Entering New Fields: Exploratory Uses of Experimentation

Starting with some illustrative examples, I develop a systematic account of a specific type of experimentation—an experimentation which is not, as in the “standard view”, driven by specific theories. It is typically practiced in periods in which no theory or—even more fundamentally—no conceptual framework is readily available. I call it exploratory experimentation and I explicate its systematic guidelines. From the historical examples I argue furthermore that exploratory experimentation may have an immense, but hitherto widely neglected, epistemic significance.