Experimental Histories
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Experimental Histories
Author: Hannah Weaver
language: en
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Release Date: 2024-08-15
In Experimental Histories, Hannah Weaver examines the medieval practice of interpolation—inserting material from one text into another—which is often categorized as being a problematic, inauthentic phenomenon akin to forgery and pseudepigraphy. Instead, Weaver promotes interpolation as the signature form of medieval British historiography and a vehicle of historical theory, arguing that some of the most novel concepts of time in medieval historiography can be found in these altered narratives of the past. For Weaver, historiographical interpolation constitutes the traces of active experimentation with how best to write history, particularly the history of Britain. Historians in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain recognized the difficulty of enfolding complex events into a linear chronology and embraced innovative textual methods of creating history. Focusing on the Brut tradition but also analyzing the long history of interpolated historiography, including the Bayeux Embroidery, Experimental Histories offers a new interpretation of generic remixing in medieval writing about the past. Drawing on both manuscript studies and the new formalism, it shows that the practice of inserting materials from romance and hagiography allowed creative revisers to explore how lived events relate to passing time. By embracing interpolation, Weaver provides lively insights into the ways that time becomes history and human actors experience time.
The art of experimental natural history
Francis Bacon introduced his contemporaries to a new way of investigating nature. He called it "natural and experimental history." Despite its rather traditional name, Bacon's natural and experimental history was a new discipline: it comprised new ideas, new practices and new models of collaborative research. This new discipline was, in many ways, a surprisingly successful project. It provided early modern naturalists with tools, methods and models for both investigating nature and writing about their subject. It also offered a set of norms and values for guiding research. And yet, this new discipline was not a science of nature -- it was more like an art. This book aims to trace the emergence, evolution and reception of Francis Bacon's art of experimental natural history.
Going Amiss in Experimental Research
Author: Giora Hon
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2008-12-04
Like any goal-oriented procedure, experiment is subject to many kinds of failures. These failures have a variety of features, depending on the particulars of their sources. For the experimenter these pitfalls should be avoided and their effects minimized. For the historian-philosopher of science and the science educator, on the other hand, they are instructive starting points for reflecting on science in general and scientific method and practice in particular. Often more is learned from failure than from confirmation and successful application. The identification of error, its source, its context, and its treatment shed light on both practices and epistemic claims. This book shows that it is fruitful to bring to light forgotten and lost failures, subject them to analysis and learn from their moral. The study of failures, errors, pitfalls and mistakes helps us understand the way knowledge is pursued and indeed generated. The book presents both historical accounts and philosophical analyses of failures in experimental practice. It covers topics such as "error as an object of study", "learning from error", "concepts and dead ends", "instrumental artifacts", and "surprise and puzzlement". This book will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science as well as to practicing scientists and science educators.