Article ID: CBB098577406

We Have Never Been “New Experimentalists”: On the Rise and Fall of the Turn to Experimentation in the 1980s (2023)

unapi

The 1980s, it is often claimed, was the decade when experimentation finally became a philosophical topic. This was the responsibility, the claim continues, of one particular movement within philosophy of science, called “new experimentalism.” The aim of this article is to complicate this historical narrative. We argue that in the 1980s, the study of experimentation was carried out not by one movement with one particular aim but rather in a diverse and open-ended way by people with different aims and backgrounds. We then argue that from the late 1990s onward, this diversity disappeared and made room for disciplinary divisions—questions concerning experimentation became philosophical, others sociological, and so on. The reason for this, we claim, was that science and technology studies, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of science took over aspects of the 1980s study of experimentation. In this way, we argue, these elements became institutionalized, whereas others were forgotten. The importance of this process of institutionalization is illustrated by means of a discussion of other, similar approaches to the philosophy of experimentation that have not been able to ensure continuity because they did not find an institutional home.

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Authors & Contributors
Feenberg, Andrew
Arabatzis, Theodore
Baird, Davis
Collins, Harry M.
Fagan, Melinda Bonnie
Freire, Olival, Jr.
Journals
Science, Technology, and Human Values
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Engineering Studies
Hyle
Physics in Perspective
Publishers
MIT Press
Taylor & Francis
Columbia University
Amsterdam University Press
Lexington Books
Palgrave Macmillan
Concepts
Philosophy of science
Philosophy of technology
Experiments and experimentation
Science and technology studies (STS)
Models and modeling in science
Methodology of science; scientific method
People
Bell, John Stewart
Rawls, John
Eve André Laramée
Levy, Stacy
Jeremijenko, Natalie
Sakurai, J. J.
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
New Mexico (U.S.)
South Asia
Institutions
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
Frankfurt School of sociology
Santa Fe Institute
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