ABSTRACT
The social epistemology of experiment (SEE) identifies as the main sources of the epistemic value of any experiment the direct participation of its subject matter and the social nature of knowledge production. These two factors create possibilities for the manifestation of both ‘material’ and ‘social’ resistances that force experimenters to conceive and answer relevant questions and thereby produce more reliable and robust experimental results. In economics, the sources of epistemic value are the participation of human subjects and the interactive way in which experimental knowledge is produced by series of experiments. In the previous chapters I argued that the key epistemic issue of experi-
mental economics is not the simplicity, nor is it the artificiality of the experimental contexts. An economics experiment is irremediably an artificial and simple system. The relevant epistemic issue is instead the trade-off between experimenters’ control and the potential for independent action on the part of the participants in experiments. This is the topic this chapter addresses. It brings to the fore an epistemic distinction between two kinds of experiment – technological experiments and behavioural experiments.
