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Experiment, Speculation and Law: Faraday's Analysis of Arago's Wheel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Friedrich Steinle
Friedrich Steinle*
Affiliation:
Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen
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Extract

This paper deals with the mutual relation of speculative considerations, experimental activity, and the attempt to establish “laws of nature.” I shall not give a general analysis, but instead study a historical example. It is taken from the work of Michael Faraday - one of the most original and most successful experimenters.

I shall start by giving a rough sketch of Faraday's view, thereby making clear the particular question on which my paper concentrates. In part three, I analyze an episode of Faraday's actual work, and conclude in part four with a rough analysis of the type of explanation given by Faraday.

Faraday repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of distinguishing “that knowledge which consists of assumption, by which I mean theory and hypothesis, from that which is the knowledge of facts and laws; never raising the former to the dignity or authority of the latter, nor confusing the latter more than is inevitable with the former.”

Type
Part VIII. Historical Case Studies and Methodology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 292 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Lorenz Krüger, Ryan Tweney. and Larry Holmes for critical and stimulating discussion, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for supporting my research.

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