Key Experiments

Philosophers have thought a lot about the conditions under which a theory deserves to be believed. One requirement is that a theory should be testable on the basis of empirical observations. A theory that can neither be confirmed nor refuted by observations is a pure speculation.

Ideally, obervations should be the judges about our theories. Unfortunately, theory and observation are not completely independent of each other. This is because theories provide us with the conceptual framework within which we describe the observations, as Albert Einstein once very aptly remarked: ‘The theory determines what can be measured.’ In addition, the logical chain of reasoning from observation to theory involves many other assumptions, so that basically no single statement can ever be verified, but always a whole bundle of implicit and explicit assumptions. Therefore, neither in everyday life nor in science do we immediately give up a conviction if it comes into contradiction. In most cases, we first scrutinise whether the observation is trustworthy or whether some error has crept into the chain of thought.

In the history of science, however, there have occasionally been cases in which a particular observation or experiment has led to a previously prevailing theory being abandoned. For example, Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's moons caused the geocentric idea that all celestial bodies revolve around the Earth to collapse. The discoveries of fossils were also difficult to reconcile with the story of the Bible, because why would God the Creator have buried the bones of animal species that no longer live on earth? Or the experiment by Michelson and Morley led Albert Einstein to the logical conclusion that the idea of an ether as a carrier medium for the propagation of light is superfluous. However, such key experiments (lat. ‘experimentum crucis’) are very rare and are often only labelled as such in retrospect. Nevertheless, new theories often only became established when they were based on facts and observations that could not be explained by the previous doctrine.

At deep-thought.org, we bring unusual hypotheses and alternative explanations into play. In order to fulfil the criterion of empirical verifiability, we should therefore also indicate in which key experiments our explanatory models should score over established theories. If, on the other hand, they fail these empirical tests, we would have to admit defeat and abandon our explanatory models. In the following, we have described some key experiments that can be used to test our explanatory models. Perhaps these suggestions can serve as a useful stimulus for interested researchers ...