Controlling Induction: Practices and Reflections in David Brewster’s Optical Studies

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the process of learning from experiments or observation by induction, broadly understood. It examines how this process has been both conceived and practiced as more or less rigorous and more or less strictly controlled in its various steps. Rigor and control might appear on many levels, such as conceiving and performing the experiment or drawing conclusions from its outcomes. They secure or enhance the reliability of the inductive process and its results. The chapter begins with a specific example of eighteenth-century optical research. The historical case serves as illustration of three theses. First, experimental control in the physical sciences has different dimensions, which are connected to different experimental traditions. Second, the ways experimental control was practiced and reflected in historical cases are related to specific epistemic goals. Third, in nineteenth-century experimental optics, at least two different traditions of experimental control and rigor were intertwined, which gave rise to most remarkable optical achievements.