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  1. The Discovery of the Expanding Universe: Philosophical and Historical Dimensions.Patrick M. Duerr & Abigail Holmes - manuscript
    What constitutes a scientific discovery? What role do discoveries play in science, its dynamics and social practices? Must every discovery be attributed to an individual discoverer (or a small number of discoverers)? The paper explores these questions by first critically examining extant philosophical explications of scientific discovery—the models of scientific discovery, propounded by Kuhn, McArthur, Hudson, and Schindler. As a simple, natural and powerful alternative, we proffer the “change-driver model”: in a nutshell, it takes discoveries to be cognitive scientific results (...)
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  2. Coherence of Inferences.Matheus Silva - manuscript
    It is usually accepted that deductions are non-informative and monotonic, inductions are informative and nonmonotonic, abductions create hypotheses but are epistemically irrelevant, and both deductions and inductions can’t provide new insights. In this article, I attempt to provide a more cohesive view of the subject with the following hypotheses: (1) the paradigmatic examples of deductions, such as modus ponens and hypothetical syllogism, are not inferential forms, but coherence requirements for inferences; (2) since any reasoner aims to be coherent, any inference (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Discovering Patterns: On the Norms of Mechanistic Inquiry.Lena Kästner & Philipp Haueis - forthcoming - Erkenntnis 3:1-26.
    What kinds of norms constrain mechanistic discovery and explanation? In the mechanistic literature, the norms for good explanations are directly derived from answers to the metaphysical question of what explanations are. Prominent mechanistic accounts thus emphasize either ontic or epistemic norms. Still, mechanistic philosophers on both sides agree that there is no sharp distinction between the processes of discovery and explanation. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that ontic and epistemic accounts of explanation will be accompanied by ontic and epistemic (...)
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  4. The Promise of Supersymmetry.Enno Fischer - 2024 - Synthese 203 (6):1-21.
    Supersymmetry (SUSY) has long been considered an exceptionally promising theory. A central role for the promise has been played by naturalness arguments. Yet, given the absence of experimental findings it is questionable whether the promise will ever be fulfilled. Here, I provide an analysis of the promises associated with SUSY, employing a concept of pursuitworthiness. A research program like SUSY is pursuitworthy if (1) it has the plausible potential to provide high epistemic gain and (2) that gain can be achieved (...)
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  5. Justifying Scientific Progress.Jacob Stegenga - 2024 - Philosophy of Science 91:543-560.
    I defend a novel account of scientific progress centred around justification. Science progresses, on this account, where there is a change in justification. I consider three options for explicating this notion of change in justification. This account of scientific progress dispels with a condition for scientific progress that requires accumulation of truth or truthlikeness, and it emphasises the social nature of scientific justification.
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  6. Exploring Regulatory Flexibility to Create Novel Incentives to Optimize Drug Discovery.Jacqueline A. Sullivan & E. Richard Gold - 2024 - Frontiers in Medicine 11 (Section on Regulatory Science).
    Efforts by governments, firms, and patients to deliver pioneering drugs for critical health needs face a challenge of diminishing efficiency in developing those medicines. While multi-sectoral collaborations involving firms, researchers, patients, and policymakers are widely recognized as crucial for countering this decline, existing incentives to engage in drug development predominantly target drug manufacturers and thereby do little to stimulate collaborative innovation. In this mini review, we consider the unexplored potential within pharmaceutical regulations to create novel incentives to encourage a diverse (...)
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  7. The Artificial Intelligence Explanatory Trade-Off on the Logic of Discovery in Chemistry.José Ferraz-Caetano - 2023 - Philosophies 8 (2):17.
    Explanation is a foundational goal in the exact sciences. Besides the contemporary considerations on ‘description’, ‘classification’, and ‘prediction’, we often see these terms in thriving applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in chemistry hypothesis generation. Going beyond describing ‘things in the world’, these applications can make accurate numerical property calculations from theoretical or topological descriptors. This association makes an interesting case for a logic of discovery in chemistry: are these induction-led ventures showing a shift in how chemists can problematize research questions? (...)
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  8. Naturalness and the Forward-Looking Justification of Scientific Principles.Enno Fischer - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (5):1050 - 1059.
    It has been suggested that particle physics has reached the "dawn of the post-naturalness era." I provide an explanation of the current shift in particle physicists' attitude towards naturalness. I argue that the naturalness principle was perceived to be supported by the theories it has inspired. The potential coherence between major beyond the Standard Model (BSM) proposals and the naturalness principle led to an increasing degree of credibility of the principle among particle physicists. The absence of new physics at the (...)
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  9. Categorical Abstractions of Molecular Structures of Biological Objects: A Case Study of Nucleic Acids.Jinyeong Gim - 2023 - Global Philosophy 33 (5):No.43.
    The type-level abstraction is a formal way to represent molecular structures in biological practice. Graphical representations of molecular structures of biological objects are also used to identify functional processes of things. This paper will reveal that category theory is a formal mathematical language not only to visualize molecular structures of biological objects as type-level abstraction formally but also to understand how to infer biological functions from the molecular structures of biological objects. Category theory is a toolkit to understand biological knowledge (...)
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  10. Human Thought, Mathematics, and Physical Discovery.Gila Sher - 2023 - In Carl Posy & Yemima Ben-Menahem (eds.), Mathematical Knowledge, Objects and Applications: Essays in Memory of Mark Steiner. Springer. pp. 301-325.
    In this paper I discuss Mark Steiner’s view of the contribution of mathematics to physics and take up some of the questions it raises. In particular, I take up the question of discovery and explore two aspects of this question – a metaphysical aspect and a related epistemic aspect. The metaphysical aspect concerns the formal structure of the physical world. Does the physical world have mathematical or formal features or constituents, and what is the nature of these constituents? The related (...)
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  11. The future won’t be pretty: The nature and value of ugly, AI-designed experiments.Michael T. Stuart - 2023 - In Milena Ivanova & Alice Murphy (eds.), The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments. New York, NY: Routledge.
    Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...)
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  12. COVID-19 and Science Communication: The Recording and Reporting of Disease Mortality.Ognjen Arandjelovic - 2022 - Information 13 (2):97.
    The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought science to the fore of public discourse and, considering the complexity of the issues involved, with it also the challenge of effective and informative science communication. This is a particularly contentious topic, in that it is both highly emotional in and of itself; sits at the nexus of the decision-making process regarding the handling of the pandemic, which has effected lockdowns, social behaviour measures, business closures, and others; and concerns the recording and reporting of (...)
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  13. Risonanze pragmaticistiche in T. Kuhn.Davide Giovedì - 2022 - Nóema 13:68-97.
    "La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche", dopo più di mezzo secolo dalla sua pubblicazione, è ancora in grado di offrire un contributo alla pratica filosofica? In questo articolo, attraverso i concetti peirceani di Abito, Abduzione e Verità, si propone una lettura pragmaticista del testo di Kuhn che intende rilanciare un fecondo confronto, ancora poco considerato, tra i due filosofi.
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  14. Integrating Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation.Michael J. Shaffer - 2022 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 14 (2):1-18.
    Tomis Kapitan’s work on Peirce’s conception of abduction was instrumental for our coming to see how Peircean abduction both relates to and is importantly different from inference to the best explanation (IBE). However, he ultimately concluded that Peirce’s conception of abduction was a muddle. Despite the deeply problematic nature of Peirce’s theory of abduction in these respects, Kapitan’s work on Peircean abduction offers insight into the nature of abductive inquiry that is importantly relevant to the task of making sense of (...)
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  15. A Philosophy of First Contact: Stanisław Lem and the Myth of Cognitive Universality.Massimiliano Simons - 2021 - Pro-Fil: An Internet Journal of Philosophy 3 (22):65-77.
    Within science fiction the topic of ‘first contact’ is a popular theme. How will an encounter with aliens unfold? Will we succeed in communicating with them? Although such questions are present in the background of many science fiction novels, they are not always explicitly dealt with and even if so, often in a poor way. In this article, I will introduce a typology of five dominant types of solutions to the problem of first contact in science fiction works. The first (...)
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  16. Bilimde Keşif ve Gerekçelendirme Bağlamı Ayrımı Tartışmaları.Mert Ünal & Ali Sarı - 2021 - Tabula Rasa Felsefe and Teoloji 1 (36):27-38.
    The distinction between context of discovery and context of justification points out to the difference between the generation a new idea or hyphotesis and the testing of it. Although the distinction is attributed to Hans Reichenbach and Karl Popper, Larry Laudan argues that the history of distinction is dates back to the debates of scientific in the seventeenth century. While in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was no need to distinguish between discovery and justification, in the twentieth century discovery (...)
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  17. Public Values in the Right Context.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2020 - Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (1):57-62.
    [Comment] I am sympathetic to Avner de Shalit’s position that a political philosophy should incorporate public values, but I see their role differently. Philosophers of science standardly distinguish between values being introduced in the context of discovery (inputs into the investigation or arguments) and in the context of justification (acceptance or rejection of substantive claims in light of the arguments or investigation). I argue that de Shalit is wrong to put the public values in the context of discovery; with respect (...)
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  18. The Pursuit of Knowledge and the Problem of the Unconceived Alternatives.Fabio Sterpetti & Marta Bertolaso - 2020 - Topoi 39 (4):881-892.
    In the process of scientific discovery, knowledge ampliation is pursued by means of non-deductive inferences. When ampliative reasoning is performed, probabilities cannot be assigned objectively. One of the reasons is that we face the problem of the unconceived alternatives: we are unable to explore the space of all the possible alternatives to a given hypothesis, because we do not know how this space is shaped. So, if we want to adequately account for the process of knowledge ampliation, we need to (...)
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  19. Mapping the Deep Blue Oceans.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2019 - In Timothy Tambassi (ed.), The Philosophy of GIS. Springer. pp. 99-123.
    The ocean terrain spanning the globe is vast and complex—far from an immense flat plain of mud. To map these depths accurately and wisely, we must understand how cartographic abstraction and generalization work both in analog cartography and digital GIS. This chapter explores abstraction practices such as selection and exaggeration with respect to mapping the oceans, showing significant continuity in such practices across cartography and contemporary GIS. The role of measurement and abstraction—as well as of political and economic power, and (...)
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  20. The Philosophy of Expertise: The Case of Vatican Astronomers.Louis Caruana - 2018 - In S. J. Gionti & S. J. Kikwaya Eluo (eds.), The Vatican Observatory, Castel Gandolfo: 80th Anniversary Celebration. Springer Verlag. pp. 245-252.
    These last decades, the many contributions to the literary output on science and religion have dealt with topics that are on the cutting edge of scientific discovery, topics mainly in the area of theoretical physics, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. Philosophers of religion, responding to this trend, have therefore struggled with intricate arguments, and have often made use of the highly technical language of these sciences. The overall result was that truly original philosophical contributions, ones that present new perspectives regarding (...)
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  21. From Galileo to Hubble: Copernican principle as a philosophical dogma defining modern astronomy.Spyridon Kakos - 2018 - International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science 2 (3):13-37.
    For centuries the case of Galileo Galilei has been the cornerstone of every major argument against the church and its supposedly unscientific dogmatism. The church seems to have condemned Galileo for his heresies, just because it couldn’t and wouldn’t handle the truth. Galileo was a hero of science wrongfully accused and now – at last – everyone knows that. But is that true? This paper tries to examine the case from the point of modern physics and the conclusions drawn are (...)
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  22. Network representation and complex systems.Charles Rathkopf - 2018 - Synthese (1).
    In this article, network science is discussed from a methodological perspective, and two central theses are defended. The first is that network science exploits the very properties that make a system complex. Rather than using idealization techniques to strip those properties away, as is standard practice in other areas of science, network science brings them to the fore, and uses them to furnish new forms of explanation. The second thesis is that network representations are particularly helpful in explaining the properties (...)
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  23. Scientific revolutions, specialization and the discovery of the structure of DNA: toward a new picture of the development of the sciences.Politi Vincenzo - 2018 - Synthese 195 (5):2267-2293.
    In his late years, Thomas Kuhn became interested in the process of scientific specialization, which does not seem to possess the destructive element that is characteristic of scientific revolutions. It therefore makes sense to investigate whether and how Kuhn’s insights about specialization are consistent with, and actually fit, his model of scientific progress through revolutions. In this paper, I argue that the transition toward a new specialty corresponds to a revolutionary change for the group of scientists involved in such a (...)
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  24. Reichenbach Falls—And Rises? Reconstructing the Discovery/Justification Distinction.Monica Aufrecht - 2017 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 31 (2):151-176.
    ABSTRACTThe distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’ in philosophy of science appears simple at first but contains interesting complexities. Paul Hoyningen-Huene has catalogued some of these complexities and suggested that the core usefulness of the ‘context distinction’ is in distinguishing between descriptive and normative perspectives. Here, I expand on Hoyningen-Huene’s project by tracing the label ‘context of discovery and context of justification’ to its origin. I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, Hans Reichenbach’s initial context distinction from (...)
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  25. "Milton Munitz et le concept-limite d'« illimitation » en cosmologie (1ère partie)" [Milton Munitz on unboundedness in cosmology - Ist Part].Philippe Gagnon - 2017 - Connaître : Cahiers de l'Association Foi Et Culture Scientifique (46):104-117.
    This is the outline: 1. Introduction 2. La compréhension théorique – 2.1 Le dynamisme conceptuel et l'a priori 2.2 L'horizon conceptuel – 3. Compréhension et singularité 4. La production de signifiance 5. La présence du mystère 6. Le problème de la substantialité : l'un et le multiple – 6.1 La notion d'un ordre implicite.
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  26. Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.Jeff Kochan - 2017 - Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.
    REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's (...)
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  27. HIT and brain reward function: a case of mistaken identity (theory).Cory Wright, Matteo Colombo & Alexander Beard - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 64:28–40.
    This paper employs a case study from the history of neuroscience—brain reward function—to scrutinize the inductive argument for the so-called ‘Heuristic Identity Theory’ (HIT). The case fails to support HIT, illustrating why other case studies previously thought to provide empirical support for HIT also fold under scrutiny. After distinguishing two different ways of understanding the types of identity claims presupposed by HIT and considering other conceptual problems, we conclude that HIT is not an alternative to the traditional identity theory so (...)
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  28. The life of the cortical column: opening the domain of functional architecture of the cortex.Haueis Philipp - 2016 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 38 (3):1-27.
    The concept of the cortical column refers to vertical cell bands with similar response properties, which were initially observed by Vernon Mountcastle’s mapping of single cell recordings in the cat somatic cortex. It has subsequently guided over 50 years of neuroscientific research, in which fundamental questions about the modularity of the cortex and basic principles of sensory information processing were empirically investigated. Nevertheless, the status of the column remains controversial today, as skeptical commentators proclaim that the vertical cell bands are (...)
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  29. Imagination and Creativity.Dustin Stokes - 2016 - In Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination. New York: Routledge.
    This paper surveys historical and recent philosophical discussions of the relations between imagination and creativity. In the first two sections, it covers two insufficiently studied analyses of the creative imagination, that of Kant and Sartre, respectively. The next section discusses imagination and its role in scientific discovery, with particular emphasis on the writings of Michael Polanyi, and on thought experiments and experimental design. The final section offers a brief discussion of some very recent work done on conceptual relations between imagination (...)
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  30. Epistemic Landscapes, Optimal Search, and the Division of Cognitive Labor.Jason McKenzie Alexander, Johannes Himmelreich & Christopher Thompson - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (3):424-453,.
    This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led (...)
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  31. Tvö viðhorf til vísindalegrar þekkingar -- eða eitt?Finnur Dellsén - 2015 - Ritið -- Tímarit Hugvísindastofnunar 15 (1):135-155.
    There are two main approaches to the epistemology of science. On the one hand, some hold that a scientific hypothesis is confirmed to the extent that the hypothesis explains the evidence better than alternative hypotheses concerning the same subject-matter. This idea is often referred to as Inference to the Best Explanation. On the other hand, some hold that a scientific hypothesis is confirmed to the extent that the hypothesis is probable given the evidence. This idea is often associated with Bayesianism (...)
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  32. Guidelines for Exploring an Unknown World: The Universality of Military Principles.Kai Jiang - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences 5 (1):33-51.
    Despite its pertinence to every field of study, no systematic theory exists for the exploration of the unknown world of new knowledge. In order to construct such a theory, this paper draws on the unique and highly refined principles of military strategy, in the process demonstrating the universal applicability of such principles and developing an effective analogy for the process of research. Such principles include diverging advance, converging attack, and selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior. In seeking further discoveries, (...)
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  33. Science, Religion, and “The Will to Believe".Alexander Klein - 2015 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 5 (1):72-117.
    Do the same epistemic standards govern scientific and religious belief? Or should science and religion operate in completely independent epistemic spheres? Commentators have recently been divided on William James’s answer to this question. One side depicts “The Will to Believe” as offering a separate-spheres defense of religious belief in the manner of Galileo. The other contends that “The Will to Believe” seeks to loosen the usual epistemic standards so that religious and scientific beliefs can both be justified by a unitary (...)
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  34. Circles of Scientific Practice: Regressus, Mathēsis, Denkstil.Jeff Kochan - 2015 - In Dimitri Ginev (ed.), Critical Science Studies after Ludwik Fleck. St. Kliment Ohridski University Press. pp. 83-99.
    Hermeneutic studies of science locate a circle at the heart of scientific practice: scientists only gain knowledge of what they, in some sense, already know. This may seem to threaten the rational validity of science, but one can argue that this circle is a virtuous rather than a vicious one. A virtuous circle is one in which research conclusions are already present in the premises, but only in an indeterminate and underdeveloped way. In order to defend the validity of science, (...)
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  35. Putting a Spin on Circulating Reference, or How to Rediscover the Scientific Subject.Jeff Kochan - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:103-107.
    Bruno Latour claims to have shown that a Kantian model of knowledge, which he describes as seeking to unite a disembodied transcendental subject with an inaccessible thing-in-itself, is dramatically falsified by empirical studies of science in action. Instead, Latour puts central emphasis on scientific practice, and replaces this Kantian model with a model of “circulating reference.” Unfortunately, Latour's alternative schematic leaves out the scientific subject. I repair this oversight through a simple mechanical procedure. By putting a slight spin on Latour's (...)
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  36. Reason, Emotion, and the Context Distinction.Jeff Kochan - 2015 - Philosophia Scientiae 19 (1):35-43.
    La recherche empirique et philosophique récente remet en question l’idée selon laquelle raison et émotion sont nécessairement en conflit l’une avec l’autre. Pourtant, les philosophes des sciences ont été lents à réagir à cette recherche. Je soutiens qu’ils continuent à exclure l’émotion de leurs modèles du raisonnement scientifique, parce qu’ils considèrent qu’elle appartient typiquement au contexte de découverte plutôt qu’au contexte de justification. Je suggère toutefois, en prenant pour exemple le fiabilisme, que des travaux récents en épistémologie remettent en cause (...)
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  37. Mapping Kinds in GIS and Cartography.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2015 - In Catherine Kendig (ed.), Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice. Routledge. pp. 197-216.
    Geographic Information Science (GIS) is an interdisciplinary science aiming to detect and visually represent patterns in spatial data. GIS is used by businesses to determine where to open new stores and by conservation biologists to identify field study locations with relatively little anthropogenic influence. Products of GIS include topographic and thematic maps of the Earth’s surface, climate maps, and spatially referenced demographic graphs and charts. In addition to its social, political, and economic importance, GIS is of intrinsic philosophical interest due (...)
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  38. Theoretical identities may not be necessary.Alik Pelman - 2014 - Analysis 74 (3):412-422.
    Following insights from the New Theory of Reference, it has become widely accepted that theoretical identities like ‘water = H2O' are necessary. However, some have challenged this claim. I propose yet another challenge in the form of a sceptical argument. The argument is based on the contention that the necessity of theoretical identities is dependent upon criteria of identity. Thus, a theoretical identity is necessary given one criterion of identity but contingent given another. Since we do not know which criteria (...)
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  39. La ruptura epistemológica de Bachelard a Balibar y Pêcheux.Pedro Karczmarczyk - 2013 - Estudios de Epistemología 10:09-33.
    Resumen: En el presente trabajo intentaremos analizar cierta serie o tradi-ción de reflexiones sobre el conocimiento científico que lo caracteri-zan por su discontinuidad en relación al conocimiento ordinario osentido común. El origen de esta serie puede localizarse en la obrade Gaston Bachelard y su peculiar estudio de los actos epistemológicoscon los que se rompe con el pasado en una disciplina científica. Estosactos contrastan con lo que este autor califica como el “mitocontinuista” del empirismo. Esta posición será apropiada porAlthusser y desarrollada (...)
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  40. Seeing and Believing: Galileo, Aristotelians, and the Mountains on the Moon.David Marshall Miller - 2013 - In Daniel De Simone & John Hessler (eds.), The Starry Messenger. Levenger Press. pp. 131-145.
    Galileo’s telescopic lunar observations, announced in Siderius Nuncius (1610), were a triumph of observational skill and ingenuity. Yet, unlike the Medicean stars, Galileo’s lunar “discoveries” were not especially novel. Indeed, Plutarch had noted the moon’s uneven surface in classical times, and many other renaissance observers had also turned their gaze moonward, even (in Harriot’s case) aided by telescopes of their own. Moreover, what Galileo and his contemporaries saw was colored by the assumptions they already had. Copernicans assumed the moon was (...)
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  41. What is Scientific Progress? Lessons from Scientific Practice.Moti Mizrahi - 2013 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (2):375-390.
    Alexander Bird argues for an epistemic account of scientific progress, whereas Darrell Rowbottom argues for a semantic account. Both appeal to intuitions about hypothetical cases in support of their accounts. Since the methodological significance of such appeals to intuition is unclear, I think that a new approach might be fruitful at this stage in the debate. So I propose to abandon appeals to intuition and look at scientific practice instead. I discuss two cases that illustrate the way in which scientists (...)
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  42. Experiment and theory building.Lydia Patton - 2012 - Synthese 184 (3):235-246.
    I examine the role of inference from experiment in theory building. What are the options open to the scientific community when faced with an experimental result that appears to be in conflict with accepted theory? I distinguish, in Laudan's (1977), Nickels's (1981), and Franklin's (1993) sense, between the context of pursuit and the context of justification of a scientific theory. Making this distinction allows for a productive middle position between epistemic realism and constructivism. The decision to pursue a new or (...)
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  43. Intervention, Causal Reasoning, and the Neurobiology of Mental Disorders: Pharmacological Drugs as Experimental Instruments.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2):542-551.
    In psychiatry, pharmacological drugs play an important experimental role in attempts to identify the neurobiological causes of mental disorders. Besides being developed in applied contexts as potential treatments for patients with mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play a crucial role in research contexts as experimental instruments that facilitate the formulation and revision of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. This paper examines the various epistemic functions that pharmacological drugs serve in the discovery, refinement, testing, and elaboration of neurobiological theories of mental disorders. I (...)
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  44. (2 other versions)Review of Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I. [REVIEW]Jeff Kochan - 2011 - Isis 102 (3):594-595.
    Review of: Isabelle Stengers (2010), Cosmopolitics I, trans. Robert Bononno (Posthumanities, 9) (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press).
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  45. The Chemical Characterization of the Gene: Vicissitudes of Evidential Assessment.Jacob Stegenga - 2011 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 33 (1):105-127.
    The chemical characterization of the substance responsible for the phenomenon of “transformation” of pneumococci was presented in the now famous 1944 paper by Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty. Reception of this work was mixed. Although interpreting their results as evidence that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the molecule responsible for genetic changes was, at the time, controversial, this paper has been retrospectively celebrated as providing such evidence. The mixed and changing assessment of the evidence presented in the paper was due to the (...)
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  46. Darwinian 'blind' hypothesis formation revisited.Maria E. Kronfeldner - 2010 - Synthese 175 (2):193--218.
    Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...)
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  47. The intelligibility of nature: How science makes sense of the world, by Peter Dear. [REVIEW]Louis Caruana - 2008 - Heythrop Journal 49 (4):702-703.
    History indicates that science is primarily not a theoretical but a practical enterprise. It represents the symbiosis of two human activities, namely, on the one hand, natural philosophy, which seeks to make sense of the world, and, on the other hand, instrumental thinking, which seeks to control the world.
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  48. Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meeting Objectivity and Logic.Frederick Grinnell - 2008 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    This book describes how scientists bring their own interests and passions to their work, illustrates the dynamics between researchers and the research community ...
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  49. (2 other versions)Making Sense of Questions in Logic and Mathematics: Mill vs. Carnap.Esther Ramharter - 2006 - Prolegomena 5 (2):209-218.
    Whether mathematical truths are syntactical (as Rudolf Carnap claimed) or empirical (as Mill actually never claimed, though Carnap claimed that he did) might seem merely an academic topic. However, it becomes a practical concern as soon as we consider the role of questions. For if we inquire as to the truth of a mathematical statement, this question must be (in a certain respect) meaningless for Carnap, as its truth or falsity is certain in advance due to its purely syntactical (or (...)
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  50. Doing science.Fred Grinnell - 2002 - Knowledge, Technology & Policy 15 (1-2):204-210.
    In recent decades, postmodernists and sociologists of science have argued that science is just one of many human activities with social and political aims -- comparable to, say, religion or art. They have questioned the objectivity of science, and whether it has any unique ability to find the truth. Not surprisingly, such claims have evoked a negative response from proponents of the traditional view of science; the debate between the two sides has been called the science wars. In the debate, (...)
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