Experimentation
Experimentation is a foundational activity in modern science. Although several Renaissance thinkers prepared the way toward modern concepts of experimentation, Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1624) was the first systematic attempt to articulate and justify and articulate the proper method of experimental scientific inquiry. Bacon envisioned scientific experimentation as a form of recursive knowledge production that both interprets nature and intervenes in it. Yet efforts to fully define experimentation in a consistent, comprehensive, and prescriptive way have been unsuccessful because of the diverse subject matter and disciplines, as well as instrumental developments, that continually create new variants. An alternative conception of experimentation construes it as an integral part of the actual formation and development of modern society, rather than as just a series of operations conducted in laboratories. Experimentation in the real world requires public participation; risk and uncertainty replace the ideal of an experimental world isolated from society.
Renaissance Roots of Experimentation
Two intellectual sources of Renaissance culture nurtured the idea of experimentation: humanistic values and the practices of superior artisans. In her historical-philosophical study The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt demonstrated a deep break between Renaissance thinking and the received preeminence of the contemplative life in classical and medieval traditions.
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