Читать книгу This is Philosophy of Science - Franz-Peter Griesmaier - Страница 32

We saw in this chapter that neither naked observation nor measurement provide access to evidence that is fully independent from background beliefs. Seeing something as evidence typically involves bringing certain additional information to the table, as our example of the physician who can see lesions on the gum as Koplik spots, and thus as evidence for measles, shows. Such theory-ladenness of observation can perhaps explain certain forms of scientific disagreement, as we suggest in Chapter 4. Measurement exhibits a similar dependence on background theories, often of a highly sophisticated kind. In addition, the use of measurement raises questions about appropriate measurement scales and also also about the conditions under which measurement changes the values of the parameters we want to measure. We next turn to the question what to do with the evidence we have collected.