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Science 1 October 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5693, pp. 60 - 61
DOI: 10.1126/science.1093598
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Essays on Science and Society

Also see the archival list of the Essays on Science and Society.

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER:
What Kind of Science Is Experimental Physics?

H. Otto Sibum*

In his essay, Sibum discusses historical and epistemological issues of the establishment of experimental physics as an academic discipline, focusing on the artificial technological character of experiment. From the mid-18th to the early 20th century, this kind of scientific experience challenged the still dominant epistemological divide between knowing and doing. Several generations of physicists were required to free the "art of experiment" from its epistemological stigma and to position experimental knowledge within academia. Around 1900, this interventionist character of experimental physics--particularly in microphysics--changed the physicists' experiential basis substantially, thereby inducing an increasing self-reflexivity that even shaped the formation of different types of theoretical physics.

H. Otto Sibum is at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Wilhelmstrasse 44, 10117 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: sibum{at}mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)