How Scientific Experimentation is Superior to Rationality and Empiricism

Now that we have looked at the differences between the experimental type of thinking and the other types we have discussed, we can see that it is superior to any of the others. Experimental thinking does, to be sure, emphasize systematization and classification, but as means, not as ends in themselves. And, along with rationalism, it emphasizes general principles and laws, but again, not as ends in themselves, but as convenient guides for making our inferences.

Neither observation nor inference, or even the two taken together, are true knowledge, no matter how rigorously controlled and how accurate and detailed they may be. True knowledge does not occur until observations and inferences have been tested in action. Action is the test of the truth or validity of observation and inference; and until they are subject to this test, inferences are at best hypotheses.

Scientific experiment is action carried on with precision. The validity of a principle is established when events conform to predictions implicit in the principle and only then. Truth can be determined only in experiment. Experimentation is disciplined practice, and is not anything like the performance of "exercises" by school children. The purpose of experimentation is to verify or demonstrate the need for changing a formulated principle, and of thus determining whether it affords an adequate basis for confident prediction of future events. the success of an experiment depends upon both the accuracy of observation and the soundness of inference.

I can summarize what I have been saying about the experimental type of thinking in two short sentences. First, its purpose is to make knowledge and principles more practical, and not to produce useless or "ornamental" knowledge. And second, it is a way of rendering human behavior more intelligent, more effectively controlled by reliable knowledge, and of reducing the incidence of blind trial-and-error type behavior.

As we look back in history we find many theories not worth the paper they are printed on, and innumerable instances of human behavior based on blind acceptance. When we consider these things, we are forced to the conclusion that the experimental method holds out the only hope of human welfare and progress.