EXPERIMENT

, in Philosophy, a trial of the effect or result of certain applications and motions of natural bodies, in order to discover something of their laws and relations, &c.

The making of experiments is grown into a kind of art; and there are now many collections of them, mostly under the denomination of Courses of Experimental Philosophy. Sturmius made a curious collection of the principal Discoveries and Experiments of the last age, under the title of Collegium Experimentale. Other Courses of Experiments have been published by Gravesande, Desaguliers, Helsham, Cotes, and others.

EXPERIMENTAL Philosophy, is that which proceeds on Experiments, or which deduces the laws of nature and the properties and powers of bodies, and their actions upon each other, from sensible Experiments and observations.

Experiments are of the utmost importance in philosophy; and the great advantages the modern physics | have over the ancient, is chiefly owing to this, viz, that we abound much more in Experiments, and that we make more use of the Experiments we have. The method of the ancients, was chiefly to begin with the causes of things, and thence argue to the phenomena and essects; on the contrary, that of the moderns proceeds from Experiments and Observations, from whence the properties and laws of natural things are deduced, and general theories are formed.

Several of the ancients indeed thought as highly of Experiments as the moderns, and practised them also. Plato omits no occasion of speaking of the advantages of them; and Aristotle's history of animals bears ample testimony for him. Democritus's great employment was to make experiments; and even Epicurus himself owes part of his glory to the same cause.

Among the moderns, the making of Experiments was chiefly begun by Friar Bacon, in the 13th century, who it seems spent a great deal of money and labour in this way. After him, the lord chancellor Bacon is looked upon as the founder of the present mode of philosophising by Experiments. And his method has been prosecuted with laudable emulation by the Academy del Cimento, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy at Paris; by Mr. Boyle, and, over all, by Sir Isaac Newton, with many other illustrious names.

Indeed, Experiments, within the last century, are come so much into vogue, that nothing will pass in philosophy, but what is either founded on Experiments, or confirmed by them; so that the new philosophy is almost wholly Experimental.

Yet there are some, even among the learned, who speak of Experiments in a different manner, or perhaps rather of the abuse of them, and in derision of the pretenders to this practice. Thus, though Dr. Keil allows that philosophy has received very considerable advantages from the makers of Experiments; yet he complains of their disingenuity, in too often wresting and distorting their Experiments and Observations to favour some darling theories they had espoused. Nay more, M. Hartsoeker, in his Recueil de plusieurs Pieces de Physique, undertakes to shew, that such as employ themselves in the making of Experiments, are not properly philosophers, but as it were the labourers or operators of philosophers, that work under them, and for them, furnishing them with materials to build their systems and hypotheses upon. And the learned M. Dacier, in the beginning of his discourse on Plato, at the head of his translation of the works of that philosopher, deals still more severely with the makers of Experiments. He breaks out with a kind of indignation at a tribe of idly curious people, whose sole employment consists in making Experiments on the gravity of the air, the equilibrium of fluids, the loadstone, &c, and yet arrogate to themselves the noble title of philosophers. But his honest indignation would have exceeded all bounds, had he lived to see the contemptible fall of one of the principal societies above-mentioned; while its members first amuse themselves with magnetical conundrums, spinning electrical wheels, torturing the unseen and unknown phlogistic particles; and finally polluting the source of science, and the streams of wisdom, with the folly of hunting after cockle-shells, caterpillars, and butterflies!