Smidton's "Natural Dynamics Experimental Research And Others" Study

The relationship between experiment and theory is always an important problem on philosophy of science and technology and the history of science.For this problem,the traditional school of philosophy uphold the principle of “theory-dominance”,that means theory-loaded;and in the new experimentalism perspective,the experiment has its own life,to guide people to discuss things worthy of study and how to carry out this exploration;in recent years the rise of philosophy of scientific practice,starting from the hermeneutic point,theory and experiment are included in the scope of scientific practice,that the theory is not only a scientific activity is also a kind of practice,not only enrich the semantic meaning of practice,also provides a strong theoretical framework for how to solve this problem,which has attracted wide attention in the field of philosophy of science and technology.However,the framework is still in the stage of theoretical construction,and there is no specific and sufficient case of auxiliary science history.John Smeaton(1724-1792)was born in England.He is a representative of the realization of science and technology,theory and practice,natural philosophy and concrete practice.He did a lot of systematic experimental research on mechanical power in the early days of the industrial revolution.Smeaton's work is not a simple theory to guide practice,nor a general practice to promote science,but reflects the complex interaction between philosophy,experiment and theories.Combing and studying the historical facts and individual cases,is more profound and multidimensional for us.Understanding,exploring the relationship,nature and development of science and technology is of great significance.Experiment enquiry concerning the natural powers of wind and water to turn mills and other machines depending on a circular motion.And an experiment examination of the quantity and proportion of mechanic power necessary to be employed in giving different degrees of velocity to heavy bodies from a state of rest.Also new fundamental experiments upon the collision of bodies,with five plates of machines(hereinafter referred to as Natural Powers Experimental Research and Other),it contains Smeaton's mechanical ideas and related typical experimental devices.This paper discusses Smeaton's experimental system and scientific and technological ideas around Natural Powers Experimental Research and Other.It mainly studies and draws conclusions from the following threeaspects:First,with the aim of promoting engineering application,Smeaton combined his scientific ideas with experimental devices closely,aiming at finding the correct knowledge and forming a unique experimental system: put forward the question of research-simplify the experimental object,define the quantitative factors and design the experimental model-analysis of mathematical relations according to experimental data-establish a proposition-engineering application.Second,compared with the traditional "realism-mathematics" scholars and the "discovery-experimental" scholars,Smeaton is more like a "practical-mathematical" scholar.He combines mathematics and experiment method to provide engineering knowledge for engineering construction,rather than to construct accurate scientific theory,which is great related to his professional status and professional characteristics.Thirdly,for the relationship between experiment and theory,the traditional philosophy of science upholds the "theory-dominance",and thinks that experiment is the "handmaid" of theory or " theory-loaded".In Smeaton's research work,not only permeated interaction of observation,experiment and theory,the addition of practice have diversified and complicated this relationship.It seems have broken through the limitation of traditional philosophy of science and more correspond with the philosophy of scientific practice that "experiment has its own life".Smeaton's experiment shows the tendency which experiment guided observation and observation guided engineering practice,which reflects the importance of experiment to scientific and engineering activities.So science can't be treated as a single pure theoretical activity,at the same time,it is also a practical activity,and thus provides auxiliary historical evidence for the construction of scientific practical philosophy.