Hitherto I have gone no further than the region of experience and
observation, from which, Jevons says, “all knowledge proceeds.” There
has been abundance of observation of phenomena in this quest and I
have ventured even on hypothesis. Experiment is shortly defined by
Jevons as _observation plus alteration of conditions_. He points out
that when we make an experiment we more or less influence the events
which we observe, as when we bring together certain substances under
various conditions of temperature, pressure, electric disturbance or
chemical action and so on, and then record the changes observed; and,
that experiment may be of two kinds, experiments of simple fact and
experiments of quantity. It is unnecessary here to describe all the
rigorous rules that the man of science so rightly imposes upon himself
before he claims to have proved his hypothesis, merely adding that
among others he requires, Exclusion of Indifferent Circumstances,
Simplification of Experiments, Removal of Usual Conditions,
Removal of Interference of Unsuspected Conditions, Blind or Test
Experiments, Negative Results of Experiment, and he lays down the
limits of experiment. Those who have not for themselves investigated
some scientific problem may learn from this statement some of the
difficulties of the work of scientific men and will not fail to respect
and admire the caution, patience and honesty of the scientific worker,
and will perhaps feel the more gratitude to a class of men by whose
self-denying labours they live and move and have their being in a
modern state, and by whose discoveries, thus established, they are
frequently preserved from premature death.
Experiments for the Present Purpose.
Now in the matter of experiment for the proof of the thesis that
changes in the habits of an animal _cause_ the changes observed in
their hair, it is at once seen that, _ex hypothesi_, no one can impose
and work with such calculated conditions as are ordained by experiment,
strictly so-called. The action of a habit is a slow process and the
movement of a hair is slow; moreover the lifetime of a man is too short
and that of a horse, for example, too long to allow of any individual
experimenter applying artificial pressure through many generations of
horses, so as to be able to verify his assertion that the effects of
artificial pressure do what is claimed, and that these effects are
transmitted from one generation of horses to another. One can conceive
a calculated experiment of the kind made with numerous individual rats,
and successive generations, but it is hardly likely that effectual
pressure could be applied to the hairy coats of such small and elusive
mammals as would serve to test the hypothesis.
Undesigned Experiments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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