What Is the Relation between Observation and Experiment?

There are certain points of similarities and dissimilarities between observation and experiment.

Similarities:

a) Both of them are material grounds of inductive inference.

b) Both of them aim at explaining certain facts and provide us knowledge about the Facts.

c) There is the involvement of physical, moral and intellectual conditions in both the cases of observation and experiment.

d) Both are the case of observations. The experiments are also observed.

Dissimilarities:

a) Observation is defined as the regulated perception of events or phenomena of nature. Experiment is defined as the artificial reproduction of events under the arranged conditions.

Thus, the former is the perception of natural events and the later is the perception of artificially reproduced events.

Bain explains it as: observation is finding a fact, experiment is making one.

b) For observation one has to depend upon nature. The events of nature are not in our control. The observer is a passive onlooker.

But in case of experiment we interrogate nature this view is maintained by Bacon. In case of experiment we are actively involved to reach at a definite answer in respect of certain querries about the nature.

c) The knowledge obtained through observation is comparatively less certain than the knowledge obtained through experiment.

d) Modification is not possible in case of observation. A modified observation is treated as a fresh observation or another piece of observation.

But modifications are allowed in case of experiment in order to become sure about the findings of observation.

Estimate:

The considerations that observation is strictly passive and experiment is strictly active, or that observation is strictly natural and experiment is strictly artificial, are definitely misleading.

Observation cannot be strictly passive nor can it be completely natural. In observation the event is presented by nature under natural circumstances. So it is more natural a process than experiment. Similarly experiment is not strictly artificial.

In experiment the phenomenon is artificially produced under controlled conditions which the experimenter can vary. Here the experimenter only sets the facts to see how they behave. Hence there is difference in degrees in respect of these above two considerations.

Thus they are not completely opposed to each other, rather both may be considered as complementary. Both aim at explaining the facts, so are not opposite processes. They do not differ in kind but only in degree.