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Tacit aspects of experimental practices: analytical tools and epistemological consequences

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Soler, Léna
Copyright Year	2011
Abstract	In recent decades many sociologists and philosophers of science, especially the so-called ‘new experimentalists’, have stressed the need for detailed studies of real, ongoing experimental practices, and have claimed that a new image of science results from such an approach. Among the new objects of interest that have emerged from laboratory studies, an important one is the tacit dimension of scientific practices. Harry Collins, in particular, has insisted that irreducibly tacit presuppositions and skills are inevitably involved in experimental practices, and that these tacit resources play an essential role in the stabilization of successful scientific achievements. What I will call the ‘opacity of experimental practices’ has been analyzed in different ways, but on the whole, it has been claimed to have harmful epistemological consequences with respect to crucial issues such as the nature of experimental facts, scientific realism, scientific rationality, and the contingency of what acquires the status of an established scientific result in practitioners’ eyes. Such claims remain highly controversial. The aim of this paper is to discuss the epistemological implications of the involvement of tacit resources in experimental practices and to provide helpful conceptual tools with respect to the issue of tacit resources in science. Specifically, the paper provides an analytical clarification of the relation between the opacity of experimental practices and the principle of experimenters substitutability, the latter being a principle commonly viewed as a necessary feature of any good science. Serious doubts are finally raised about the validity of the experimenters substitutability principle, and the impact of these doubts with respect to the contingency of scientific facts and results is considered.
Starting Page	393
Ending Page	433
Page Count	41
File Format	PDF
ISSN	18794912
Journal	European Journal for Philosophy of Science
Volume Number	1
Issue Number	3
e-ISSN	18794920
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2011-09-29
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Tacit knowledge Experimenters substitutability Harry Collins Contingentism Inevitabilism Philosophy of Science
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy History and Philosophy of Science

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