[edna314]

Because others already questioned the first part, I’ll question this:

> the set of observations it offers is vast

Actually, in an experiment there is always only one observation at a time. That we group multiple observations together is kind of arbitrary and relies on the hope that the experimental conditions are the same and therefore one experiment is analogous to the next.

[MauranKilom]

Yes, that's exactly the heart of the quote to me: There is sufficiently little complexity in the causality of observable behavior that with sufficiently controlled and repeated experiments/sampling, we can uncover regularities and patterns in it to fuel our predictions (and hypothesize about these causalities).

Does the reading of your multimeter depend on the digits of Arnold Schwarzenegger's phone number? Do you have to repeat the experiment if his phone number changes? Indeed, we assume that this is not an "experimental condition" to take into account. There is no way to determine this a-priori, and one could conceive of a universe with an arbitrary amount of such strange influences. But we do not appear to live in such a universe, which is why we get to apply Occam's Razor.

[edna314]

> Does the reading of your multimeter depend on the digits of Arnold Schwarzenegger's phone number? Do you have to repeat the experiment if his phone number changes? Indeed, we assume that this is not an "experimental condition" to take into account. There is no way to determine this a-priori, and one could conceive of a universe with an arbitrary amount of such strange influences. But we do not appear to live in such a universe, which is why we get to apply Occam's Razor.

I think this is not true for every experiment. For example if you measure the polarization of a photon it will have the same polarization in any subsequent experiment, no matter how hard you try to reduce complexity.

Also, my comment was rather directed at the fact that any experiment has a unique outcome. In that sense we we can’t have perfect control over an experiment, since at least time must have passed between subsequent measurements, such that the experimental conditions are different.