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How Experiments End
"Galison provides excellent histories of three experimental the measurement of the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, the discovery of the mu meson, or muon, and the discovery of weak neutral currents. These studies of actual experiments will provide valuable material for both philosophers and historians of science and Galison's own thoughts on the nature of experiment are extremely important. . . . Galison has given both philosophers and historians much to think about. I strongly urge you to read this book."—Allan Franklin, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science
"Anyone who is seriously concerned with understanding how research is done should read this. There have been many books on one or another part of its subject matter but few giving such insights into how the research is done and how the consensus of discovery is arrived at."—Frank Close, New Scientist
"[Galison] is to be congratulated on producing a masterpiece in the field."—Michael Redhead, Synthese
" How Experiments End is a major historical work on an exciting topic."—Andy Pickering, Isis
"Anyone who is seriously concerned with understanding how research is done should read this. There have been many books on one or another part of its subject matter but few giving such insights into how the research is done and how the consensus of discovery is arrived at."—Frank Close, New Scientist
"[Galison] is to be congratulated on producing a masterpiece in the field."—Michael Redhead, Synthese
" How Experiments End is a major historical work on an exciting topic."—Andy Pickering, Isis
337 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 29, 2013
To do a history of science, ask a historian who is also a scientist
JDN 2456442 EDT 15:48.
A review of How Experiments End by Peter Galison
It seems so obvious in hindsight, but most things do. If you want a really good history of science, you need a historian who is also a scientist. Galison fits the bill; he has PhDs in both physics and history. How Experiments End is, as such, the finest history of science I've ever read.
Unlike most historians who write about science, Galison has the proper respect for science. He appreciates how reason and evidence really do influence scientific decisions, and how, however imperfectly, we do gain real knowledge about the world. Yet unlike most scientists who write about science, he doesn't sugar-coat the story either; he talks about the mistakes, the false paths, the blistered egos and funding competitions. I hope I get the chance to do some of this in the history of the Physics Department… though I rather doubt it. I suspect they'll want it sanitized to be as unobjectionable and pro-Michigan as possible.
At the very end of the book he sums it up this way: "In denying the old Reichenbachian division between capricious discovery and rule-governed justification, our task is neither to produce rational rules for discovery—a favorite philosophical pastime—nor to reduce the arguments of physics to surface waves over the ocean of professional interests. The task at hand is to capture the building up of a persuasive argument about the world around us, even in the absence of the logician's certainty."
This strongly reminded me of one of my favorite quotations by Bertrand Russell: "Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when widespread, produce social disaster."
Galison also appreciates how silly it is that we insist upon speaking of "the discovery of the muon" or "the invention of the superconductor" as a single event traceable to a particular year (or even day!). Scientific progress is always more complicated than that; it takes a lot of people for a long time doing a lot of different things. I guess this is a problem in history in general though; we like to think of history as done by "Great Men"; it's easier to wrap your mind around one heroic individual than a complex system of social change.
That said, How Experiments End has its flaws. For one thing, it's extremely technical; you need to know quite a bit of physics to understand what he's talking about. For another, it has a very plodding pace about it, with enormous depth of historical detail, much of which seems ultimately irrelevant. Only in the introductory and conclusive chapters do you really get a sense of what Galison is trying to argue from all this. In the large middle portion of the book, it's a long sequence of names, events, and technologies that all begin to blend together. I'm fairly interested in the history of science, and I still found sections boring. Someone who didn't already come to the subject with such interest would probably be put off entirely.
JDN 2456442 EDT 15:48.
A review of How Experiments End by Peter Galison
It seems so obvious in hindsight, but most things do. If you want a really good history of science, you need a historian who is also a scientist. Galison fits the bill; he has PhDs in both physics and history. How Experiments End is, as such, the finest history of science I've ever read.
Unlike most historians who write about science, Galison has the proper respect for science. He appreciates how reason and evidence really do influence scientific decisions, and how, however imperfectly, we do gain real knowledge about the world. Yet unlike most scientists who write about science, he doesn't sugar-coat the story either; he talks about the mistakes, the false paths, the blistered egos and funding competitions. I hope I get the chance to do some of this in the history of the Physics Department… though I rather doubt it. I suspect they'll want it sanitized to be as unobjectionable and pro-Michigan as possible.
At the very end of the book he sums it up this way: "In denying the old Reichenbachian division between capricious discovery and rule-governed justification, our task is neither to produce rational rules for discovery—a favorite philosophical pastime—nor to reduce the arguments of physics to surface waves over the ocean of professional interests. The task at hand is to capture the building up of a persuasive argument about the world around us, even in the absence of the logician's certainty."
This strongly reminded me of one of my favorite quotations by Bertrand Russell: "Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when widespread, produce social disaster."
Galison also appreciates how silly it is that we insist upon speaking of "the discovery of the muon" or "the invention of the superconductor" as a single event traceable to a particular year (or even day!). Scientific progress is always more complicated than that; it takes a lot of people for a long time doing a lot of different things. I guess this is a problem in history in general though; we like to think of history as done by "Great Men"; it's easier to wrap your mind around one heroic individual than a complex system of social change.
That said, How Experiments End has its flaws. For one thing, it's extremely technical; you need to know quite a bit of physics to understand what he's talking about. For another, it has a very plodding pace about it, with enormous depth of historical detail, much of which seems ultimately irrelevant. Only in the introductory and conclusive chapters do you really get a sense of what Galison is trying to argue from all this. In the large middle portion of the book, it's a long sequence of names, events, and technologies that all begin to blend together. I'm fairly interested in the history of science, and I still found sections boring. Someone who didn't already come to the subject with such interest would probably be put off entirely.
August 14, 2016
Experiments are hard. There are lots of little details. At every point, the experimenter needs to decide to (A) decide that they are confident enough in their results to publish them, (B) keep tweaking the experiment and try to remove more sources of error, or (C) give the whole thing up.
In this book, Peter Galison traces the details of that decision in several major physics experiments of the 20th century -- work by Einstein and others on measuring the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, the discovery of the muon, and the observation of weak neutral currents. In all these cases, several different experimental groups were pursuing the same topic. In each case, different experimenters had different and conflicting results at first, but in all cases, the results were eventually pinned down.
Reading through these details, I came away with a much better understanding of what's challenging about experimental physics and about how the scientific process works.
Galison is not an impartial observer. This book is largely an attempt to advance certain claims about the philosophy of science, largely reacting against Kuhn and the notion that scientific progress consists of stable paradigms, disrupted by revolution. In each of Galison's case, there were fairly major changes in how physicists understood what they were seeing -- but also a great deal of continuity in methods and analytical questions between before and after the discovery. However, Galison is very much a scientific realist -- however much confusion and motivated thinking there is, scientists are pretty good at coming to the right conclusion, once they have enough data.
In this book, Peter Galison traces the details of that decision in several major physics experiments of the 20th century -- work by Einstein and others on measuring the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, the discovery of the muon, and the observation of weak neutral currents. In all these cases, several different experimental groups were pursuing the same topic. In each case, different experimenters had different and conflicting results at first, but in all cases, the results were eventually pinned down.
Reading through these details, I came away with a much better understanding of what's challenging about experimental physics and about how the scientific process works.
Galison is not an impartial observer. This book is largely an attempt to advance certain claims about the philosophy of science, largely reacting against Kuhn and the notion that scientific progress consists of stable paradigms, disrupted by revolution. In each of Galison's case, there were fairly major changes in how physicists understood what they were seeing -- but also a great deal of continuity in methods and analytical questions between before and after the discovery. However, Galison is very much a scientific realist -- however much confusion and motivated thinking there is, scientists are pretty good at coming to the right conclusion, once they have enough data.
Textbooks do not tell you that groups of physicists gather around the table at CERN stamping OUT and IN on event candidates. This may be due to the persistent myth that, at least at the level of data-taking, no human intervention ought to occur in an experiment or, if it does occur, that any selection criteria should conform to rules full specified in advance. But here, as everywhere in the scientific process, procedures are neither rule governed nor arbitrary. This false dichotomy between rigidity and anarchy is as inapplicable to the sorting of data as it is to every other problem-solving activity. Is it so surprising that data-taking requires as much judgment as the correct application of laws or the design of apparatus.
September 25, 2016
Brilliant book, denying the division between capricious discovery and rule-governed justification, Galison takes on the task of of neither producing rational rules for discovery - a favourite philosophical pastime - nor reducing the arguments of physics to surface waves over the ocean of professional interest or parodying it as if it were no more grounded in reason than negotiations over the price of a street fair antique. Galison successfully shows that the task at hand is "to capture the building up of a persuasive argument about the world around us, even in the absence of the logician's certainty." With my professional reviewers hat on this got four stars - highly recommended for anyone who truly wishes to understand the practice of science - to get to that almost magical 'everyone should read this' five stars would mean losing it's highly valuable relevance and philosophical punch.
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