From Experiment to Simulation: The Cartesian Error of Experience from Galileo to Turing

Abstract

This paper reexamines the Turing Test by placing it within the broader history of experimentation. Challenging views that link Turing to a continuous scientific tradition from Galileo, it argues that the Imitation Game marks a key epistemological break. Whereas Galileo used experiment to connect observation with mathematical order, and Descartes internalized experience as formal representation, Turing transformed experiment into simulation—producing meaning through logic alone. This shift reveals AI not as a recent innovation, but as the outcome of a rationalist tradition that displaces experience with computation. The paper critiques this legacy and calls for restoring experience as central to knowledge