Twenty Years On: Adding the Cat's Whiskers

Abstract

An encouraging proportion of studies of science in recent decades involve close attention to experiment. This article is mainly concerned with the implications of those studies for philosophy of science. It is argued that the results that are produced by experimental activity are practical productions that embody a practical solution to some of the key problems that have worried philosophers, such as the problem of induction and the nature of the relationship between scientific claims and the material world that those claims refer to. Appreciating the nature of these solutions provides a secure ground for confounding the sceptics. In the final section, it is argued that the nature of experiment points to the need to understand the world in terms of an ontology of powers, dispositions and other ontological categories unjustly given a bad name by Humeans.