Experimental conditions

The occurrence of any given event in the world is frequently correlated with many other factors, in order to separate – to pry apart or disentangle – the causal influences of these various simultaneous events experimenters seek to create situations which isolate the influence of a single variable: the independent variable – the focus of the investigation.

On many occasions it is the case – one might almost say usually the case – that these special conditions are not found occurring naturally, although they can do, so it is often necessary for scientists to create special conditions which are specific to, and will test a particular theory about a phenomenon. Simply making observations of events in the natural course of things is a state-of-affairs seldom sufficient to enable the establishment of scientific principles and laws, for example, consider the case of people’s observations of falling and moving objects and scientific notions about motion and gravity.

(see also: experimental, science, experimental research, control group, double-blind, experimenter bias, randomized assignment, confound/confounding, variable, correlation)

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