This volume focuses on democratic experimentalism, gathering a collection of original and previously unpublished essays focusing upon its major outlines, as well as specific aspects ¿ both promising and troublesome - of this theoretical approach. Together these essays offer conceptions of democracy and democratic governance that emphasize and highlight experimentalist aspects of pragmatic thought, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, and its relationship to instantiation in concrete social and political institutions. Issues of democratic governance, political organization and the relationship of law to (...) democracy are analyzed. (shrink)

This chapter deals with one of Nietzsche’s answers to the question of the good life: with the ethos of (becoming what one is through) experimentalism (GS 324), which involves trying out different practices of self-formation and even entire ways of life with the goal of seeking such conditions of everyday existence and conduct of life as are most conducive to one’s active and productive happiness. Book IV of The Gay Science, the original conclusion of Nietzsche’s “free spirit” trilogy, is (...) a prime locus of this conception of the free-spirited life as experimental self-formation. By interpreting key aphorisms from it, the notion of experimentalism will be elucidated on three levels: as (1) a justification of our existence that does not depend on any higher authority, and thus an emancipation from the Christian God; (2) a way of seeking a morality or a plan for life that suits our nature or character; and (3) experimenting with the conditions in which we live and work on a daily basis, in the most immediate and practical sense. I conclude by highlighting the kinship between this experimentalism and the practices of Plato’s Socrates, as interpreted by Jacob Klein. (shrink)

As developed by Sabel, Dorf and Cohen, and John Dewey before them, democratic experimentalism is based on the premise that current democratic practices are no longer able to deal with central and pressing social and political problems. Beginning with the criticism of democracy as command and control, Dorf and Sabel show how current democratic practices are part of the problem rather than the solution. Even as democratic experimentalists have successfully explored democracy beyond the state in the European Union, I (...) argue that they have not fully transnationalized democracy or fully appreciated “the new circumstances of politics.” With the emergence of pervasive forms of interdependence, Rousseau’s conception of democracy as self legislation is no longer adequate, despite its cogent normative assumptions. Instead, the new transnational circumstances of justice suggest a stronger conception of democracy as self determination. In order to minimize domination and maximize self determination, cross-cutting constituencies must achieve a shared democratic minimum, through which democracy may once again become a means to justice. (shrink)

As developed by Sabel, Dorf and Cohen, and John Dewey before them, democratic experimentalism is based on the premise that current democratic practices are no longer able to deal with central and pressing social and political problems. Beginning with the criticism of democracy as command and control, Dorf and Sabel show how current democratic practices are part of the problem rather than the solution. Even as democratic experimentalists have successfully explored democracy beyond the state in the European Union, I (...) argue that they have not fully transnationalized democracy or fully appreciated “the new circumstances of politics.” With the emergence of pervasive forms of interdependence, Rousseau’s conception of democracy as self legislation is no longer adequate, despite its cogent normative assumptions. Instead, the new transnational circumstances of justice suggest a stronger conception of democracy as self determination. In order to minimize domination and maximize self determination, cross-cutting constituencies must achieve a shared democratic minimum, through which democracy may once again become a means to justice. (shrink)

With his recent contribution to Dewey studies, Deweyan Experimentalism and the Problem of Method in Political Philosophy, Joshua Forstenzer delivers a timely and highly readable examination of Dewey's democratic ideal and its contemporary relevance. Outstanding in its scholarship and compelling in its argument, Forstenzer's fascinating study presents an extensive interpretation of Dewey's experimentalist approach to democratic politics, while highlighting its significant interdisciplinary value and practical interest. Focussing particularly upon its experimentalist character and renunciation of a priori idealisations, Forstenzer examines, (...) over ten well-argued chapters, how Dewey's approach to political philosophy... (shrink)

Contemporary "flexible capitalism" requires novel forms of legal regulation. In this vein, Joshua Cohen, Michael Dorf, Archon Fung, and Charles Sabel have developed a provocative set of proposals for a new mode of regulatory law, what they describe as "democratic experimentalism" or, alternately, "directly deliberative polyarchy." Their proposal are criticized: they not only fail to take traditional liberal democratic rule of law virtues seriously enough, but it remains unclear whether they can effectively tame and humanize capitalism. Instead, some evidence (...) suggests that their proposals simply amount to a normatively problematic synchronization of the legal system with contemporary high-speed capitalism. (shrink)

This article briefly presents and characterizes a relatively young (nineteen-nineties) trend in methodology, the theory of science – and philosophy, called “the new experimentalism”. The fundamental problem is determined by the question about the value of the new experimentalism and experimental grounds of scientific knowledge in empirical sciences. In the first part of the article, the previous (old) experimentalism is presented. First of all, the history of the experimental method is outlined and the definitions of experiment, object, (...) phenomenon, and of the carried out and analyzed observation are provided. It is shown why the main proposition of experimentalists – “determining a fact based on sensory experience” is fallacious. The second part describes the way in which the representatives of the new experimentalism try to identify and characterize those factors of an experiment that guarantee the objectivity of its result; demonstrate that results are not only determined by psychological, historical, sociological or economic factors but also that they exist in nature as real objects and events. A correct and reliable analysis of the experiment and its results may – according to the new experimentalists – contribute to this conclusion. Therefore, the important role and value of the experimental foundation of social activity in general, and in particular, for the natural sciences, is rightly noted. (shrink)

An important theme to have emerged from the new experimentalist movement is that much of actual scientific practice deals not with appraising full-blown theories but with the manifold local tasks required to arrive at data, distinguish fact from artifact, and estimate backgrounds. Still, no program for working out a philosophy of experiment based on this recognition has been demarcated. I suggest why the new experimentalism has come up short, and propose a remedy appealing to the practice of standard error (...) statistics. I illustrate a portion of my proposal using Galison's experimental narrative on neutral currents. (shrink)

This chapter explores the intellectual development of Jacques Rohault – although not considered one of the leading figures of the early modern period, well known among historians of science. It attempts to evaluate Rohault’s Cartesianism and to present it in a more nuanced manner than it is usually illustrated in the literature. Focusing on his mature work, published only one year before his death in 1672, but also referring to his earlier activities in Paris and to the publication of his (...) posthumous works, the chapter argues that his “Cartesianism” came rather late in his thinking, while his early activity concerns mathematics and mechanics. The reading endorsed in this chapter opens a fresh perspective on Rohault’s experimentalism, suggesting a transition from practical mathematics to Cartesian natural philosophy. (shrink)

Contemporary “flexible capitalism” requires novel forms of legal regulation. In this vein, Joshua Cohen, Michael Dorf, Archon Fung, and Charles Sabel have developed a provocative set of proposals for a new mode of regulatory law, what they describe as “democratic experimentalism” or, alternately, “directly deliberative polyarchy.” Their proposal are criticized: they not only fail to take traditional liberal democratic rule of law virtues seriously enough, but it remains unclear whether they can effectively tame and humanize capitalism. Instead, some evidence (...) suggests that their proposals simply amount to a normatively problematic synchronization of the legal system with contemporary high-speed capitalism. (shrink)

William James and John Dewey hold the view that all knowledge and experience are experimental. Within this common pragmatic context, James's theism and Dewey's atheism offer contrasting - indeed, contradictory - interpretations of the object of religious experience. This essay explores the intertwining of their common pragmatic context and differing objects of religious belief to show the way in which this intertwining gives rise to a unique position which can appeal to theists and atheists alike.

This essay rethinks democratic experimentalism from an ethical point of view, and look at its potential for the future by drawing on two key thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st century: Richard Rorty and Luce Irigaray. I explore the experimentalist character in Irigaray's later thought and point to a pragmatist link in her works, and then dynamize her original theory of sexual difference by pointing to G.H. Mead's symbolic interactionism. Then a revolutionary character of Irigaray's thought is (...) defended by focusing on her interventions into the very core of Western philosophy and in particular its Hegelian heritage. By introducing Rorty into the debate, a pledge is made for a new democratic culture of love and nonviolence as a 'spiritual' mode of democratic experimentalism needed in our times. Finally, I show that Irigaray's and Rorty's thought share an affinity toward intercultural thinking, bearing important consequences for an ethicospiritual project of democratic experimentalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reconstruct Dewey’s conception of experimentalism, mainly through his pedagogical writings, on the one hand; and to show the relevance of this reconstruction to current reassessments of Dewey’s political thought, on the other. The grounds for our perspective have a double character too. Firstly, we reconstruct the links between experimentalism and education on the basis of the first edition of How We Think (1910, MW 6), perhaps one of Dewey’s most noteworthy (...) pedagogical texts. Secondly, we critically address three different reassessments of Dewey’s experimentalism in contemporary political thought, namely: 1) Pappas’s defense of Dewey’s substantive idea of democracy; 2) Forstenzer’s proposal of Deweyan experimentalism as an appropriate methodology for political philosophy; and 3) Anderson’s vindication of Deweyan experimental democracy in the context of social epistemology. It is sustained that in HWT Dewey places experimentalism as a kind of antidote against dogmatism and unreflective ways of reasoning. Thus, he links experimentalism with anti-dogmatism placing a special role in schooling for at least two reasons: 1) it is in the schooling phase that children are still sensitive to the development of certain habits; 2) dogmatism seems inevitable in any society but the educational phase is a key instance to try to avoid it. Neither (1) nor (2) are present in contemporary reassessments of Deweyan experimentalism. (shrink)

For Pleasure argues that aesthetic pleasure and formal experimentalism hold the twinned capacity to maintain a global racial order and also to undo it.

Nomological dispositionalism has occupied a center stage in contemporary metaphysics about laws, holding the view that laws of nature derive from an ontology of intrinsically modal dispositional properties. This view faces, though, various challenges, some of which are worth revisiting. Among them, dispositionalism about properties condemns laws to ontological redundancy; its reconstruction of properties does not seem to fit with experimentalism; it introduces a view of metaphysical modality that ambiguously moves between (_de dicto_) logical modality and (_de re_) physical (...) modality; and it assumes fundamentalist meta-metaphysical presuppositions. Rather than dismantling nomological dispositionalism –quite the contrary, we believe it is a valuable theory–, we aim at identifying those nodes where alternative strategies could be followed in a theory of laws. (shrink)

In Morality, Leadership, and Public Policy, Eric Weber argues for an experimentalist approach to moral theory in addressing practical problems in public policy. The experimentalist approach begins moral inquiry by examining public problems and then makes use of the tools of philosophy and intelligent inquiry to alleviate them. -/- Part I surveys the uses of practical philosophy and answers criticisms - including religious challenges - of the approach, presenting a number of areas in which philosophers' intellectual efforts can prove valuable (...) for resolving public conflicts. -/- Part II presents a new approach to experimentalism in moral theory, based on the insights of John Dewey's pragmatism. Focusing on the elements of good public inquiry and the experimentalist attitude, Weber discusses ways of thinking about the effective construction and reconstruction of particular problems, including practical problems of public policy prioritization. -/- Finally, in Part III the book examines real-world examples in which the experimentalist approach to ethics proves useful, including instances of "bandwidth theft" and the controversies surrounding activist judges in the US Supreme Court. (shrink)

This article explores interpretations of the Earth’s interior during the latter half of the seventeenth century, focusing particularly on the debate surrounding the existence of a great central fire. In 1667, Donato Rossetti, a collaborator of the experimental Accademia del Cimento, challenged the central fire hypothesis by proposing instead that at the center of the Earth lay a heart that, through rhythmic systolic and diastolic movements, regulated all terrestrial phenomena. I argue that uncovering the motivations behind Rossetti’s model reveals, first (...) and foremost, the crucial role of meteorology in the conflict between proponents and opponents of Galilean science during this period. Furthermore, Rossetti’s terrestrial model exemplifies an effort to legitimize the study of the Earth’s interior as a valid domain of experimental science – one that could be fully integrated into the Galilean Accademia del Cimento’s investigations of natural phenomena. To support his theory, Rossetti drew upon two key foundations: experimental studies of fluid motion and observations of human blood circulation, a subject that had captivated members of the Cimento since the mid-1650s. (shrink)

This paper explores the scientific sources behind Kant’s early dynamic theory of matter in 1755, with a focus on two main Kant’s writings: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens and On Fire. The year 1755 has often been portrayed by Kantian scholars as a turning point in the intellectual career of the young Kant, with his much debated conversion to Newton. Via a careful analysis of some salient themes in the two aforementioned works, and a reconstruction of the (...) scientific sources behind them, this paper shows Kant’s debt to an often overlooked scientific tradition, i.e. speculative Newtonian experimentalism. The paper argues that more than the Principia, it was the speculative experimentalism that goes from Newton’s Opticks to Herman Boerhaave’s Elementa chemiae via Stephen Hales’ Vegetable Staticks that played a central role in the elaboration of Kant’s early dynamic theory of matter in 1755. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century the new science was introduced through the works of Bacon, Hooke, Boyle, Power, and others. The advocates of the new science promised to divulge the inner workings of nature and to help man overcome his painful fallen state by means of controlling nature. The new sciences of mechanism and corpuscularism were to be based on objective experiments that would reveal the secret inner natures of minerals, vegetables, animals, the sun, moon, and stars. These experiments were done (...) with new and improved telescopes and microscope with magnifications of up to 100 times. One early critic of the new science was Margaret Cavendish. Cavendish was skeptical of the ambitious claims, methodology, instruments, and institutions of the new science. In her work, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, Cavendish argued against “experimental and dioptrical writers,” provided her own account of the natural world, investigated aspects of chemistry, medicine, and the nature of heat and color, as well as many other topics in natural philosophy (OEP 10). While many think Cavendish landed on the wrong side of history with respect to her skepticism regarding microscopes and telescopes, her criticisms of the new science were wide ranging and she was by no means the only one to question the value of such experiments and instruments. While several commentators, like Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish was against all things experimental, several recent commentators, Emma Wilkins (2014) and Deborah Boyle (2018), have tried to show the much more complicated relationship between Cavendish and the Royal Society and medical studies, respectively. In addition, some commentators, such as Lisa Sarasohn (1984, 2010) and Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish’s criticisms of the new science are based on her belief that Nature, as a representation of the feminine, was under attack by the experimentalists desire to “penetrate” and “manipulate” her for their own ends. While it is certainly true that Cavendish and many of the experimentalists personified nature as a woman, and that Cavendish does portray the men as trying to make her into something she is not, I agree with Deborah Boyle (2004) that these descriptions are not the focus of her objections to experimentalism. Rather than hold that Cavendish is concerned with, as Sarasohn claims, “the sexual implications for both women and nature of the new philosophy” (2010: 147), it seems that Cavendish’s objections were largely based on her philosophical commitments. However, I believe there is one aspect of the new science that Cavendish does critique from a feminist perspective, and that is what she sees as its institutional nature and its exclusion of women on the basis of sex, and to this I will turn in the last section of the chapter.1 My aim is to address Cavendish’s three major critiques of the new science. The chapter is divided as follows: The first section provides a brief overview of Cavendish’s views on the nature of bodies and perception. The second regards her critique of the methods and aims of the new science as represented by Bacon and Boyle. The third section examines her critique of Hooke and the instruments of experimentalism. The final section lays out her feminist critique of the institution of the new science. (shrink)

My particular focus in this article is on getting clearer about what Nietzsche’s experimentalism entails. Some immediate resistance may form in response to this proposal, based on my use of the term experimentalism. As Walter Kaufmann has pointed out in a discussion of experimentalism, Nietzsche himself does not discuss his work using this concept; in the original German, Nietzsche uses the terms “Experiment” and “Versuch.”1 In light of this, two main concerns may be raised about my proposal (...) that experimentalism is worth some of our time and attention: whether it is necessary or helpful to focus discussion on yet another “ism” within Nietzsche scholarship and given that experimentalism is not Nietzsche’s.. (shrink)

When beginning to think about the relation between experimental music and the thought of Gilles Deleuze, this quotation seems to be a natural starting point. In Deleuze and Guattari’s affirmation of this phrase from John Cage they suggest a resonance between music and philosophy: in both fields the experimental approach entails a dismantling of predetermining codes and hierarchies, and with this arises the opportunity for an open-endedness that accommodates singular events and encounters. This understanding of experimentation, however, is not as (...) transparent as it seems. In the context of the uptake and critique of Deleuzian ideas in the theorisation of music and sound, as well as recent re-evaluations of the milieu of “experimental music,” critics have argued that a range of normative demands, ideological assumptions, and metaphysical reductions undermine the purported freedoms of both Cagean and Deleuzian experimentalism. Here I can only deal with a small aspect of the wide historical and theoretical problem this involves; but in short my aim is to begin to construct a means through which Deleuze and Guattari’s thought can be used to help us examine some strategies that composers and performers in post-Cagean musical experimentalism developed to navigate around the demands, assumptions, and reductions of Cage’s thought. (shrink)

The literary complexity of Nietzsche's writings is by now largely familiar; it needs no further display. Instead, I try to reconstruct some of his ideas such that they amount to a sustained philosophical argument and promising project, namely, an attempt to understand — after the Kantian and Darwinian turns — the very possibility of the formation and continuation of infinite varieties of forms of life.I demonstrate that such a project could make good sense only as a transcendental experiment in which (...) the idea of a reality which is ready-made, immutable, and fixed “in itself” must not only be dismissed as something incomprehensible, but as something not in the least worth striving for, and replaced by the idea of synergetic processes (of self-organization) and what Nietzsche called art without an artist. Read as an empirical-historical narrative we would have to reject Nietzsche's account as a mere rhapsody and arrogant fantasy. (shrink)

The New Enlightenment in Italian philosophy is expressed, chiefly, by two militant currents of thought, the existentialist and the neo-positivist. Thus the interesting thing about the author's latest book, which deals with the neo-positivistic movement from its originators down to its Italian representatives, is that it turns out to be an appraisal of some of his own pupils. In addition, the book contains a short but telling comment on his former pupil Nicola Abbagnano, who is coupled with the neo-positivists in (...) Italy for strategic purposes. (shrink)

The ascendant view in the current debate about education science —experimentism— is a reassertion of the randomized experiment as the methodological gold standard. Advocates of this view have ignored, not answered, long‐standing criticisms of the randomized experiment: its frequent impracticality, its lack of external validity, its confinement to a regularity conception of causality, and its externalization of politics. This article rehearses these criticisms and then adumbrates the alternative of experimentalism. In contrast to experimentism, experimentalism is expansive and variegated (...) in its conception of scientific method, seeing methodology as itself an object of experimentation. Experimentalism also includes a central role for intentional causation and self‐consciously incorporates progressive political values. (shrink)

Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel invoke John Dewey’s “pragmatist account of thought and action” as the “backdrop” for their theory of democratic experimentalism, an approach to governance emphasizing judicially monitored local decision making within a system of decentralized administrative authority. Little credit for influence is given to the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and his classic liberal ideas. Indeed, Sabel has been highly critical of Hayek’s ideas. Yet, an argument can be made that (i) democratic experimentalism is at least (...) loosely Hayekian and (ii) a combined Deweyan-Hayekian analysis of Dorf and Sabel’s theory reveals some critical mistakes. One implication of my analysis is that Dewey and Hayek’s ideas are more compatible than most democratic theorists and political philosophers will admit. Evidence of this compatibility opens the door for creating and evaluating democratic experiments within a Deweyan-Hayekian theoretical framework, as well as extending the framework to other areas of political inquiry. (shrink)

The paper is focused on some aspects of experimental realism of Ian Hacking, and especially on his manipulability criterion of existence. The problem is here related to chemical molecules, the objects of interest in chemical research. The authors consider whether and to what extent this criterion has been applied in experimental practice of chemistry. They argue that experimentation on is a fundamental criterion of existence of entities in chemistry rather than experimentation with. Some examples regarding studies of structures of complex (...) compounds, taken from organic chemistry, are presented to support the authors' considerations. Chemists' laboratory practice depends strongly on the way that representations of entities on (or with) the experiments are used. The authors show that this point has not been given sufficient attention by the new experimentalists. (shrink)

This article re-examines democratic experimentalism through the philosophy and practice of Jane Addams. Inspired by John Dewey’s pragmatism, democratic experimentalism emphasizes institutional reform through policy experimentation and participatory mechanisms. Yet both Dewey and Addams conceived democracy as a way of life grounded not only in institutions, but also in habits, dispositions, and affective ties. Addams developed this integrated vision through the situated experience of Hull House, where daily coexistence with socially marginalized groups shaped a distinctive mode of interpreting (...) and enacting democratic life. Drawing on Addams’s writings and on practices at Hull House, the article shows how democratic legitimacy was transformed into a cooperative, affective, and situated practice with direct institutional consequences. In this sense, sympathetic and cooperative dispositions emerge as a practical condition for democratic participation and institutional transformation. While contemporary democratic experimentalism offers powerful institutional procedures for addressing complex social problems, Addams’s work reveals that such procedures become democratically effective only when sustained by sympathetic and imaginative dispositions. The article concludes by connecting Addams’s approach to contemporary feminist practices and by proposing a cooperative feminist experimentalism capable of renewing her insights within present-day institutional contexts. (shrink)

Written in the anthropological tradition of ethnography, this is a comprehensive account of the radical American musical called experimentalism that arose early in the century and peaked in the 1950s and 1960s.