Introduction: Practices, Strategies, and Methodologies of Experimental Control in Historical Perspective

The introduction distinguishes four distinct strands in the history of experimental control. The first is the historical development of control practices to stabilize and standardize experimental conditions. The second is the emergence and career of the comparative design in experimentation, understood as a way of generating and securing knowledge of cause-effect relations. The third involves the unfolding, both in philosophy of science and in the sciences themselves, of methodological discussions on control practices and designs in experimental practice. The fourth is the history of the term “(experimental) control.” The introduction describes how the contributions to this volume address these aspects of experimental control.