The Neglect of Experiment by Allan Franklin

What position have experiments performed, and may they play, in physics? How does one come to think rationally in experimental effects? The overlook of scan makes an attempt to supply solutions to either one of those questions. Professor Franklin's technique combines the distinct learn of 4 episodes within the heritage of 20th century physics with an exam of a few of the philosophical concerns concerned. The episodes are the invention of parity nonconservation ( or the violation of replicate symmetry) within the Nineteen Fifties; the nondiscovery of parity nonconservation within the Thirties, whilst the result of experiments indicated, at the very least on reflection, the symmetry violation, however the value of these effects used to be no longer learned; the invention and attractiveness of CP ( mixed parity-charge conjugations, paricle-antiparticle) symmetry; and Millikan's oil-drop scan. Franklin examines some of the roles that scan performs, together with its function in finding out among competing theories, confirming theories, and calling fo new theories. the writer argues that you can offer a philosophical justification for those roles. He contends that if scan performs such vital roles, then one should have strong cause to think in experimental effects. He then bargains with deveral difficulties pertaining to such reslults, together with the epistemology of test, how one involves think rationally in experimental effects, the query of the effect of theoretical presuppositions on effects, and the matter of clinical fruad. This unique and significant contribution to the examine of the philosophy of experimental technology is an outgrowth of decades of analysis. Franklin brings to this paintings greater than a decade of expertise as an experimental high-energy physicist, together with his major contributions to the heritage and philosophy of science.