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Article ID: CBB001553021

Hypothesis Bound: Trial and Error in the Nineteenth Century (2015)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 106, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 635-645
Publication date: 2015
Language: English

DOI: 10.1086/683528

Publication Date: 2015
Edition Details: Part of a Series: Bounded Rationality and the History of Science

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Mathematics Teaching; pedagogy Psychology Bounded Rationality 19th century Gerd Gigerenzer

Like so many things, “trial and error” has a history. The term first emerged as the name for a technique in eighteenth-century mathematics pedagogy. In the nineteenth century, psychologists and biologists transformed “trial and error” from a mathematical tool into a developmental theory, one that could explain both the learning mind and life on earth. “Trial and error” can thus be seen as a case of the larger process whereby the tools we use to explain the world do not just influence but in many ways become our explanations---a process that the psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has called the “tools-to-theories” heuristic. This essay uses Gigerenzer's concept to frame the evolution of “trial and error.” By the end, it suggests how the historical relationship between tools and theories prompts a reconsideration of the terms and assumptions historians of science use in their own work.

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Article Cowles, Henry M.; Deringer, William Peter; Dick, Stephanie; Webster, Colin (2015) Introduction: Bounded Rationality and the History of Science. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 621-622). unapi

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