Experimental Philosophy

Experimental philosophy is the methodological program, most systematically articulated by Newton in the Principia, that natural philosophy should proceed from phenomena to propositions through induction, not from metaphysical first principles through deduction. Newton's famous phrase hypotheses non fingo — I frame no hypotheses — was a manifesto against the Cartesian method of positing unseen mechanisms and then deducing their consequences.

The program has four components, stated as the Rules of Reasoning in the Principia: (1) no more causes should be admitted than are sufficient to explain phenomena; (2) the same causes should be assigned to the same effects; (3) qualities found in bodies within our experience should be attributed to all bodies universally; (4) propositions collected by induction from phenomena should be held as exactly or very nearly true until contrary phenomena appear.

These rules are not formal logic. They are heuristics for managing uncertainty: principles of parsimony, uniformity, and defeasibility that govern how empirical evidence constrains theory choice. The experimental philosophy program became the template for the scientific method in the centuries that followed, though its interpretation remains contested — some read it as naive inductivism, others as a sophisticated precursor to Bayesian inference.