“Location” Incommensurability - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

Inconmensurabilidad de la “ubicación”
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 revealed incommensurability
without indeterminacy on the smallest scale and indeterminacy without in-
commensurability on higher scales, with communication failure in the former
and successful workarounds in the latter. I argue that an involved philosophy
helps clarify fundamental concepts in this case, and since it could also help other
cases it therefore should be examined in every case before being ruled out.

Introducción

1.
This paper emerged from a decade of involvement in long-term bio-
diversity surveys in places such as Yosemite Valley, Lassen National Park,
New England Harvard Forest, and the Israeli Negev Desert. While actively
engaged in the scientiﬁc work it was impossible not to notice the reoccur-
ring discussions over how to replicate a survey to the same location. Estos
two terms—“replication” and “location”—were necessary and basic for the
scientists yet marginal (almost non-existent) in philosophical literature.
The ﬁrst two sections of this paper analyze the different practical meanings
of replication and location through describing the survey ﬁeldwork, y

I thank James Griesemer, Elihu Gerson, Yemima Ben-Menahem and Eva Jablonka for their per-
sonal example and advice and the rigorous and open-minded biologists at Berkeley, Harvard and
Hamaarag. I am also grateful for the insightful comments given by Yael Silver, Amy Klein, y
the anonymous reviewers of this journal. Finally I thank the Israel Science Foundation (ISF grant
No. 960/12) for its support.

Perspectives on Science 2016, volumen. 24, No. 4
©2016 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

doi:10.1162/POSC_a_00215

425

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426

“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy

I argue for an unavoidable and basic uncertainty for re-visiting a location
outdoors. The third section utilizes the re-survey description for clarifying
Kuhn’s “incommensurability” and for differentiating this concept from
“empirical equivalence” and two types of “indeterminacy.” The fourth section
reﬂects on how the philosophical analysis was done and recommends an
involved approach to philosophy of science instead of the detached mode
common today. At least in this case an involved approach was a valuable tool,
and I argue for its general, replicable, relevance to science and philosophy of
ciencia.

2. Replication
Replication: “the set of technologies which transforms what counts as
belief into what counts as knowledge” (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, pag. 225),
is fundamental to science. Repeatability of a scientiﬁc experiment and repro-
ducibility of its results are common scientiﬁc practices ever since Boyle
([1660] 1999)1 and Redi ([1668] 1909), and it is widely accepted that
one cannot fully explain a biological process nor empirically conﬁrm a gen-
eralization without them (Shavit and Griesemer 2009; Shavit 2013).

Philosophers of science were traditionally more skeptical of the possibility
and relevance of replication. Problems concerning replication were initially
presented as epistemic absurdities, from Wittgenstein’s 1953 rule-following
paradox: “No course of action could be determined by a rule because every
course of action could be made out to accord with the rule” (Wittgenstein
1953, pag. 201); to Popper’s note of the relativity of similarity, “But if repeti-
tion is thus based upon similarity…[él] means that anything can be made to a
repetition of anything, as long as we adopt the appropriate point of view”
(Popper [1959] 1992, pag. 422), to Collins’s experimental regress: “The prob-
lem is that, since experimentation is a skillful practice, it can never be clear
whether a second experiment was conducted sufﬁciently enough to be con-
sidered as check on the results of a ﬁrst. Some further test is needed to test
the quality of the experiment” (collins 1992, pag. 2) Etcétera. Hacking
(1983) concludes that the concern with replication is a philosophical pseudo-
problem “…because, roughly speaking, no one ever repeats an experiment”
(Hacking 1983, pag. 231).

Given this long tradition of skepticism, it is apparently surprising to
learn about scientists’ widespread and genuine concern for what Nature
editors referred to as “the plague of non-reproducibility in science” (Hayden
2013): the fact that widely-published research in many scientiﬁc ﬁelds is

1. The challenge of replication may date back to Heraclitus’s metaphor of stepping into
the same river twice (Heraclitus DK22B91, DK22B12 translation: robinson 1987), todavía
such straightforward comparisons are clearly problematic (Hadót [1995] 2002).

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Perspectives on Science

427

never replicated, and may not even be replicable nor become generalizable
(Por ejemplo, in Nature see: Editorials 2014a & b; Bissell 2013; Russell 2013;
Sanderson 2013; Gunn 2014). The bulk of attention is focused on biomedical
investigación, but owing to the overwhelming variability in scope, escala, datos
estructura, and semantics for studying the dynamics of our environments,
the problem of reliable experimental replication is clearly applicable to
ecological and biodiversity research (Michener and Jones 2012), así como
to agriculture, molecular biology, bioinformatics and other biological dis-
ciplines (Shavit and Ellison Forthcoming). Además, in biological research,
the spatial and temporal contexts—the location of a genome, cell, organism,
población, habitat or ecosystem—as well as the researcher’s questions,
methods, and available means of funding are constantly changing. Since bio-
logical research is contingent on the historical and social context in which it is
being conducted, biologists are confronted with this key challenge: how do
we both conceptualize and implement (operationalize) replication?

The term replication refers to wide-ranging practices: a) repeating the
same measurement process (sampling, experimentation, natural experiment
etcétera), and obtaining comparable—not necessarily similar—results be-
tween both measurements; b) reproducing the same result from the same
computational analysis on the same data without a new measurement pro-
impuesto (Cassey and Blackburn 2006); and c) retrieving the individual entity, a
physical item (specimen, photo, blood tissue, etc.) or a record (stored in a
ﬁeld-journal, excel spreadsheet, SQL database and so forth) for aggregating,
comparing, and interoperating2 the data. Different operational meanings of
replication, along with their different goals and motivations, typically domi-
nate different stages of the research, p.ej. ﬁeld measurement, data synthesis,
metadata description and many more (Shavit 2013). In this paper I focus
on the ﬁrst meaning of replication: how to repeat an empirical process of
measurement—species presence in these cases—at the same location. Para
that end we ﬁrst need a clearer understanding of “location.”

3. Location
Ever since scientiﬁc natural history became engulfed in a range of scientiﬁc
disciplines (Kohler 2006; Strasser 2008; Nyhart 2009), revisiting the same
location became necessary for the causal study of biological systems (Latour
1987, ch. 2). Además, it seems any explanation in ecology, biogeography or
biodiversity requires, at a minimum, an identiﬁed location, a description of
the distribution patterns of a population or species, and a comparison of

2. “Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange
information and to use the exchanged information” (IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Elec-
tronics Engineers, 1990, pag. 42).

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428

“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy

location patterns for one or more spatial scales. Variables that correspond to
changes in pattern, such as the location’s average temperature, may point to
the process or processes that caused such a change in the distribution of
organisms and groups of organisms (poblaciones, species, etc.). En respuesta
to global climatic change (lloyd 2010; Frigg et al. 2013) and global attention
to a crisis of species’ extinction (wilson 1992, ch. 12), the biological com-
munity became intensely engaged in meticulously tracing a species’ location
back to its geographical point/line (Tingley and Beissinger 2009) on various
scales and for various purposes (Kohler 2012). Scientists worked hard to
ensure that their information would be available and interoperable for others
to use in the future (Bowker 2005; Ellison et al. 2006; Karasti et al. 2010;
Leonelli 2013).

The inherent vagueness of location is discussed in depth, although in
very different contexts, in the philosophy of quantum physics (Barad
2007), in science and technology studies with regard to geo-political maps
(Negro 1997; Gugerli 1998), and in eco-feminist studies of the politics of
inscribing social places and situated knowledge (Shiva 2000; Code 2006).
Sin embargo, a study of the various non-metaphorical meanings of location on
multiple scales is relatively new to the philosophy of biology (Shavit and
Griesemer 2009, 2011a; 2011b; Kohler 2012).

In order to clarify the concepts of location and replication, in addition to
literary analysis, I was actively involved in three biodiversity case studies,
participating over the course of three to eight years in ﬁeldwork, lab meet-
ings, and workshops. The case studies involved the research institutions of
Harvard-LTER, at Harvard University, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
(MVZ), University of California at Berkeley, and the Hamaarag at the
Israeli Academia of Sciences. The research organizations conducted rigorous,
repeated surveys of designated locations across New England, California,
and Israel respectively. Their resulting models, conceptos, protocols, and data
set national and international standards in biodiversity research and policy.3
Por eso, the analysis of their use of location and repeated sample is expected
to be relevant for other scientists and philosophers of science alike.

In all these cases location meant two very different ways to operationa-
lize one’s concept of space—exogenous to one’s system of study or inter-
acting with it. Además, each operational location was committed to a
very different set of best practices emerging from different epistemic values
for conducting scientiﬁc replication: describing a location in a way that

3. The geo-referencing protocol developed at MVZ, Berkeley is used by over 32 investigación
museums worldwide, Harvard-LTER is one of the leading contributors to the International-
LTER network, and the monitoring results of Hamaarag are deﬁned as a national resource
for the conservation policy of the Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection.

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Perspectives on Science

429

will allow it to be representative of many other locations or comprehen-
sively accurate of that particular place. An exogenous location assumes that
organisms’ impact on their environmental space, through their physiology,
metabolism, comportamiento, or sheer existence, can be safely ignored for success-
fully predicting their distribution (hutchinson 1978, páginas. 159–60; Guisan
and Thuiller 2005). An alternative, interactionist location assumes that
organisms and their environments are mutually co-determined hence the
above impacts should not be disregarded (Levins and Lewontin 1985,
páginas. 1–2).4 The problem is that both operational concepts of location, a lo largo de
with their conﬂicting and sometimes mutually exclusive practices, are nec-
essary for rigorously repeating a survey at the same location.

Operating according to a speciﬁc concept of location in a speciﬁc work-
ing context signiﬁes a commitment: an actual expenditure of resources
(Gerson 1998) based upon speciﬁc constitutive and contextual values
(Longino 2004), cognitive and social constraints (Longino 2004), and gen-
eratively entrenched (Wimsatt 2007, ch. 7) work procedures for coordinat-
ing the scientiﬁc work (Gerson 2007). An exogenous concept of space is
committed to revealing general distribution patterns, and hence values
representative data. Por otro lado, an interactionist concept of loca-
tion presumes that one cannot typically ignore the current and historical
contexts of organism-environmental interactions, as sometimes they create
a relevant casual chain that impacts upon a species’ location. un inter-
actionist location values, por lo tanto, comprehensive data on that particular
location and species.

Given the goal of representativeness, an exogenous partition of space
strives to locate a measuring device (p.ej., climatic chamber, trap, cámara,
etc.) at a preselected random point that deﬁnes the longitude, latitude and
angle of a regular shape (p.ej., rectangle, hexagon, transact line, etc.). Él
deliberately attempts to ignore any hypothetical prior knowledge of the
historical and biological context of the species, ubicación, and studied ﬁeld.
Por otro lado, an interactionist partition of space seeks to set that
device in a place that is biologically meaningful to the organism studied.
The device is set according to a preselected, non-random environmental
stratiﬁcation, typically by irregular polygons (p.ej., constructed run-ways,
preferred microhabitats, modulated patch-type, etc.) hypothesized to be

4. Other philosophical traditions that explore the codetermination of organism and en-
vironment include the developmental systems theory (Oyama [1985] 2000; Grifﬁths and
Gray 1994), the scaffolding perspective (Griesemer 2014) and Sterelny’s (2001) environ-
mental engineering approach. The biological literature discusses the niche construction
(Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman 2003), foundational-species (Ellison et al. 2010),
eco-engineer and landscape modulator (Shachak et al. 2008) modelos.

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430

“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy

relevant for understanding the dynamics of a particular biological system.
When arriving at the ﬁeld one must decide what to measure ﬁrst; one type
of measurement precludes the other measurement from taking place in the
smallest spatial location and affects the possibility of repeating a visit to
that same location.

In all three case studies, at the MVZ, Harvard-LTER and Hamaarag,
scientists who jointly wrote the research grant and agreed on the sampling
method only days before venturing outdoors, were somewhat surprised to
learn that these practices became mutually exclusive on the smallest spatial
scale outdoors. The issue of location/locality did not disappear over time,
but rather brought about explicit conceptual discussions among the sci-
entists regarding their technology, method and evaluation criteria (Shavit
and Griesemer 2011a). These discussions, termed philosophical by the
científicos, expanded and boosted the cooperative research in certain con-
texts and in other contexts stopped it altogether.

The problem was not a mere technicality. In all three cases a more pre-
cise GPS actually deepened the dilemma while working outdoors. Simply
put, the problem was what to do ﬁrst. The golden standard for an exog-
enous location requires a pre-chosen random5 set of independent spatial
puntos, each with precise longitude, latitude, and elevation/depth coordi-
nates. Only after a point-location was identiﬁed by the researcher outdoors
and a measurement device was placed at that point and the GPS’s precision
and extent were recorded was one supposed to record that point’s surround-
ings and ecological and geographical context. Desafortunadamente, an inter-
actionist protocol requires the exact opposite: to ﬁrst identify in the ﬁeld,
not the location of an abstract point but the location of a geographical and
ecological context suspected of being causally relevant to the organism of
estudiar (p.ej., its burrow, relevant micro-habitat, patch etc.). After identifying
such a micro-environmental location, you set up the measuring device
within/outside that locality, and only then record its grid coordinates with
GPS.

Both exogenous and interactionist concepts of location are necessary
for any rigorous biodiversity survey. Each operation of location however
binds the researcher to different work practices for maintaining its stan-
dard. Since one cannot utilize both procedures for the same set of loca-
tion data collected on the same spatial scale, location uncertainty is
fundamental and inevitable (Shavit and Griesemer 2009). Además,

5. Most sampling designs called “random” are actually haphazard rather than purely
randomized (Shrader-Frechette and McCoy 1993), yet the re-survey at Harvard Forest
was just that—random. The MVZ’s re-survey was uniform and the Hamaarag re-survey
was targeted.

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Perspectives on Science

431

when performing an individual measurement on the smallest spatial
scale of the studies here, in most cases I observed that a) the measure-
ment device had to be relocated to different longitudinal and latitudinal
coordinates when positioned according to different concepts of location
(even in the uncommon incidents when the device maintained its lat./long.
coordinates, its location was empirically different as its description as a
ubicación)6 and b) a barrier for communication between scientists holding
different concepts was evident, translation was lost, and decisions were
based upon hierarchy7 or separation of the data records.8 Upon later
reﬂection of this incident, when interviewing the scientists involved, ellos
did not refer to heuristic considerations as their cause of disagreement. Para
ejemplo, they did not say that the procedures used by their colleagues were
more complex or required more time and effort.9 They also did not say that
the statements delivered by their collaborators were false, but rather: “it did
not make any sense,”10 or “he is smart, I simply could not understand why
he was so stubborn on this issue,”11 and often they only smiled gently and
dicho: “I’m sorry, I could not do it the way they [o: él] wanted it.”12

This clear-cut empirical gap and communication breakdown in each of
these biodiversity studies did not lead, sin embargo, to any disagreements on
the overall answer to the question of species location and species distribution.
Por qué? Since that answer was provided statistically, by aggregating results

6. Por ejemplo, there were two different maps of the Harvard Forest, with and without
the location of each tree, which were deliberately kept separate. Choosing a location was
made by randomly selecting a block on the blank map, yet when positioning a trap in the
ﬁeld, one repeatedly had to change its position because of the trees.

7. At the MVZ resurvey, the lead researcher in the ﬁeld acknowledged the dis-
satisfaction of his colleague with his interactionist location (personal observation on
Agosto 25, 2007). In the Harvard Forest, the lead researcher decided on the locations
beforehand and the traps were constantly maintained (interview, Puede 27, 2010). En
that survey, there were no independent revisits so it is unclear if there was replication
or one very long survey.

8. The same applied to the Israeli resurveys (personal observation on May 16, 2005,
June 6–7, 2005 and September 3, 2008; interviews, Abril 23, 2009 and July 6, 2009)
and to Harvard Forest (personal observations and interviews, May 26–28, 2010, June 6–8,
2012 and July 30, 2012).

9. Although one can interpret what the MVZ scientist said: “it would have been a
total waste of time” as a strictly practical or heuristic criticism, I understood it as a criti-
cism of meaning, a precursor to the follow-up sentence: “it just made no practical sense!"
(Agosto 25, 2007).

10. Interview with MVZ scientist, Marzo 23, 2007.
11. Interview with Israeli scientists, Abril 23, 2009.
12. Interview with Israeli scientists, Julio 6, 2009, Febrero 9, 2010, and with MVZ
científicos, Marzo 23, 2007 and August 25, 2007. Only one of the two Israelis used the
word “sorry” and both MVZ scientists said “he” rather than “they.”

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“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy

across higher spatial scales that encompass multiple individual measure-
mentos, as it was easily accepted that there are incompatible ways to analyze
that aggregated data. Acknowledging the barrier at the individual trap made
scientists frequently alternate between spatial scales as the relevant scale.13
They juxtaposed different concepts of location rather than seek a single con-
cept for all levels. This facilitated the emergence of a productive scientiﬁc
discourse on different operational meanings of location (Shavit and Griesemer
2011a) to consider alternative ecological and evolutionary models (Shavit and
Griesemer 2011b). It also facilitated an ongoing public discussion on repli-
cation via symposium, international workshop and a monograph (Shavit
2013;14 Shavit and Ellison, próximo).

The philosophical concepts of incommensurability (Kuhn [1962] 1970;
Feyerabend 1962), underdetermination (Duhem 1969; Quine 1953), y
indeterminacy of translation (Quine 1960, 1990) seem especially relevant
en este caso. For both incommensurability and indeterminacy of translation
“the paradoxical situation stems from meaning variance—the same terms
have different meanings in the seemingly incompatible theories” (Ben
Menahem 2006, pag. 11), yet only “incommensurability implies that from
the perspective of one paradigm (theory), the alternative is not simply
false, but makes no sense at all” (Ben Menahem 2006, pag. 11). Listening
to the biologists discuss adequate location and replication while participat-
ing in the re-survey created the impression that this is indeed a case of
incommensurability.

In the next section, I will employ these concepts for describing the
small details of the scientiﬁc practice with which I was involved. Such a
description will render the scientists’ disagreement more sensible than bi-
zarre, which is presumably a better description.15 Paying close attention to
the scientiﬁc routine clariﬁed a common philosophical conﬂation between
incommensurability and empirical equivalence (Ben Menahem 1990) y
between indeterminacy of translation and of reference, and should therefore
assist in avoiding it. Noticing and reﬂecting upon the conceptual aspects

13. The relevant, smallest spatial scale for the theoretical MVZ ecologist was the aver-
age of a transact line with 50 traps, while for the collector it was the individual trap on that
line (Septiembre 4, 2006); the smallest, relevant scale for Hamaarag was a single trap for the
hierarchical sampling and a patch-type with three such traps for the landscape sampling
(Febrero 7, 2009), and at Harvard Forest, the smallest relevant scale was the experimental
block with multiple traps ( Junio 8, 2012).

14. During follow-up symposiums on April 18, 2013 in Jerusalem (Israel), and on
Agosto 8, 2014 in Minneapolis (Minnesota), museum collectors, experimental ecologists
and bioinformatics discussed their mutual problems of replication.

15. To rationalize these assumptions, see Quine’s 1960 and Davidson’s 1984 principle

of charity and the vast philosophical literature discussing this principle.

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attached to a scientiﬁc disagreement also facilitated a discussion among the
scientists that clariﬁed their operational concepts and working procedures.
Eso es, involvement in the routine scientiﬁc work not only can help to
better describe and understand science—the standard role for the history
and philosophy of science—but may also illustrate the beneﬁts of philosophy
para la ciencia (Griesemer 2011), at least for some scientists and HPS scholars.

Indeterminacy and Incommensurability

4.
Philosophical discourse is rich with discussions over incommensurability,
yet is still replete with conﬂation of incommensurability with empirical
equivalence (Ben Menahem 1990). I ﬁrst met Thomas Kuhn’s Structure as
a teenager and “like many philosophers of my generation and the one pre-
ceding it, I was ﬁrst attracted to the philosophy of science by The Structure of
Scientiﬁc Revolution. But like many of my peers, I found that once I started
actually doing philosophy of science, I was far less of a Kuhnian than I had
thought” (Levin 2010, pag. 376). In this article, I will show that a Kuhnian
view of incommensurability can be sensibly held if the philosopher of sci-
ence participates, notices and cares about routine scientiﬁc work.

Elucidating what a Kuhnian view amounts to is beyond the scope of
this paper. Given space constraints, I will not discuss here the interesting
debates over this notion’s history (Agassi 2002; Oberheim 2005), sociolog-
ical context (Demir 2008) or philosophical compatibility with realism and
scientiﬁc progress (Hoyningen-Huene 1993; Sankey 2009; Hoyningen-
Huene and Oberheim 2009; Davies 2013). En cambio, I will depend on
the common understanding that incommensurability refers to a translation
breakdown (Ben Menahem 2006; Levin 2010) and utilize Davies’ 2013
explicit deﬁnition of the term:

Two theories are incommensurable when they include the same
lexical items but wherein there is a divergence in quasi-analytic
principles such that the extension of at least one lexical item is
different because of the difference in constraints on extension
consequent upon the difference in quasi- analytic principles
(Davies 2013, pag. 572).

Davies links incommensurability specifically to its empirical extension, y
also defines “quasi-analytic” principles as principles formed while conducing
empirical research that function not as truth-evaluable descriptions of the
world but as meta-linguistic statements (Davies 2013). I will rely on this and
on Ben Menahem’s argument against the association of incommensurability
with empirical equivalence between semantically non-equivalent theories
(1990, 2006); y, como resultado, against the conﬂation of incommensurabil-
ity with indeterminacy of translation and the common phrase no fact of

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434

“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy

the matter. As Davies’ deﬁnition points out, and as seen in our case studies,
the traps were placed at different places on the ground given different oper-
ational concepts of location, so indeed incommensurability held a clear and
pressing fact of the matter.

Most history of philosophy of science scholars nonetheless conﬂate these
two. According to Ben Menahem, the blame for conﬂating incommensu-
rability with ‘no fact of the matter’ could be placed on Kuhn’s [1962]
1970 explicit claim that paradigms are incommensurable and are therefore
equivalent in the sense that there is no fact of the matter as to which
paradigm to adopt (Ben Menahem 2006, pag. 94). Exactly who and what
brought about this conﬂation is the topic of a larger historical project,
and in our context sufﬁce it to note that Kuhn himself clearly does not
connect incommensurable paradigms with different facts: “Just because it
is a transition between incommensurabilities, the transition between
competing paradigms cannot be… forced by logic and natural experience”
[italics mine] (Kuhn 1970, pag. 149). I agree with Ben Menahem that a
claim for no fact of the matter does not follow from incommensurability,
nor does it conform to well-known examples of empirical equivalence (para
example Poincaré’s argument for the empirical equivalence of different
geometries). Brieﬂy stated, incommensurability and indeterminacy of
translation are not closely related.

Then what is indeterminacy of translation? “The thesis is then this:
manuals for translating one language into another can be set up in diver-
gent ways, all compatible with the totality of speech dispositions, yet incom-
patible with one another” (Quine 2004, pag. 120). There is no barrier of
comunicación. Sin embargo, due to the lack of logical inference from obser-
vational to theoretical sentences, es decir., the underdetermination of theories,
very different theoretical sentences can ﬁt the same observation sentence
rather than a one-to-one relationship between theory and data. Eso es, el
meaning of the data is not a determined entity that is somehow captured in
our minds (the museum myth) and is independent from its translation.

In our case studies, a repeatable survey of the same location, es decir., a detailed
protocol for re-measuring the same location in the same way, was constantly
translated while moving between working protocols. Such explicit discus-
sions between adherents of the different operational concepts of location, Alabama-
ternating between concepts across spatial scales, occurred when one was
committed to choosing a statistical package for analyzing one’s data. Fue
accepted as common knowledge that different statistical packages are based
upon different theoretical constraints and on different idealized premises of
how best to aggregate results from several spatial scales. Although the exog-
enous and interactionist concepts of space were evaluated differently by var-
ious researchers and cultural-research bodies, and unlike the breakdown of

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Perspectives on Science

435

communication outdoors at the single trap scale, at the lab, in all three cases,
researchers could agree on a manual for translating the aggregated operational
concept of location between different statistical packages. They agreed even
though they knew very well that these statistical packages employed different
computational rules and constraints for analyzing their collected data, muchos
of these rules completely unrealistic.

Quine distinguishes such an indeterminacy of translation, which is man-
ifested when different (and incompatible) sentences correlate to the same em-
pirical data from the indeterminacy of reference (what he terms “ontological
relativity”). A reference is indeterminate when the terms of the same sentence
(or theory) can be correlated with the world in different ways (Quine 1990).
In this instance, different empirical content may ﬁt the same sentence, y
there is no fact of the matter. In all of our case studies, such indeterminacy of
reference occurred. Researchers easily agreed on the truth-value of sentences
describing the survey results, either observational sentences summarizing the
ﬁeldwork or prediction sentences resulting from their SDMs (species distri-
bution model), while alternating between incompatible causal interpretations
of these sentences regarding the world.

Por ejemplo, researchers agreed on the number of organisms and species
detected on a transact line, p.ej., thirty Peromyscus maniculatus (deer mouse)
collected from Yosemite Valley in 1913 and in 2013, yet were hesitant to
agree on the causal meaning of this empirical result. Eso es, even if it is
true that the same number of deer mouse were taken from the same loca-
ción, whether or not the survey process itself was repeated will determine, en
least in part, if the ﬁndings regarding the same deer mouse’s population,
p.ej., its size or structure, were in fact reproduced across a century of re-
buscar. Perhaps the same number of rodents occupied the same number
of traps in 1913 y 2013, yet past collectors were much more experienced
and efﬁcient in collecting animals than today’s collectors? Different causal
dinámica, such as where the rodent population grows or declines, poder
still correlate with the same number of mice caught,16 so researchers
ﬁrmly maintained their skepticism as to the ontological interpretation of

16. Before analyzing this result within a species distribution model, one needs to val-
idate the result itself. Eso es, one needs to model the variance in detecting that species
across a century of research, p.ej. variance in effort, equipment or personal experience in
detección, and incorporate a model for species’ detection within one’s model of species’
occupancy (Tingley and Beissinger 2009). Desafortunadamente, building a model for validating
one’s data also depends on the researcher’s assumption about which type of variance matters
mayoría, variance in effort? Equipment? Something else? Since this assumption could also be
questioned, one can easily understand why researchers remained ontologically skeptical, en
least with regard to species that are difﬁcult to detect such as the American Pika (Shavit
and Griesemer 2011b).

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“Location” Incommensurability and “Replication” Indeterminacy

their observation sentences. Such indeterminacy of reference clearly differs
from indeterminacy of translation, as the former denotes causally inter-
preting empirical results and the latter to choosing a suitable model to
analyze these results. Sin embargo, both concepts help address the pressing
problem of replication mentioned at the beginning of this article (Shavit
and Ellison forthcoming) and both clearly differ from the incommen-
surability of placing a measurement device in what scientists call the same
ubicación.

5. Concluding Remarks: On the Beneﬁts of an Involved Philosophy of Science
en este estudio, a clariﬁcation of concepts was gained by an involved philo-
sophical approach. I use involved here in the everyday meaning of care and
active engagement. Eso es, both caring that the analysis will be true to
the scientists’ actual speech-act, accurate from the scientists’ point of view
and relevant to their interests, and active engagement in that the scholarly
account will emerge from an active participation in routine scientiﬁc work.
Such an involved approach, which is typically expected from an anthro-
pologist rather than a philosopher, in effect enriched and improved the
análisis. I argue that since this approach clariﬁed very basic scientiﬁc con-
cepts and philosophical conﬂations in three major case studies, y, since it
could be relevant to other concepts and case studies as well, it therefore
should be tested in these other cases before being ruled out.

To recapture, the main beneﬁts of noticing that biologists have very dif-
ferent concerns and goals and use very different procedures when repeating
a survey at the same location are: a) the unpacking of a common and long-
lasting conﬂation between incommensurability, empirical equivalence and
no fact of the matter; b) distinguishing incommensurability from indeter-
minacy of translation and both from indeterminacy of reference; C) expos-
ing the philosopher to a basic scientiﬁc problem (before it became
celebrated in Nature) although it was often perceived by her colleagues
as a mere philosophical pseudo-problem; and d) making the invention
of new pseudo-problems more difﬁcult since the philosopher could easily
notice if what she calls a problem is relevant to her scientist colleagues.
To be sure, no fancy method was employed here nor did the philosopher
help or guide the scientists. En cambio, the scholar merely described to the
scientists what she saw and heard and what she read in their historic
archives, consequently inviting a reﬂected response. It was the scientists’
commitment to rigor that conceptually distinguished a basic uncertainty
at the smallest spatial scale outdoors from a worked-around ambiguity
when analyzing the aggregated location data back at the laboratory.
Juntos, the scholar and scientists explicated the beneﬁts of containing
this communication breakdown in the former case, of working around

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437

the translation differences in the latter case, and noticed the beneﬁts of
not conﬂating the two.

In that respect, an involved philosopher’s ﬁndings are deeply and sys-
tematically contingent upon her speciﬁc scientiﬁc partners. She cannot
make a claim for necessary truths about science or the history and philos-
ophy of science, yet her dependence on contingent and localized contexts
may also liberate her from the conﬁnement of inevitable results and thus
increase her autonomy (Ben Menahem 2009). Finally a lack of universal
results by an involved philosopher does not imply a lack of importance.
Por ejemplo, since an explication of replication is critical for regulating
and standardizing science (Shavit and Ellison forthcoming) and since our
society is immersed and often regulated by science, then the philosopher’s
ﬁndings in this case can clearly impact society at large.

The beneﬁts of this approach should not surprise us. Nor is it completely
nuevo. Después de todo, a wise man already said that “‘to give a new concept’ can
only mean to introduce a new deployment of a concept, a new practice”
(Wittgenstein [1956] 1983, pag. 432). The aim of such an involved dialogue
between a practically oriented philosopher and a reﬂective scientist is not
to transform either of them, but to systematically build interdisciplinary
bridges while minding the gaps between them.

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