Editing Experimentum crucis (section)

{{Short description|Critical experiment}}
{{More references|date=August 2017}}
{{Original research|date=October 2024}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:''Experimentum crucis''}}
In science, an '''''experimentum crucis''''' ([[English language|English]]: '''crucial experiment''' or '''critical experiment''') is an [[experiment]] capable of decisively determining whether or not a particular [[hypothesis]] or [[theory]] is superior to all others whose acceptance is currently widespread in the scientific community<ref>{{cite book |type=encyclopedia |last=Schwartz|first=Daniel |date=2022 |title=Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences |chapter=Experimentum Crucis/Instantia Crucis in the Seventeenth Century |location=Cham, Switzerland |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland AG |page=647 |isbn=978-3-319-31069-5}}</ref>. In particular, such an experiment—if true—must typically be able to produce a result that rules out all other hypotheses or theories, thereby demonstrating that under the conditions of the experiment (i.e., [[Ceteris paribus|under the same external circumstances]] and for the same "input variables" within the experiment), those hypotheses and theories are ''proven false'' but the experimenter's hypothesis ''is not ruled out''. 

An opposite view, rejecting the decisive value of the ''experimentum crucis'' in choosing one hypothesis or theory over its rivals, is the [[Duhem–Quine thesis]].