[E]xperiments ... compare performance under two or more conditions---they involve manipulation of an independent variable. When I examine my publications ..., to my embarrassment I find that this fundamental condition for sound experimentation is seldom met in them. What have I been up to? The answer (it surprised me) is that you can test theoretical models without contrasting an experimental with a control condition. And apart from testing models, you can often make surprising observations that give you ideas for new and improved models. (Simon, 1989, p. 392)
If this methodology troubles us, it may be comforting to recall that detailed logitudinal analysis of the behavior of a single solar system was the foundation stone for Kepler's laws, and ultimately for Newton's. Perhaps it is not our methodology that needs revising so much as the standard textbook methodology, which perversely warns us against running an experiment until precise hypotheses have been formulated and experimental and control conditions defined. How do such experiments ever create surprise---not just the all-too-common surprise of having our hypotheses refuted by fact, but the delight-provoking surprise of encountering a wholly unexpected phenomenon? Perhaps we need to add to the textbooks a chapter, or several chapters, describing how basic scientific discoveries can be made by observing the world intently, in the laboratory or outside it, with controls or without them, heavy with hypotheses or innocent of them. (Simon, 1989, p. 394)
Simon, H. A. (1989). The scientist as problem solver. In D. Klahr & K. Kotovsky (Eds.), Complex information processing: The impact of Herbert A. Simon (pp. 376-398). Hilsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Last updated: Thursday, 13-May-2004 09:15:02 PDT