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The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Dudley Shapere
Dudley Shapere*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The University of Maryland
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Abstract

Through a study of a sophisticated contemporary scientific experiment, it is shown how and why use of the term ‘observation’ in reference to that experiment departs from ordinary and philosophical usages which associate observation epistemically with perception. The role of “background information” is examined, and general conclusions are arrived at regarding the use of descriptive language in and in talking about science. These conclusions bring out the reasoning by which science builds on what it has learned, and, further, how that process of building consists not only in adding to our substantive knowledge, but also in increasing our ability to learn about nature, by extending our ability to observe it in new ways. The argument of this paper is thus a step toward understanding how it is that all our knowledge of nature rests on observation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 1982 , pp. 485 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1982

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Footnotes

†

This paper is part of a chapter of a book, of the same title, to be published by Oxford University Press. The paper is a revision of one which has been circulated privately and read on numerous occasions, in various versions, over the past several years. The present version is based on one written in 1981 during a visit at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., an opportunity for which I am grateful. I also wish to express my thanks to John Bahcall for his help with the technical material in this paper and related work.

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