The Validity Of Experiments During The Aristotelian Era

Using experiments to validate scientific findings has not always been the universal concept that it is today. During the Aristotelian era, experimentation was not considered necessary because many people believed Aristotle’s ideas were sound in logic and need not be proven any other way. However, beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, experimentation became more important to philosophers such as Blaise Pascal, William Harvey, and Robert Hooke. These men had opinions of their own and new ideas of how natural philosophy work should be done. Experiments provided them with a way to prove to other scholars and to the general public that their concepts and hypotheses were correct. Natural philosophers felt the need to validate the roles of experiments because of the newness of this practice and they did this through the continuation of experiments and having them recreated over and over again with the same results. …show more content…
However, many of the experiments that were being done were to prove thoughts of natural philosophy. This is why in 1633, the Royal Society of London was chartered by King Charles II and by 1645 it became known as an experimental philosophy club (lecture; Patronage and Institutions in the Scientific Revolution). In the Royal Society, the scholars held up Baconian ideals where they refrained from speculation and hypotheses. They mainly wanted to build up facts from these experiments, meaning one outcome occurred so many times that it must be a fact (lecture; Patronage and Institutions…). The validation of experiments was necessary for these tested and proven facts to be accepted into