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EXPERIMENTAL OBJECTS
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Instruments and tools connect individuals with their objects of investigation. In visual imagery of experiments, they occupy the center of science in action. The 17th century saw the advent of a special type of instruments, conceptually different from earlier ones used mainly to measure and determine quantities. The newly invented set of instruments, such as telescope, microscope, and air pump, came to be called “philosophical,” and the discipline that employed them became known as “experimental philosophy.”
Unlike compasses, quadrants, and other measuring instruments, these objects do not take the world and its phenomena as givens. Instead they visually distort nature (telescope and microscope) and create special and often unnatural scenarios (a vacuum in an air pump, for instance). These scenarios are experiments or experiences, as they were called in the period. Books included in this section showcase how these instruments make science experimental.
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