International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

A methodology of inquiry that assumes the indissoluble interconnection between facts and scientific laws.

Experimentalism has been proposed by E.A. SINGER Jr. and developed by C.W. CHURCHMAN and R.L. ACKOFF.

In their overview of experimentalism, G.A. BRITION and H. McCALLION write: "All knowledge of law implies knowledge of fact, all knowledge of fact implies knowledge of law. For experimentalists there are no fundamental truths. Some laws have to be assumed in order to learn, but in addition, some facts have to be known in order to generate laws. Facts and laws are inextricably intertwined, they cannot be separated. Truth is not the starting point of inquiry; it is the end point" (1994, p.490).

This is coincident with the autopoietic view of the observer: perceptions as well as concepts are closely linked within the observer's organizational closure.

According to C.W. CHURCHMAN, the "original question becomes more and more complicated, not simpler and simpler. This learning "more and more" is what, following SINGER, I call the "sweep-in process" of systems science" (1981, p.1-2).

Some important results of this approach are:

1) no science is more fundamental or important than another;

2) experimentalism moves the attention away from what scientists actually do to what they ought to do and

3) experimentalism assumes a teleological view of the world (1994, p.491).

Experimentalism breeds a method of insight and intuition and, in the case of CHURCHMAN, an ethical view of science: The meaning of reality is an ideal to be pursued.