Experiment - History

History

Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and scientist in the 17th century, and an early and influential supporter of experimental science. He disagreed with the method of answering scientific questions by deduction and described it as follows: "Having first determined the question according to his will, man then resorts to experience, and bending her to conformity with his placets, leads her about like a captive in a procession." Bacon wanted a method that relied on repeatable observations, or experiments. He was notably the first to order the scientific method as we understand it today.

There remains simple experience; which, if taken as it comes, is called accident, if sought for, experiment. The true method of experience first lights the candle, and then by means of the candle shows the way ; commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not bungling or erratic, and from it deducing axioms, and from established axioms again new experiments.

— Francis Bacon. Novum Organum. 1620.

In the centuries that followed, important advances and discoveries were made by people who applied the scientific method in different areas. For example, Galileo Galilei was able to accurately measure time and experiment to make accurate measurements and conclusions about the speed of a falling body.Antoine Lavoisier was a French chemist in the late 1700s who used experiment to describe new areas, such as combustion and biochemistry and to develop the theory of conservation of mass (matter). During the 1800s, Louis Pasteur used the scientific method to disprove the prevailing theory of spontaneous generation and to develop the germ theory of disease. Because of the importance of controlling potentially confounding variables, the use of well-designed laboratory experiments is preferred when possible.

A considerable amount of progress on the design and analysis of experiments occurred in the early 20th century by statisticians such as Ronald Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, Oscar Kempthorne, Gertrude Mary Cox, and William Gemmell Cochran, among others. This early work has largely been synthesized under the label Rubin causal model, which formalizes earlier statistical approaches to the analysis of experiments.