ABSTRACT
The social epistemology of experiment (SEE) identifies as the main sources of epistemic value of any experiment the direct participation of its subject matter and the collaborative nature of knowledge production. These two factors create possibilities for the manifestation of both ‘material’ and ‘social’ resistances that force experimenters to conceive of and answer relevant questions, and thereby produce more reliable and robust experimental results. In this chapter I spell out the contribution of each factor to experimental
economics and mobilize them to examine early methodological debates. I focus in particular on the debates that questioned the relevance of experiments and the arguments put forward to justify the adequacy of economics experiments to test theories. I show that the discussion carried out by the experimenters themselves failed to provide full-blown arguments. They were instead defensive responses that did not satisfactorily answer the critical charges.
