The Role of Experimentation in Theory Formation

Experimentation serves three purposes: (a) hypothesis testing, (b) gathering of new data to constrain the theory generator, and (c) manipulation of the external system to reveal its structure. A theory formation system, EG, is described that employs experimentation and observation techniques to develop a theory of the UNIX file system and executive-level file commands. This theory formation task is more complex than previous efforts, and the goal of the project is to determine which existing theory formation methods are applicable and what new methods need to be developed. Previous techniques arc reviewed, and none of them arc found to be applicable. A new technique, based on controlled experimentation, is de3cribcd, and a hypothetical trace of EG's execution is presented. Key terms: 'Theory formation, generate-and-test, controlled experimentation, exploratory experiments, observation experiments, hypothesis-test experiments, credit assignment, new terms.