Social Coordination in Scientific Communities David Eck Cañada College Kuhnian philosophy of science has established the existence of a social dimension within epistemology, but neo-Kuhnian accounts remain limited by linguis- tically centered conceptions of rationality and normativity. As an alternative, I use an embodied epistemology to reframe two neo-Kuhnian concepts: Fred D’Agostino’s (2010) federal model of enquiry and William Rehg’s (2009) immanent cogency. Both concepts

Standardized Study Designs, Value Judgments, and Financial Conflicts of Interest in Research Kevin C. Elliott Michigan State University The potential for financial conflicts of interest (COIs) to influence scientific research has become a significant concern. Some commentators have suggested that the development of standardized study protocols could help to alleviate these problems. This paper identifies two problems with this solution: (1) scien- tific research incorporates

“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy: Clarifying an Entrenched Conflation by Using an Involved Approach Ayelet Shavit Tel Hai College Reproducible results and repeatable measurements at the same location are funda- mental to science, yet of grave concern to scientists. Involvement in biological re-surveys under MVZ-Berkeley, Harvard-LTER and Hamaarag elucidated “replication” and “location” and untangled “incommensurability” from “no fact of the matter” and “indeterminacy.” All cases

William Harvey on Anatomy and Experience Benjamin Goldberg University of South Florida The goal of this essay is to explore the meaning of experience in William Harvey’s work. I begin by expanding on Andrew Cunningham’s argument (2002, 2003) that for Harvey, anatomy was an experience-based science of final causes. Observation and reason are united through experience (experi- entia) for Harvey, that is, by the repeated

Inductive Risk, Epistemic Risk, and Overdiagnosis of Disease Justin B. Biddle Georgia Institute of Technology Recent philosophers of science have not only revived the classical argument from inductive risk but extended it. I argue that some of the purported extensions do not fit cleanly within the schema of the original argument, and I discuss the problem of overdiagnosis of disease due to expanded disease definitions

The Physics of Forgetting: Thermodynamics of Information at IBM 1959–1982 Aaron Sidney Wright Harvard University The origin and history of Landauer’s principle is traced through the develop- ment of the thermodynamics of computation at IBM from 1959 to 1982. This development was characterized by multiple conceptual shifts: memory came to be seen not as information storage, but as delayed information trans- mission; information itself was

Brittleness and Bureaucracy: Software as a Material for Science Matt Spencer Oxford University Through examining a case study of a major fluids modelling code, this paper charts two key properties of software as a material for building models. Scientific software development is characterized by piecemeal growth, and as a code expands, it begins to manifest frustrating properties that provide an important axis of motivation in

Epistemic Contributions of Models: Conditions for Propositional Learning François Claveau Université du Québec à Montréal Melissa Vergara Fernández Erasmus University Rotterdam This article analyzes the epistemic contributions of models by distinguishing three roles that they might play: an evidential role, a revealing role and a stimulating role. By using an account of learning based on the philosophical understanding of propositional knowledge as true justified belief,

Contested Boundaries: The String Theory Debates and Ideologies of Science Sophie Ritson University of Sydney Kristian Camilleri University of Melbourne Over the last three decades, physicists have engaged in, sometimes heated, debates about relative merits and prospects of string theory as a viable research program and even about its status as a science. The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of

Neo-Darwinism and Evo-Devo: An Argument for Theoretical Pluralism in Evolutionary Biology Lindsay R. Craig Temple University There is an ongoing debate over the relationship between so-called neo-Darwinism and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) that is motivated in part by the possibility of a theoretical synthesis of the two (e.g., Amundson 2005; Brigandt and Love 2010; Laubichler 2010; Minelli 2010; Pigliucci and Müller 2010). Through analysis of

Making the Case Against Gene Patents Tania Simoncelli1 Sandra S. Park2 On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, holding that a naturally occurring DNA segment that has merely been “isolated” is not patent eligible, and effectively overturning a longstanding policy that had allowed for patents to be issued on thousands of human genes.

Pluto and the ‘Planet Problem’: Folk Concepts and Natural Kinds in Astronomy Alisa Bokulich Boston University The Pluto controversy provides fertile new ground to revisit the traditional philosophical problem of natural kinds and scientiªc change. Here I show that further insight into the Pluto case is gained by drawing out some of the striking analogies with what is termed the “species problem” in the philoso-

Simulation and Understanding in the Study of Weather and Climate Wendy S. Parker Durham University wendy.parker@durham.ac.uk In the study of weather and climate, the digital computer has allowed scien- tists to make existing theory more useful, both for prediction and for under- standing. After characterizing two sorts of understanding commonly sought by scientists in this arena, I show how the use of the computer to

Experiments in Thought Walter Hopp Boston University What are thought experiments, and how do they generate knowledge? More speciªcally, what sorts of intentional acts must one perform in order to carry out a thought experiment, what sorts of objects are such acts directed toward, and how are those objects made present in such acts? I argue on phenomeno- logical grounds that the proper objects of

Descartes on the Heartbeat: The Leuven Affair Lucian Petrescu Ghent University This paper presents the reactions to Descartes’ account of the heartbeat expressed by the Leuven professors Fortunatus Plempius and Libertus Fromondus, reactions that also involved the Utrecht professor Henricus Regius. I show that the letters exchanged between Descartes and the two Leuven professors in 1637–1638 stirred a continuous debate, followed through a series of

Social-Scientiªc Modeling in Biblical and Related Studies Petri Luomanen University of Helsinki This article provides background information about the use of the social sci- ences and introduces the basic themes and factions in the debate about model- ing in the ªeld of biblical and related studies. It argues that some of the con- troversial issues could be clariªed by drawing on the current discussion on

Dirac’s Prediction of the Positron: A Case Study for the Current Realism Debate Thomas Pashby University of Pittsburgh Much debate has ensued regarding the challenge to scientiªc realism provided by consideration of certain problematic episodes of theory change in the history of science. This paper contends that there is an interesting case which has been overlooked in this debate, namely the prediction of the positron

The misunderstanding of memes: Biography of an unscientiªc object, 1976–1999 Jeremy Trevelyan Burman York University When the “meme” was introduced in 1976, it was as a metaphor intended to illuminate an evolutionary argument. By the late-1980s, however, we see from its use in major US newspapers that this original meaning had become obscured. The meme became a virus of the mind. (In the UK, this