Science is replete with falsehoods that epistemically facilitate understanding by virtue of being the very falsehoods they are. In view of this puzzling fact, some have relaxed the truth requirement on understanding. I offer a factive view of understanding that fully accommodates the puzzling fact in four steps: (i) I argue that the question how these falsehoods are related to the phenomenon to be understood and the question how they figure into the content of understanding it are independent. (ii) I (...) argue that the falsehoods do not figure into the understanding’s content by being elements of its periphery or core. (iii) Drawing lessons from case studies, I argue that the falsehoods merely enable understanding. When working with such falsehoods, only the truths we extract from them are elements of the content of our understanding. (iv) I argue that the extraction view is compatible with the thesis that falsehoods can have an epistemic value by virtue of being the very falsehoods they are. (shrink)

Scientists appeal to models when explaining phenomena. Such explanations are often dubbed model explanations or model-based explanations. But what are the precise conditions for ME? Are ME special explanations? In our paper, we first rebut two definitions of ME and specify a more promising one. Based on this analysis, we single out a related conception that is concerned with explanations that are induced from working with a model. We call them ‘model-induced explanations’. Second, we study three paradigmatic cases of alleged (...) ME. We argue that all of them are MIE, upon closer examination. Third, we argue that this undermines the building consensus that model explanations are special explanations that, e.g., challenge the factivity of explanation. Instead, it suggests that what is special about models in science is the epistemology behind how models induce explanations. (shrink)

It is widely argued that the skills of scientific expertise are tacit, meaning that they are difficult to study. In this essay, I draw on work from the philosophy of action about the nature of skills to show that there is another access point for the study of skills—namely, skill transmission in science education. I will begin by outlining Small’s Aristotelian account of skills, including a brief exposition of its advantages over alternative accounts of skills. He argues that skills exist (...) in a sort of life cycle between learning, practicing, and transmitting, which provides reasons to think that we should pay close attention to the way skills are transmitted in teaching and learning. To demonstrate how a study of skill transmittance can be revealing about the nature of skills in expertise, I explore an example—what I identify as the skill of tension-balancing in model-building. After describing the skill, I briefly examine two case studies from the science education literature that reveal insights about the skill of tension-balancing as it functions in the practice of model-building. (shrink)

Agent-based accounts of scientific representation all agree that the representational relationship is constituted by the actions of scientists. Despite this agreement, there are several differences in how agent-based accounts describe scientific representation. In this essay, I argue that these differences do not undercut the compatibility between the accounts. I make my argument by examining the nature of human agency and demonstrating that scientific, representational actions are multiply describable. I then argue that the differences between the accounts are valuable because they (...) help to bring different parts of the representational practices of science into greater focus. (shrink)