We propose a new account of calibration according to which calibrating a technique shows that the technique does what it is supposed to do. To motivate our account, we examine an early twentieth-century debate about chlorophyll chemistry and Mikhail Tswett’s use of chromatographic adsorption analysis to study it. We argue that Tswett’s experiments established that his technique was reliable in the special case of chlorophyll without relying on either a theory or a standard calibration experiment. We suggest that Tswett broke the experimenters’ regress by appealing to material facts in the common ground for chemists at the time.

中文翻译：

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校准色谱：Tswett 如何打破实验者的回归

我们提出了一种新的校准方法，根据该方法，校准技术表明该技术完成了它应该做的事情。为了激发我们的叙述，我们研究了 20 世纪早期关于叶绿素化学的辩论以及 Mikhail Tswett 使用色谱吸附分析来研究它。我们认为 Tswett 的实验证实了他的技术在叶绿素的特殊情况下是可靠的，而不依赖于理论或标准校准实验。我们建议 Tswett 通过诉诸当时化学家共同基础中的物质事实来打破实验者的倒退。