What is the difference between observations and experiments. How experience differs from observation

Scientific progress cannot be stopped, and methods for studying the environment have always improved and become more complex. Observations and experiments have been known for centuries, they are not only compared, but also identified. At the same time, there is a huge difference between these concepts, which reflects the dynamics of the development of scientific thought.

Observations  - These are studies in which a scientist conducts visual control of an object, allowing events to develop in a natural way and noting any changes. The result of the work is recorded on a storage medium for subsequent analysis. Observation is possible without equipment, as well as with the use of special equipment.

Experiences  - this is research in which objects are placed in an artificially created or natural environment, and the scientist enters into an active interaction with the studied subject. In the process of experiments, a hypothesis based on the available theoretical data is confirmed or refuted.

Thus, observations do not imply active interaction with the object. The researcher distances himself from them, recording the data obtained. This is the main goal - collecting information, which will then be analyzed. In experience, the scientist enters into an active interaction with the object. The purpose of this action is to test the hypothesis by confirming it an unlimited number of times.

Experience always has a plan; observations do not. To conduct an experiment, the researcher needs to recreate certain conditions. Observation is carried out in a natural environment, because interference in the life of the objects studied will mean the beginning of the experiment. Both the first and second research methods are extremely useful for science, they do not contradict, but mutually complement each other.

1. Impact on the object. Observations do not imply active interaction with the studied object, while experiments are built on such an intervention.
2. Use of special equipment. The study can be conducted with the naked eye, for the experience always requires instruments and other scientific and technical means.
3. Having a plan. Observation is carried out in the same way, experience - according to a previously worked out scenario.
4. Wednesday. Observation takes place in a natural environment, experience in an artificial one.
5. Goal. Observations are made to collect information for subsequent analysis, experiments to confirm the hypothesis.

A characteristic feature of the experiment as a special empirical research method is that it provides the possibility of active practical impact on the studied phenomena and processes. The researcher here is not limited to passive observation of phenomena, but consciously intervenes in the natural course of their course. He can accomplish this either by isolating the phenomena under investigation from some external factors, or by changing the limited conditions in which they occur. In both cases, the test results are accurately recorded and monitored.

Thus, the addition of simple observation with an active effect on the process under study makes the experiment an extremely effective method of empirical research. This is facilitated primarily by a closer connection between experiment and theory. “Experimentation,” writes I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, “means not only a reliable observation of genuine facts, not only a search for empirical relationships between phenomena, but also involves a systematic interaction between theoretical concepts and observation” 1.

The idea of \u200b\u200ban experiment, its plan and interpretation of the results are much more dependent on theory than the search and interpretation of observational data.

At present, the experimental method is used not only in those experimental sciences, which according to tradition are classified as exact natural sciences (mechanics, physics, chemistry, etc.), but also in the sciences that study living nature, especially in those that use modern physical sciences. and chemical research methods (genetics, molecular biology, physiology, etc.).

In the science of modern times, the experimental method first began to systematically apply, as we already know, Galileo, although some attempts to use it can be found even in antiquity and especially in the Middle Ages.

Galileo began his research with the study of the simplest natural phenomena - the mechanical movement of bodies in space over time (the fall of bodies, the movement of bodies along an inclined plane and the trajectories of cannonballs). Despite the apparent simplicity of these phenomena, he encountered a number of difficulties, both of a scientific and ideological nature. The latter were mainly associated with the tradition of a purely natural philosophical, speculative approach to the study of natural phenomena dating back to antiquity. So, in Aristotelian physics it was recognized that motion only occurs when force is applied to the body. This position was considered universally recognized in medieval science. Galileo first questioned him and suggested that the body would be at rest or in uniform and rectilinear motion until external forces act on it. Since Newton's time, this statement has been formulated as the first law of mechanics.

It is noteworthy that to substantiate the principle of inertia, Galileo was first used mental  an experiment that subsequently found wide application as a heuristic research tool in various branches of modern science. Its essence lies in the analysis of the sequence of real observations and in the transition from them to some ultimate situation in which the action of certain forces or factors is mentally excluded. For example, when observing mechanical motion, one can gradually reduce the effect on the body of various forces - friction, air resistance, etc. - and make sure that the path traveled by the body will increase accordingly. In the limit, you can exclude all such forces and come to the conclusion that the body in such ideal conditions will move unlimitedly uniformly and rectilinearly or remain at rest.

Galileo's greatest achievements, however, are connected with the setting up of real experiments and the mathematical processing of their results. He achieved outstanding results in an experimental study of the free fall of bodies. In his wonderful book, Conversations and Mathematical Evidence ..., Galileo describes in detail how he arrived at his discovery of the law of constancy of acceleration of freely falling bodies. Initially, he, like his predecessors - Leonardo da Vinci, Benedetti and others, believed that the speed of the fall of the body is proportional to the distance traveled. However, Galileo subsequently rejected this assumption, since it leads to consequences that are not confirmed by experiment 1. Therefore, he decided to test another hypothesis: the speed of a freely falling body is proportional to the time of fall. The corollary was that the path traveled by the body is proportional to half the square of the fall time, which was confirmed in a specially constructed experiment. Since at that time there were serious difficulties with measuring time, Galileo decided to slow down the fall process. To do this, he rolled a bronze ball along an inclined trough with well-polished walls. By measuring the time the ball covered various segments of the path, he was able to verify the correctness of his assumption about the constancy of the acceleration of freely falling bodies.

Modern science owes its enormous achievements precisely to experiment, since with its help it was possible to organically link thought and experience, theory and practice. In fact, an experiment is a matter of nature. Scientists were convinced that nature answers the questions they posed correctly. Therefore, since the time of Galileo, the experiment has become an important means of dialogue between man and nature, a way of penetrating its deepest secrets and a means of discovering the laws that govern the phenomena observed in the experiment.

•   Prigogy I., Stengers I. Order out of chaos. - M., 1986. - S. 44.
•   Some famous historians of science, including P. Duhem, A. Cromby, D. Randall, argue that the emergence of experimental science occurred in the Middle Ages. To confirm their thesis, they refer to the fact that such experiments were carried out in the XIII-XIV centuries. in Paris, and in the XVI century. in Padua.
•   Galileo G. Selected Works: In 2 vols. T. 1. - M .: Nauka, 1964. - S. 241-242.
•   See: Lipson G. Great experiments in physics. - M., 1972. - S. 12.

It is generally accepted that the determining property of observation is its non-intervention in the processes under study, in contrast to the active implementation in the studied area, which is carried out during experimentation. In general, this statement is correct. However, upon a more detailed examination it needs to be clarified: after all, observation is also to a certain extent active. There are also situations when observation itself will be impossible without intervention in the studied object. For example, in histology, without preliminary dissection and staining of living tissue, there will simply be nothing to observe.

The observer’s intervention during observation is aimed at achieving optimal conditions for the observations.  The observer's task is to obtain a set of primary data about the object. Of course, in this aggregate, certain dependencies of data groups on each other, some regularities and trends are often already visible. Preliminary guesses and assumptions about important relationships may arise in a researcher already during the observation itself. However, the researcher does not change the structure  this data does not interfere with the data recorded by him relations  between the phenomena.

So if the phenomena A  and IN  accompany each other in the entire series of observations, the researcher only fixes their coexistence (not trying, say, to cause a phenomenon A  with absence IN).  This means that empirical material increases upon observation. extensive  by - by expanding observations and accumulating data. We repeat a series of observations, increase the duration and detail of perception, study new aspects of the initial phenomenon, etc.

In the experiment, the researcher takes a different position. Here, an active intervention is carried out in the studied area in order to isolate various kinds of connections in it. Unlike observation, in an experimental research situation, the experimental material grows intenseby way. The scientist is not interested in the accumulation of all new data, but highlightingin empirical material of some significant dependencies. Applying various controlling influences, the researcher tries to discard everything that is insignificant, to penetrate into the very interconnections of the studied area. An experiment is an intensification of experience, its refinement and deepening.

In general, the ratio of the experimental and observational components is complex, depending each time on the specific circumstances of the study. It should be understood that in the "pure form" observation and experiment are, rather, idealized strategies. In various situations, as a rule, the methodological strategy of either observation or experiment prevails. By this prevalence, we qualify a particular research situation. The study of distant space objects, of course, we call observation. And carrying out an experimental laboratory intervention with predetermined tasks (say, testing a working hypothesis), clearly defined dependent and independent variables is close to the ideal of a “pure experiment”.

Thus, observation and experiment are idealized strategies  action in real research situations. Observer activity during observation is directed to rubbing in the extension of empirical data, and when experimenting - to deepen them, intensification.