Hypothesis Bound: Trial and Error in the Nineteenth Century

Like so many things, "trial and error" has a history. The term first emerged as the name for a technique in eighteenth-century mathematics pedagogy. In the nineteenth century, psychologists and biologists transformed "trial and error" from a mathematical tool into a developmental theory, one that could explain both the learning mind and life on earth. "Trial and error" can thus be seen as a case of the larger process whereby the tools we use to explain the world do not just influence but in many ways become our explanations--a process that the psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has called the "tools-to-theories" heuristic. This essay uses Gigerenzer's concept to frame the evolution of "trial and error." By the end, it suggests how the historical relationship between tools and theories prompts a reconsideration of the terms and assumptions historians of science use in their own work.