Yes, I was pretty much basing my definition in the social sciences... I
may have gotten the mistaken impression that the author was writing for
that audience.
Paul
On Wednesday, March 12, 2003, at 10:43 PM, Donald Burrill wrote:
Paul's definitions sound to me very much like definitions for a
*psychological* experiment. I cannot imagine a physicist, for example,
conducting an experiment that involved "subjects". (Actually, a
physicist might conduct such an experiment, but it would not be an
experiment in physics. Might be an experiment in the learning of
physics, which is not at all the same thing.)
Further, Paul's description of "two or more conditions" can be read
(I don't know if he intended this) as implying that the various
experimental conditions are distinguished only on a categorical
(sometimes called "qualitative") scale, not on a quantitative one.
Such a reading makes the definition of "experiment" unnecessarily
narrow.
.
.
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