Mess in Science and Wicked Problems Jutta Schickore Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana University This paper discusses the claim that science is “messy.” Part I argues first, that a good portion of today’s discussions about messy science is just a portrayal of familiar features of science in new terms. In the paper, I refer to this as “messy science talk.”

Kuhn, 孔多塞, and Comte: On the Justification of the “Old” Historiography of Science J. C. Pinto de Oliveira Department of Philosophy, IFCH, State University of Campinas, Brazil Despite the importance of the “historiographical revolution” in Kuhn’s work, he did not carry out a specific study about it. Without a systematic investi- gation into it, he even affirms that the “old” historiography of science (OHS) 是

科学, Sensibility and Gender in Argentina, 1820–1852 Adriana Novoa Department of History, University of South Florida This article analyzes how scientific thinking evolved in Argentina during the 1820s and 1830s. I will focus on liberals’ association of science with the emergence of a new male sensibility that feminized the role of men in society. This gendered scientific culture explains how liberals clashed in the 1830s

Intersubjective Accountability: Politics and Philosophy in the Left Vienna Circle Thomas Uebel The University of Manchester In different places Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath affirmed “a noteworthy agreement” and an “inner link” between their philosophy of science and political movements agitating for radical socio-economic change. Given the normative abstinence of Vienna Circle philosophy, indeed the metaethical com- mitments of its verificationism, this claim presents a

“True Empiricism”: The Stakes of the Cousin-Schelling Controversy Daniel Whistler Royal Holloway, University of London Between 1833 和 1835, Victor Cousin and F.W.J. Schelling engaged in an “amical but serious critique” of each other’s philosophies. 我认为, despite perceptions to the contrary, key to this exchange is a common vision of an atypical, speculative empiricism. 那是, against the grain of most commen- taries,

Interdisciplinarities in Action: Cognitive Ethnography of Bioengineering Sciences Research Laboratories Nancy J. Nersessian Harvard University The paper frames interdisciplinary research as creating complex, distributed cognitive-cultural systems. It introduces and elaborates on the method of cog- nitive ethnography as a primary means for investigating interdisciplinary cog- nitive and learning practices in situ. The analysis draws from findings of nearly 20 years of investigating such practices in

Can a Methodology Subvert the Logics of its Principal? Decolonial Meditations Nokuthula Hlabangane University of South Africa This paper raises a question that is fundamental in the relationship between Euro-Western knowledge as a system of knowing, spawned and refined under particular historical circumstances, and the methodologies that are attached to it. I argue that Euro-Western knowledge gains its hegemonic status precisely because it is a

How Do Feynman Diagrams Work? James Robert Brown University of Toronto Introduction 1. Feynman diagrams (hereafter FDs) are now iconic. Like pictures of the Bohr atom, everyone knows they have something important to do with physics. Those who work in quantum field theory, string theory, and other esoteric fields of physics use them extensively. In spite of this, it is far from clear what they

Companion Animals as Technologies in Biomedical Research Ashley Shew Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Keith Johnson Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University In this paper we examine the use of companion animals (pets) in studies of drugs and devices aimed at human and animal health and situate it within the context of philosophy of technology. We argue that companion animals serve a unique role

Methodological Strategies in Microbiome Research and their Explanatory Implications Maureen A. O’Malley University of Bordeaux University of Sydney Derek J. Skillings University of Bordeaux Early microbiome research found numerous associations between microbial community patterns and host physiological states. These findings hinted at community-level explanations. “Top-down” experiments, working with whole communities, strengthened these explanatory expectations. 现在, “bottom-up” mechanism-seeking approaches are dissecting communities to focus on specific

Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-Driven Explanations of Scientific Method Adrian Currie CSER, University of Cambridge Kirsten Walsh Philosophy, University of Nottingham Philosophers and scientists often cite ontic factors when explaining the methods and success of scientific inquiry. 那是, the adoption of a method or approach (and its subsequent success or otherwise) is explained in reference to the kind of system in which the scientist is

“An Unusual and Fast Disappearing Opportunity”: Infectious Disease, Indigenous Populations, and New Biomedical Knowledge in Amazonia, 1960–1970 Rosanna Dent McGill University Ricardo Ventura Santos Fundação Oswaldo Cruz and Museu Nacional/UFRJ In the twentieth century, biomedical researchers believed the study of Indigenous Amazonians could inform global histories of human biological diversity. This paper examines the similarities and differences of two approaches to this mid- century biomedical

Facing the Credibility Crisis of Science: On the Ambivalent Role of Pluralism in Establishing Relevance and Reliability Martin Carrier Bielefeld University Science at the interface with society is regarded with mistrust among parts of the public. Scientific judgments on matters of practical concern are not in- frequently suspected of being incompetent and biased. I discuss two proposals for remedying this deficiency. The first aims at

Demarcating Nature, Defining Ecology: Creating a Rationale for the Study of Nature’s “Primitive Conditions” S. Andrew Inkpen University of Pittsburgh The proper place of humans in ecological study has been a recurring issue. I reconstruct and evaluate an early twentieth century rationale in ecology that encouraged the treatment of humans as apart from natural processes, and I unearth the interests and assumptions, both epistemic and

“Why These Laws?”— Multiverse Discourse as a Scene of Response Jacob Pearce University of Melbourne This paper traces the emergence of “why” questions in modern cosmology and the responding proliferation of multiverse discourse in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Critics who see speculative theorizing as delving into the metaphysical are not hard to find. George Ellis’ concern that we are entering a new

The Sensation and the Stimulus: Psychophysics and the Prehistory of the Marburg School Marco Giovanelli University of Tübingen This paper analyzes the role played by Fechner’s psychophysics—the new science meant to measure sensation as a function of the stimulus—in the development of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. It will show how Cohen, in the early 1870s, in order to make sense of Kant’s obscure principle of the Anticipations

Representing Experimental Procedures through Diagrams at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider: The Communicatory Value of Diagrammatic Representations in Collaborative Research Koray Karaca University of Twente l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / 直接的 . m i t . The aim of this paper is to elucidate the

Trust without Shared Belief: Pluralist Realism and Polar Bear Conservation Jennifer Jill Fellows Douglas College Trust-building has implicitly been characterized in epistemology as necessitat- ing the adoption of shared belief. If this is so, such models of trust-building appear at odds with a metaphysical commitment to pluralist realism. In this article I offer the first steps in modeling how a pluralist realist might under- 站立