Experimentum crucis
As a crucial experiment ( lat. "Cross test") is referred to in the scientific theory an experiment , whose failure the experiment underlying theory falsified or overcomes.
history
The name goes back to the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon ( Instantias crucis corresponding to facts that correspond to an orientation sign at a crossroads, in Novum Organum , Book 2, Aphorism 36), from whom Isaac Newton took it, who called his prism experiment in 1672 so. Karl Popper saw the existence of an experimentum crucis as a quality criterion for scientific theories. Popper came to the conclusion that the systematic impossibility of an experimentum crucis represents a decisive flaw in Sigmund Freud's theory, which was praised as irrefutable at the time .
criticism
The positivist idea of the experimentum crucis is questioned in today's philosophy of science in its fundamental importance for scientific progress; because each experiment only allows one particular statement .
Because experiments to test hypotheses themselves require auxiliary hypotheses, according to the Duhem-Quine thesis they cannot finally falsify a hypothesis to be tested. Because it is also possible that the auxiliary hypotheses used are wrong.
The history of science can also show that the emergence and implementation of a certain alternative to a previous theory is tied to certain historical situations and, under certain circumstances, despite indisputable superiority, only slowly asserts itself. Under certain historical situations, they cannot even assert themselves at all, such as scientific inventions e.g. B. show in imperial China. According to Thomas Kuhn, scientific revolutions can usually only prevail when previous prevailing theories are in crisis, influential representatives of previous theories die away and the new theory fits even better into the current worldview.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kargon: Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1966, pp. 124f
- ↑ "Experience is of particulars only." Abraham Kaplan : The Conduct of Inquiry. 1964, p. 37.
- ^ Alan F. Chalmers : Paths of Science . 6th edition. Springer Wissenschaftsverlag, ISBN 978-3-540-49490-4 , Chapter 7 The Limits of Falsificationism , p. 74-76 .