DOCSLIB.ORG

OBSERVATION and ENLIGHTENMENT Lorraine

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
OBSERVATION and ENLIGHTENMENT Lorraine OBSERVATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT Lorraine Daston Introduction: The Age of Observation On 22 July 1757 the Genevan naturalist Charles Bonnet wrote to his Ber- nese colleague Albrecht von Haller: I have often revolved in my mind the plan of a work which I would have entitled Essay on the Art of Observing. I would have collected as in a tab- leau the most beautiful discoveries that had been made since the birth of philosophy. I would have shown the routes by which the great masters of the art had reached the sanctuary of Nature. I would have indicated the obstacles they had to overcome; the means they used; the different views offered to their minds [and] the use to which they put these. I would have demonstrated that the spirit of observation is the universal spirit of the arts and sciences. But, Monsieur, for a work like that I would have to have had your head. If your occupations ever allowed you to undertake [such a work], what an excellent logic it would furnish us with!1 Neither Bonnet nor Haller ever managed to write such a work on the art of observation,2 but Bonnet’s claim that “the spirit of observation is the uni- versal spirit of the arts and sciences” and that scientific observation was a new and powerful kind of logic would have been loudly echoed by many 1 “J’ai souvent eu dans l’esprit le plan d’un Ouvrage que j’aurois intitulé Essai sur l’Art d’Observer. J’y aurois rassemblé comme dans un Tableau les plus belles Découvertes qui ont été faites depuis la naissance de la Phylosophie. J’aurois montré les routes par lesquelles les Grands Maîtres de l’Art sont parvenus dans le Sanctuaire de la Nature. J’aurois indiqué les obstacles qu’ils ont eu à prendre; les moyens qu’ils ont eu à employer; les différentes vuës qui se sont offertes à leur esprit; l’emploi qu’ils ont sçu en faire. J’aurois fait voir que l’esprit d’Observation est l’esprit universel des Sciences et des Arts. Mais, Monsieur, pour un Ouvrage comme celui là il me faudroit votre Téte. Ha! Si vos occupations vous permettoient jamais de l’entreprendre, quelle excellente Logique ne nous vaudroit-il pas!” Charles Bonnet to Albrecht von Haller, Geneva, 22 July 1757, in Otto Sonntag (ed.), The Correspondence between Albrecht von Haller and Charles Bonnet (Bern 1983), 107 (transla- tion by L.D.). 2 At Bonnet’s urging, the Genevan pastor and naturalist Jean Senebier ended up writing the treatise: Jean Senebier, L’Art d’observer (Genève 1775), 2 vols. On the background, see Hans Poser, ‘Die Kunst der Beobachtung: Zur Preisfrage der Holländischen Akademie von 1768’, in id. (ed.), Erfahrung und Beobachtung: Erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnisbegründung (Berlin 1992), 99–119. © Lorraine Daston, 2013 | doi:10.1163/9789004243910_029 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.Lorraine Daston - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:49:16AM via free access 658 lorraine daston Enlightenment savants, whether anatomists or astronomers, botanists or chemists, physicians or physicists. By the mid-eighteenth century, obser- vation was practiced, theorized, and celebrated in almost all sciences. “Never has so much been observed, as in our century.”3 The Enlighten- ment has been called the Age of Reason, but from the standpoint of the natural and human sciences, it would be still more accurate to call it the Age of Observation. During the Enlightenment, the prestige of scientific observation reached its zenith—as an art, a logic, a way of life. Never before or since has observation figured so prominently among cultivated scientific practices. Throughout the Latin Middle Ages, observatio was associated with shep- herds, sailors, farmers, and other outdoor workers who practiced what Cicero had called “natural divination”: waiting and watching for correla- tions between the stars, the weather, fat and lean harvests, the migration of birds, and other natural phenomena. Observation on this model was slow, cumulative, and anonymous, handed down orally from generation to generation in the form of proverbs like “Red in the morning, sailors take warning”. Only astronomical observations counted as part of the learned tradition and even these were made rarely; until well into the sixteenth century, European astronomers and astrologers relied largely on ancient observations. For medieval natural philosophers, observation was useful but not scientific: at best, it was a tool of the conjectural sciences like medicine and alchemy, condemned to deal with individual particulars rather than universal causes.4 Observation, since Antiquity linked with divination, was triply at the mercy of chance: the chance concatenation of causes, the chance opportunity of being at the right place at the right time, and the chance accumulation and transmission of past wisdom. For Aristotelian natural philosophers, chance was most unpromising material for genuine science. 3 Benjamin-Samuel-Georges Carrard, Essai qui a remporté le prix de la Société Hollan- doise des Sciences de Haarlem en 1770, sur cette question, qu’est-ce qui est requis dans l’art d’observer (Amsterdam 1777), 1. Carrard won the Haarlem Academy of Science’s prize for the best work on observation: Poser 1992 (note 2), 99–119; Jan Gerrit Bruijn, Inventaris van de Prijsvragen uitgeschreven door de Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wettenschappen 1753–1917 (Haarlem 1977). Senebier’s entry was awarded the Academy’s approbation and was probably more widely read (and translated) than Carrard. 4 See Katharine Park, ‘Observation in the Margins, 500–1500’, in Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (eds.), Histories of Scientific Observation (Chicago 2011), 15–44. Lorraine Daston - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:49:16AM via free access observation and enlightenment 659 For very different reasons, scientists since the mid-nineteenth century have also taken a jaundiced view of observation. Unlike their medieval predecessors, nineteenth-century men of science considered observa- tion to be essential to science. But they distinguished observation sharply from experiment, describing the one as passive and requiring minimal skill and the other as active and demanding the utmost ingenuity. The French physiologist Claude Bernard emphasized that “the mind of the experimenter must be active, that is to say he must interrogate nature and pose questions in every sense, following the various hypotheses that suggest themselves to him”, whereas the observer embodied “the passive senses that obeyed the intellect in order to realize an experiment designed with a preconceived idea in view.”5 The British astronomer John Herschel demoted observation to an amateur activity, to be discharged by an army of volunteers who would diligently “observe regularly and methodically some particular class of facts” and fill out standardized forms consisting of “distinct and pertinent questions, admitting of short and definite answers”.6 Twentieth-century philosophers of science took the devaluation of obser- vation in science a step further by positing a “neutral observation language” that barely differed from mere looking—a form of empiricism too rudi- mentary to be suspected of being “theory-laden”.7 Such condescension would have greatly surprised Bonnet, for whom observation was the highest, not the lowest form of scientific inquiry. For Enlightenment savants, observation was an elite learned activity, too lofty for unlettered sailors or shepherds and too demanding for amateur foot soldiers. Observation was decidedly active, fully engaging the senses and the intellect; observation and experiment were intertwined, not opposed. True observers were born, not made: “Depending on the kind of observa- tions in question, it is necessary that he [the observer] have clear-sighted eyes, very sensitive touch, a good nose, a delicate palate, and keen hearing. 5 Claude Bernard, Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale [1865], ed. by François Dagognet (Paris 1866), 52–54 and 71. 6 John F.W. Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (reprint of 1830 edn., Chicago 1987), 131–134. Herschel’s vision of centralized networks of standard- ized volunteer observers was to some extent realized in nineteenth-century meteorology: Fabien Locher, Le Nombre et le temps. La météorologie en France (1830–1880), dissertation, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2004; Katharine Anderson, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology (Chicago 2005). 7 For a brisk, perspicuous account of the philosophical positions in the mid-twentieth- century anglophone discussion of scientific observation, see Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science (Cambridge 1983), 167–185. Lorraine Daston - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:49:16AM via free access 660 lorraine daston He also needs dexterity, sagacity, and intellectual penetration, which are gifts of nature that can be more or less developed but not acquired by art.”8 Throughout the long eighteenth century, observation featured prominently in the titles of learned books and articles; its prestige sur- passed that of both experiment and deduction; it was the yardstick by which savants took each other’s measure; it was even possible to become a “genius of observation”. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct what scientific observation meant in precept and practice for Enlightenment savants like Bonnet, von Haller, and a host of other citizens of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. Between circa 1660 and 1830 observation reigned supreme in the natural and human sciences: cultivated as a practice, analyzed as a logic, embraced as a vocation. How did observation rise to such heights after centuries of learned neglect? How were perception, attention, judgment, and memory schooled to craft an observation? Who was the observer and what demands were made on a life dedicated to observation, which noto- riously disrupted diurnal rhythms, constrained socializing, and endan- gered health? Above all, what kind of knowledge did observation promise; in other words, how could observation serve, in Bonnet’s phrase, as an “excellent logic”.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Observational Determinism for Concurrent Program Security
    Observational Determinism for Concurrent Program Security Steve Zdancewic Andrew C. Myers Department of Computer and Information Science Computer Science Department University of Pennsylvania Cornell University [email protected] [email protected] Abstract This paper makes two contributions. First, it presents a definition of information-flow security that is appropriate for Noninterference is a property of sequential programs that concurrent systems. Second, it describes a simple but ex- is useful for expressing security policies for data confiden- pressive concurrent language with a type system that prov- tiality and integrity. However, extending noninterference to ably enforces security. concurrent programs has proved problematic. In this pa- Notions of secure information flow are usually based on per we present a relatively expressive secure concurrent lan- noninterference [15], a property only defined for determin- guage. This language, based on existing concurrent calculi, istic systems. Intuitively, noninterference requires that the provides first-class channels, higher-order functions, and an publicly visible results of a computation do not depend on unbounded number of threads. Well-typed programs obey a confidential (or secret) information. Generalizing noninter- generalization of noninterference that ensures immunity to ference to concurrent languages is problematic because these internal timing attacks and to attacks that exploit informa- languages are naturally nondeterministic: the order of execu- tion about the thread scheduler. Elimination of these refine- tion of concurrent threads is not specified by the language se- ment attacks is possible because the enforced security prop- mantics. Although this nondeterminism permits a variety of erty extends noninterference with observational determin- thread scheduler implementations, it also leads to refinement ism.
    [Show full text]
  • 1.) What Is the Difference Between Observation and Interpretation? Write a Short Paragraph in Your Journal (5-6 Sentences) Defining Both, with One Example Each
    Observation and Response: Creative Response Template can be adapted to fit a variety of classes and types of responses Goals: Students will: • Practice observation skills and develop their abilities to find multiple possibilities for interpretation and response to visual material; • Consider the difference between observation and interpretation; • Develop descriptive skills, including close reading and metaphorical description; • Develop research skills by considering a visual text or object as a primary source; • Engage in creative response to access and communicate intellectually or emotionally challenging material. Observation exercises Part I You will keep a journal as you go through this exercise. This can be a physical notebook that pleases you or a word document on your computer. At junctures during the exercise, you will be asked to comment, define, reflect, and create in your journal on what you just did. Journal responses will be posted to Canvas at the conclusion of the exercise, either as word documents or as Jpegs. 1.) What is the difference between observation and interpretation? Write a short paragraph in your journal (5-6 sentences) defining both, with one example each. 2.) Set a timer on your phone or computer (or oven…) and observe the image provided for 1 minute. Quickly write a preliminary research question about it. At first glance, what are you curious about? What do you want to know? 3.) Set your timer for 5 minutes and write as many observations as possible about it. Try to keep making observations, even when you feel stuck. Keep returning to the question, “What do I see?” No observation is too big or too small, too obvious or too obscure.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Download Starting with Science Strategies for Introducing Young Children to Inquiry 1St Edition Ebook
    STARTING WITH SCIENCE STRATEGIES FOR INTRODUCING YOUNG CHILDREN TO INQUIRY 1ST EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Marcia Talhelm Edson | 9781571108074 | | | | | Starting with Science Strategies for Introducing Young Children to Inquiry 1st edition PDF Book The presentation of the material is as good as the material utilizing star trek analogies, ancient wisdom and literature and so much more. Using Multivariate Statistics. Michael Gramling examines the impact of policy on practice in early childhood education. Part of a series on. Schauble and colleagues , for example, found that fifth grade students designed better experiments after instruction about the purpose of experimentation. For example, some suggest that learning about NoS enables children to understand the tentative and developmental NoS and science as a human activity, which makes science more interesting for children to learn Abd-El-Khalick a ; Driver et al. Research on teaching and learning of nature of science. The authors begin with theory in a cultural context as a foundation. What makes professional development effective? Frequently, the term NoS is utilised when considering matters about science. This book is a documentary account of a young intern who worked in the Reggio system in Italy and how she brought this pedagogy home to her school in St. Taking Science to School answers such questions as:. The content of the inquiries in science in the professional development programme was based on the different strands of the primary science curriculum, namely Living Things, Energy and Forces, Materials and Environmental Awareness and Care DES Exit interview. Begin to address the necessity of understanding other usually peer positions before they can discuss or comment on those positions.
    [Show full text]
  • Principles of Scientific Inquiry
    Chapter 2 PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY Introduction This chapter provides a summary of the principles of scientific inquiry. The purpose is to explain terminology, and introduce concepts, which are explained more completely in later chapters. Much of the content has been based on explanations and examples given by Wilson (1). The Scientific Method Although most of us have heard, at some time in our careers, that research must be carried out according to “the scientific method”, there is no single, scientific method. The term is usually used to mean a systematic approach to solving a problem in science. Three types of investigation, or method, can be recognized: · The Observational Method · The Experimental (and quasi-experimental) Methods, and · The Survey Method. The observational method is most common in the natural sciences, especially in fields such as biology, geology and environmental science. It involves recording observations according to a plan, which prescribes what information to collect, where it should be sought, and how it should be recorded. In the observational method, the researcher does not control any of the variables. In fact, it is important that the research be carried out in such a manner that the investigations do not change the behaviour of what is being observed. Errors introduced as a result of observing a phenomenon are known as systematic errors because they apply to all observations. Once a valid statistical sample (see Chapter Four) of observations has been recorded, the researcher analyzes and interprets the data, and develops a theory or hypothesis, which explains the observations. The experimental method begins with a hypothesis.
    [Show full text]
  • THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD and the LAW by Bemvam L
    Hastings Law Journal Volume 19 | Issue 1 Article 7 1-1967 The cS ientific ethoM d and the Law Bernard L. Diamond Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bernard L. Diamond, The Scientific etM hod and the Law, 19 Hastings L.J. 179 (1967). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol19/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE LAW By BEmVAm L. DIivmN* WHEN I was an adolescent, one of the major influences which determined my choice of medicine as a career was a fascinating book entitled Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. This huge volume, originally published in 1897, is a museum of pictures and lurid de- scriptions of human monstrosities and abnormalities of all kinds, many with sexual overtones of a kind which would especially appeal to a morbid adolescent. I never thought, at the time I first read this book, that some day, I too, would be an anomaly and curiosity of medicine. But indeed I am, for I stand before you here as a most curious and anomalous individual: a physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and (I hope) a scientist, who also happens to be a professor of law. But I am not a lawyer, nor in any way trained in the law; hence, the anomaly. The curious question is, of course, why should a non-lawyer physician and scientist, like myself, be on the faculty of a reputable law school.
    [Show full text]
  • Contrastive Empiricism
    Elliott Sober Contrastive Empiricism I Despite what Hegel may have said, syntheses have not been very successful in philosophical theorizing. Typically, what happens when you combine a thesis and an antithesis is that you get a mishmash, or maybe just a contradiction. For example, in the philosophy of mathematics, formalism says that mathematical truths are true in virtue of the way we manipulate symbols. Mathematical Platonism, on the other hand, holds that mathematical statements are made true by abstract objects that exist outside of space and time. What would a synthesis of these positions look like? Marks on paper are one thing, Platonic forms an­ other. Compromise may be a good idea in politics, but it looks like a bad one in philosophy. With some trepidation, I propose in this paper to go against this sound advice. Realism and empiricism have always been contradictory tendencies in the philos­ ophy of science. The view I will sketch is a synthesis, which I call Contrastive Empiricism. Realism and empiricism are incompatible, so a synthesis that merely conjoined them would be a contradiction. Rather, I propose to isolate important elements in each and show that they combine harmoniously. I will leave behind what I regard as confusions and excesses. The result, I hope, will be neither con­ tradiction nor mishmash. II Empiricism is fundamentally a thesis about experience. It has two parts. First, there is the idea that experience is necessary. Second, there is the thesis that ex­ perience suffices. Necessary and sufficient for what? Usually this blank is filled in with something like: knowledge of the world outside the mind.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Use Observations in a Research Project. Trent Focus, 1998
    Trent Focus for Research and Development in Primary Health Care How to Use Observations in a Research Project NICK FOX TRENT FOCUS GROUP How to Use Observations In a Research Project AUTHOR: Nick Fox Institute of General Practice Northern General Hospital Sheffield PRODUCED BY: TRENT FOCUS GROUP, 1998 1998. Copyright of the Trent Focus Group This resource pack is one of a series produced by the Trent Focus Group. This series has been funded by the Research and Development Group of NHS Executive Trent. This resource pack may be freely photocopied and distributed for the benefit of researchers. However it is the copyright of the Trent Focus Group and the authors and as such, no part of the content may be altered without the prior permission in writing, of the Copyright owner. Reference as: Fox, Nick. Trent Focus for Research and Development in Primary Health Care: How to Use Observations in a Research Project. Trent Focus, 1998 HOW TO USE OBSERVATIONS IN A RESEARCH PROJECT Table of Contents Introduction 1 Section 1: Observation as a research method 2 Section 2: When and why should we use ethnographic methods? 4 Section 3: Observing in the field: finding a role 6 Section 4: Becoming an observer 8 Section 5: Access 9 Section 6: Methods of observation 11 Section 7: Note-taking 12 Section 8: Understanding and interpretation 14 Section 9: Putting it into practice: the inside view 17 Section 10: Validity and reliability in observational studies 19 Section 11: Some criticism of observational research 22 Conclusion 25 Answers exercises 26 References 30 Further reading and resources 31 HOW TO USE OBSERVATIONS IN A RESEARCH PROJECT Introduction Imagine that you want to discover what goes on when elderly patients consult with a general practitioner (GP) or a practice nurse.
    [Show full text]
  • On Scientific Observation Author(S): by Lorraine Daston Source: Isis, Vol
    On Scientific Observation Author(s): By Lorraine Daston Source: Isis, Vol. 99, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 97-110 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/587535 . Accessed: 22/12/2014 22:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 22:36:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions F O C U S On Scientific Observation By Lorraine Daston* ABSTRACT For much of the last forty years, certain shared epistemological concerns have guided research in both the history and the philosophy of science: the testing of theory (including the replication of experiments), the assessment of evidence, the bearing of theoretical and metaphysical assumptions on the reality of scientific objects, and, above all, the interaction of subjective and objective factors in scientific inquiry. This essay proposes a turn toward ontology—more specifically, toward the ontologies created and sustained by scientific observation.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Introduction to Temporality and Causality
    A Brief Introduction to Temporality and Causality Kamran Karimi D-Wave Systems Inc. Burnaby, BC, Canada [email protected] Abstract Causality is a non-obvious concept that is often considered to be related to temporality. In this paper we present a number of past and present approaches to the definition of temporality and causality from philosophical, physical, and computational points of view. We note that time is an important ingredient in many relationships and phenomena. The topic is then divided into the two main areas of temporal discovery, which is concerned with finding relations that are stretched over time, and causal discovery, where a claim is made as to the causal influence of certain events on others. We present a number of computational tools used for attempting to automatically discover temporal and causal relations in data. 1. Introduction Time and causality are sources of mystery and sometimes treated as philosophical curiosities. However, there is much benefit in being able to automatically extract temporal and causal relations in practical fields such as Artificial Intelligence or Data Mining. Doing so requires a rigorous treatment of temporality and causality. In this paper we present causality from very different view points and list a number of methods for automatic extraction of temporal and causal relations. The arrow of time is a unidirectional part of the space-time continuum, as verified subjectively by the observation that we can remember the past, but not the future. In this regard time is very different from the spatial dimensions, because one can obviously move back and forth spatially.
    [Show full text]
  • Evidence for the Deterministic Or the Indeterministic Description? a Critique of the Literature About Classical Dynamical Systems
    Charlotte Werndl Evidence for the deterministic or the indeterministic description? A critique of the literature about classical dynamical systems Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Original citation: Werndl, Charlotte (2012) Evidence for the deterministic or the indeterministic description? A critique of the literature about classical dynamical systems. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 43 (2). pp. 295-312. ISSN 0925-4560 DOI: 10.1007/s10838-012-9199-8 © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/47859/ Available in LSE Research Online: April 2014 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. Evidence for the Deterministic or the Indeterministic Description? { A Critique of the Literature about Classical Dynamical Systems Charlotte Werndl, Lecturer, [email protected] Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method London School of Economics Forthcoming in: Journal for General Philosophy of Science Abstract It can be shown that certain kinds of classical deterministic descrip- tions and indeterministic descriptions are observationally equivalent.
    [Show full text]
  • Scientific Methods Objectives
    Scientific Methods Objectives *Describe the scientific methods. • Determine the appropriate design of a controlled experiment. • Use information in tables and graphs to analyze experimental results. • Explain how scientific knowledge can change. I. What Are Scientific Methods? A. Scientific methods are the ways in which scientists answer questions and solve problems. “If only I could figure this out!” Annie May Found Twenty Adorable Dogs and Cats. The Scientific Method II. Ask a Question A. Asking a question helps focus the purpose of the investigation. Scientists often ask a question after making an observation. B. For example, students observing deformed frogs might ask, “Could something in the water be causing the deformities?” What questions can you ask about this picture? A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise. After the hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen, was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately , it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat, and sleep together. The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother. The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mother for four years. C. Make Observations What observations can you make D. Accurate Observations about this fennec fox? Any information that you (Qualitative and Quantitative) gather through your senses is an observation.
    [Show full text]
  • Are Deterministic Descriptions and Indeterministic Descriptions Observationally Equivalent?
    Charlotte Werndl Are deterministic descriptions and indeterministic descriptions observationally equivalent? Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Original citation: Werndl, Charlotte (2009) Are deterministic descriptions and indeterministic descriptions observationally equivalent? Studies in history and philosophy of science part b: studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, 40 (3). pp. 232-242. ISSN 1355-2198 DOI: http://10.1016/j.shpsb.2009.06.004/ © 2009 Elsevier Ltd This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/31094/ Available in LSE Research Online: July 2013 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. Are Deterministic Descriptions And Indeterministic Descriptions Observationally Equivalent? Charlotte Werndl The Queen’s College, Oxford University, [email protected] Forthcoming in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics Abstract The central question of this paper is: are deterministic and inde- terministic descriptions observationally equivalent in the sense that they give the same predictions? I tackle this question for measure- theoretic deterministic systems and stochastic processes, both of which are ubiquitous in science.
    [Show full text]