Philosophy of Experimentation Reading Group

This reading group explores philosophical topics related to scientific experimentation. We meet on Thursdays from 10am to 11am in the Board Room. All welcome!

Organised by Cameron Dashwood (cdd39), Niall Roe (nrr32) and Marta Halina (mh801).

Easter Term 2026 – Idealization and Experimentation

This term we will be looking at idealization and experimentation. We hope to offer a slightly different perspective on idealization than that offered in the standard literature on representation/modelling. Our first three papers provide a quick historical sketch, looking at idealization in Aristotle, Galileo and Newton. The remaining papers survey the contemporary debate.

7 May

Byrne, Christopher. 2020. 'Aristotle and Scientific Experiments'. Dialogue 59 (4): 527–37.

14 May

McMullin, Ernan. 1985. 'Galilean Idealization'. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16 (3): 247–73.

21 May

Smith, George E. 2012. 'How Newton's Principia Changed Physics', in Interpreting Newton, 1st ed., edited by Andrew Janiak and Eric Schliesser. Cambridge University Press.

28 May

This meeting will be in Seminar Room 1.

Cartwright, Nancy. 2002. 'Essay 7: Fitting Facts to Equations', in How the Laws of Physics Lie. Reprinted. Clarendon Paperbacks. Clarendon Press.

4 June

Laymon, Ronald. 1995. 'Experimentation and the Legitimacy of Idealization'. Philosophical Studies 77 (2–3): 353–75.

11 June

Carrillo, Natalia, and Tarja Knuuttila. 2022. 'Holistic Idealization: An Artifactual Standpoint'. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 91 (February): 49–59.

18 June

Buzzoni, Marco. 2025. 'Idealizations, Scientific Models and Fictions', in Arfini, Selene, ed., Scientific Cognition, Semiotics, and Computational Agents: Essays in Honor of Lorenzo Magnani – Volume 2. Vol. 506. Synthese Library. Springer Nature Switzerland.