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Experimental Reproducibility and the Experimenters’ Regress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Hans Radder
Hans Radder*
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Extract

Many philosophers of science tend to take for granted the proposition that, as a rule, scientific experiments are reproducible (or, in other words, repeatable, replicable). Very few of them, however, have examined the issue in any detail (a recent exception is Hones 1990). Yet, by now an important body of literature exists, mainly written by sociologists and historians of science, in which the above proposition is discussed and analyzed on the basis of elaborate studies of experimental practice. These studies claim to offer not only a descriptively adequate account of experimentation, but also a number of fundamental philosophical conclusions concerning (experimental) science as a whole.

In the present paper I analyze and evaluate the views of H.M. Collins, an early and influential thinker concerning the issue in question. In particular I discuss what he has called the ‘experimenters’ regress’.

Type
Part II. Experimentation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 63 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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