Abstract
Crucial experiments have been largely neglected by philosophers of science. The main reason for this predicament is that Duhem’s criticism of that kind of experiment has been accepted as sound and definitive. In this article, I start by revisiting the main argument against the possibility of crucial experiments, which is based on epistemological holism. I contend that the argument rests on the confusion between crucial and decisive experiments. When crucial experiments are deprived of their supposed decisive character, the argument loses its bite. Epistemological holism applies to any experiment, whether crucial or not, but it does not imply that experiments are not possible or that they do not have any epistemological import. This variety of holism simply shows that any evidence has to be interpreted and assessed within a theoretical context that includes many auxiliary hypotheses and presupposed theories, which are regarded as accepted background knowledge. This knowledge is not put to the test in a given experiment, but it is rather employed in describing the experimental result and interpreting its theoretical consequences. The meaning of any crucial experiment has then to be extracted from the theoretical context in which the experimental result is interpreted. When the background of accepted knowledge undergoes a drastic change, a crucial experiment may be reinterpreted in such a way that confirms or refutes hypotheses or theories not available at the moment in which it was performed. I will illustrate this kind of reinterpretation with the historical cases of Fizeau’s 1851 experiment, the Michelson and Morley 1887 experiment, and Eddington’s 1919 experiment. I will conclude by vindicating crucial experiments.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For instance, Psillos (2007, p. 109) defines confirmational holism as “the view that theories are confirmed as wholes). In the foreword to the English translation of Duhem’s book, Louis de Broglie wrote that “according to Duhem, there are no genuine crucial experiments because it is the ensemble of a theory forming an indivisible whole which has to be compared to experiments” (de Broglie, 1954, p. XI).
- 3.
See Gillies (1993), chapter 5, for a comparison between Duhem’s and Quine’s varieties of holism.
- 4.
From now on, I will assume the classical conception of theories, according to which a theory is a logically closed set of propositions. All discussions of conformational holism are based on that account of theories, which was endorsed by Duhem and Quine themselves. Duhem and Quine also endorsed a deductivist conception of confirmation, according to which theories and hypotheses are tested exclusively by the evidence they imply. Formally, they subscribed to these two conditions: (a) E confirms H ↔ H ⊨ E and (b) E refutes H ↔ H ⊨ not E (where H is a given hypothesis and E is any piece of evidence). These conceptions of theories and testing form the basis of the so-called hypothetico-deductive method. See Quine & Ullian (1978), chapter 8, for an explicit account of deductive confirmation.
- 5.
See, for instance, Harding (1976) and the articles included in that work.
- 6.
Standard dictionaries of those languages always mention the word “decisive” as synonymous with “crucial”, or as part of its definition.
- 7.
I introduced this distinction in Cassini (2015), but I will elaborate on it in more detail here.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Arago (1853) is the delayed publication of the experimental result. A discussion of the experiment can be found in Eisenstaedt (2005), chapter 10.
- 11.
For a more detailed account of the experiment see Cassini & Levinas (2019).
- 12.
- 13.
See Stachel (2005) for a brief account of the controversies.
- 14.
Since 1910 Einstein regarded Fizeau’s experiment as a crucial experiment that confirmed his special theory of relativity (as well as Lorentz’s electrodynamics) and refuted the electrodynamical theories of Hertz and Ritz (besides Galilei mechanics). See an analysis of all the available sources in Cassini & Levinas (2019).
- 15.
See Cassini & Levinas (2005) for a detailed account. See also the classic article by Holton (1969). Swenson (1972) is a comprehensive history of most ether-drift experiments. Michelson made a previous attempt in 1881, which was a failure because of a mistake in his calculations (see Michelson, 1881, 1882).
- 16.
Given that the refractive index of the air is almost equal to the one of the void, in practice Fresnel’s coefficient could be set as null and, as a consequence, the ether could be regarded as being in relative motion with respect to the laboratory with the orbital speed of the Earth.
- 17.
In 1950 Einstein himself told to Shankland (1963, p. 49) that he considered Tomaschek’s null results “really decisive in establishing the speed of light to be independent of the motion of the source”.
- 18.
The details of the experiment are rather complicated and do not concern us here. See the comprehensive account by Kennefick (2019).
- 19.
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Cassini, A. (2023). Reinterpreting Crucial Experiments. In: Soto, C. (eds) Current Debates in Philosophy of Science. Synthese Library, vol 477. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32375-1_13
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