experimenter ever be sure about his results? Mutually stabilising elements of experimental knowledge”
  16. Friedrich Steinle (Universität Wuppertal): (introduction, comment)
  17. Marcel Weber (Universität Basel): "Mechanism, Experimental Reasoning, and Inference to the Best Explanation”
  18. Lambert Williams (MPIWG Berlin/ Harvard University, USA): ”Experimental systems and quasi-disciplines”