From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Science and methodology (was: Homeopathy ... tradition?)
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
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In article <1993Apr16.210916.6958@cs.rochester.edu>, fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes:

|> I'm not familiar with the history of this experiment, although, arguably,
|> I should be.

For a brief, but pretty detailed account, try Hempel's _Philosophy of
Natural Science_.

|> I think that it is enough if his contemporaries found the result surprising.
|> That's not what I'd quibble about.  What I'd like to know are Toricelli's
|> reasons for doing his experiment; not the post hoc _constructed_ reasons,
|> but the thoughts in his head as he considered the problem.  It may be

This smacks a bit of ideology -- the supposition being that Toricelli's
subsequent descriptions of his reasoning are not veridical.  It gets dangerously
close to an unfalsifiable view of the history and methodology of science if
we deny that no subsequent reports of experimenters are reliable descriptions
of their "real" reasons.

|> impossible to know much about Toricelli's thoughts; that's too bad if
|> it is so.  One of Root-Bernstein's services to science is that he has gone
|> rooting about in Pasteur's and Fleming's (and other people's) notes, and has
|> discovered some surprising clues about their motivations.  Pasteur never
|> publicly admitted his plan to create mirror-image life, but the dreams are
|> right there in his notebooks (finally public after many years), ready for
|> anyone to read.  And I and my friends often have the most ridiculous
|> reasons for pursuing results; one of my best came because I was mad at
|> a colleague for a poorly-written claim (I disproved the claim).
|> 
|> Of course, Toricelli's case may be an example of a rarety: where the
|> fantasy not only motivates the experiment, but turns out to be right
|> in the end.

But my point is that this type of case is *not* a rarity.  In fact, I was
going to point to Pasteur as yet another rather common example -- particularly
the studies on spontaneous generation and fermentation.  I will readily
concede that "ridiculous reasons" can play an important role in how
scientists spend their time.  But one should not confuse motivation with
methodology nor suppose that ridiculous reasons provide the impetus in the
majority of cases based on relatively infrequent anecdotal evidence.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
