Parting Thoughts

Summary

A philosopher looks at science and what does she see? That science does not consist just of theory and experiment with a little window dressing added on. Rather, it consists of a whole Meccano set of scientific practices and products. And all the pieces matter. You can’t build a dam, design a social policy, measure temperature or justify a climate model with theory and experiment alone. You can’t even do any project purely in science itself without a good collection of other pieces to back you up. An experiment needs measurement techniques, not just for what is being experimented on but to get the arrangements right, as with temperature measurements to ensure the SQUID magnetometers used to measure the precession in the Gravity Probe B are able to function properly (recall that the temperature needs to be below a critical point for superconductivity). Measurement techniques need models and principles to show that they measure what they are supposed to. Principles involve concepts and concepts need stabilising and validating. And so on.