The 51st International Meeting of Hongo Metaphysics Club

We The Philosophy Department of The University of Tokyo will hold the 51st International Meeting of Hongo Metaphysics Club by inviting Professor Peter Anstey. Everyone is welcome.

Programme (PDF)

• Prof. Peter Anstey (The University of Sydney)

  ‘Proof by Experiment in Early Modern Europe’

  ▼Abstract
  A new kind of proof emerged in late seventeenth-century Europe, proof by experiment. This paper examines the notion of proof by experiment in early modern England and France. I argue that this notion of proof by experiment is best understood in relation to a background metatheory to which virtually all philosophers were committed in the period. And I call this metatheory the neo-Aristotelian theory of knowledge acquisition. Proof by experiment is not an early modern version of the hypothetico-deductive method in science; it is a sui generis concept of proof that is embedded in the metatheory. In order to establish these claims, I present a selective historical overview of the deployment of the notion of proof by experiment from Pascal to Boyle to Newton to Mariotte, and then back to Newton. This overview shows that Pascal, Boyle, and Mariotte worked with an intuitive notion of proof by experiment that is akin to what some contemporary philosophers of science call demonstrative induction. By contrast, the notion developed by Newton over many decades is theoretically sophisticated and lies at the heart of his form of experimental philosophy.