Direct perception and theory-theory approaches to social cognition are opposed with respect to whether social cognition is inferential. The latter argues that it is inferential, the former that it is not. This paper argues that the opposition in terms of inference is mistaken. A sense of inference is specified on which social cognition can be inferential and directly perceptual. Arguing for inferential social cognition does not commit to a defense of indirect social cognition if inferential access to other minds can (...) be direct. Contrary convictions are symptomatic of working with too simplistic a notion of inference. The dispute between direct and inferentialist social cognition is one where both sides can be right. The argument, then, is that inferentialism should not be called on to witness in favor or disfavor of advocates of either direct or indirect social cognition. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose an inferential and dynamic approach to understanding with models in biology. Understanding plays a central role in the practice of modeling. From its links with the other two central elements of scientific research, experimentation, and explanation, we show its epistemic relevance to the case of explanation in biology. Furthermore, by including the notion of understanding, we propose a non-referentialist perspective on scientific models, which is determined by their use.

This essay argues that nano-images would be best understood with an aesthetical approach rather than with an epistemological critique. For this aim, I propose a ‘techno-aesthetical’ approach: an enquiry into the way instruments and machines transform the logic of the sensible itself and not just the way by which it represents something else. Unlike critical epistemology, which remains self-evidently grounded on a representationalist philosophy, the approach developed here presents the advantage of providing a clear-cut distinction between image-as-representation and other modes (...) of existence of images, such as the one of ‘ imaginaction ’ that I draw from a comparison between far-field and near-field microscopies. Once this regime of imaginaction is distinguished from representation, I focus on nanotechnological percepts and argue that they follow a transmodal logic. I then draw the implications of this enquiry in terms of a new sensible condition that changes the way we think of non-living objects. Finally, I conclude that if techno-aesthetics dares to posit and articulate sensibility beyond the privileged sphere of subject/object relationships, it simultaneously engages us to consider the political character of our responsibilities towards the design of nano-engineered sensorial spaces. (shrink)

A reading of Feyerabend in Against Method, and a comparison of C.S. Peirce.

Mulliken proposed an Aufbauprinzip for the molecules on the basis of molecular spectroscopy while establishing, point by point, his concept of molecular orbit. It is the concept of electronic state which becomes the lever for his attribution of electronic configurations to a molecule. In 1932, the concept of orbit was transmuted into that of the molecular orbital to integrate the probabilistic approach of Born and to achieve quantitative accuracy. On the basis of the quantum works of Hund, Wigner, Lennard-Jones and (...) group theory, he suggested the fragment method to establish the characteristics of molecular orbital for polyatomic molecules. These developments make it possible to bring elements of thought on the relation between a molecular whole and its parts . An operational realism combined with the second law of thermodynamics can pave the way for interesting tracks in the mereological study of chemical systems. (shrink)

We propose a new account of calibration according to which calibrating a technique shows that the technique does what it is supposed to do. To motivate our account, we examine an early twentieth-century debate about chlorophyll chemistry and Mikhail Tswett’s use of chromatographic adsorption analysis to study it. We argue that Tswett’s experiments established that his technique was reliable in the special case of chlorophyll without relying on either a theory or a standard calibration experiment. We suggest that Tswett broke (...) the experimenters’ regress by appealing to material facts in the common ground for chemists at the time. (shrink)

This article presents a case study from the history of cardiology, namely, the development towards the acceptance of the coronary theory of angina pectoris. I show that the arguments which were considered decisive against the theory were not answered at the time the theory was accepted. I also point out that the experimental and practical success of the theory cannot be used to support the initial choice because, in the subsequent development, the field researchers became preoccupied with new questions and (...) problems. In spite of this, there is a sense in which the field of angina research has progressed, but it remains a challenge to exactly characterise in what sense this is the case. (shrink)

Today, mechanisms and mechanistic explanation are very popular in philosophy of science and are deemed a welcome alternative to laws of nature and deductive‐nomological explanation. Starting from Mitchell's pragmatic notion of laws, I cast doubt on their status as a genuine alternative. I argue that (1) all complex‐systems mechanisms ontologically must rely on stable regularities, while (2) the reverse need not hold. Analogously, (3) models of mechanisms must incorporate pragmatic laws, while (4) such laws themselves need not always refer to (...) underlying mechanisms. Finally, I show that Mitchell's account is more encompassing than the mechanistic account *Received August 2008; revised January 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, B‐9000 Belgium; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Experiment, instrumentation, and procedures of measurement, the body of practices and technologies forming the technical culture of science, have received at most a cameo appearance in most histories. For the history of science is almost always written as the history of theory. Of course, the interpretation of science as dominated by theory was the main pillar of the critique, launched by Kuhn, Quine, Hanson, Feyerabend, and others, of the positivist and logical empiricist traditions in the philosophy of science. Against Carnap, (...) Hempel, Nagel, and Popper, who accorded observation reports an independent status either as a source of inductive support or as a basis for the falsification of scientific theories, Hanson and Kuhn emphasized the theory-ladenness of observation. They made this central point – that all observation is shaped by reference to theory – the cornerstone of a full-blown philosophy of science by buttressing it with two additional lines of argument: First, theories are always underdetermined by the data, several theories being compatible with the same set of data. Hence, choice between theories is never a matter of empirical support, but always turns around conceptual issues. Second, statements derived from theory never confront nature alone; they are always clothed in a web of interrelated beliefs. Thus, theories, their associated observation languages, and the entire technical culture they support must be accepted or rejected as wholes. (shrink)

New accents in the philosophy of technology and philosophy of science amounting, e.g., to the so-called schools of the “New Experimentalism”, “New Instrumentalism” and, recently, “New Mechanism” emphasize the impact of instruments, experiments, and “mechanisms” of the respective technologies opened up by the progress of ever-improving measuring instruments, procedures etc. In addition, it would be necessary to accentuate the process- and action-orientation including practical responsibility problems and dynamic systems models from an epistemological perspective of the methodological scheme-interpretationist approach developed by (...) the author since the seventies of last century. The necessity of multi-disciplinary mutual influences was already time and again stressed regarding philosophy of science. But relatively new is not only the methodological turn involved but also the necessity to go to higher levels of abstraction, metatheories, action- and value-orientation. Therefore, we have to go more interdisciplinary, systems-oriented, and higher-level. That implies notable consequences for an ethics, or rather, meta-ethics for philosophy of science. Practice-oriented philosophers of science will have to go more methodological, multidisciplinary and even responsible. (shrink)

It is usually believed that science goes with things like theoria, ‘knowing that’, ontology and representing, and that techne, know-how, technology and intervening are only instrumental to science or its beneficial but nonetheless accidental side effect. In this context to be instrumental means also to be eliminable, or at least transparent, something that leaves no trace. Following the historical development of experimentation, from simple observation to modern microscopic experiments. I try to show how that view loses its ground. To produce (...) an artefact, scientific or other, is to be engaged in a complex dynamics, both ontological and epistemological in which at least two component processes, that of bringing forth and that of bringing into, are intertwined. The old dictum: ‘Science discovers, technology invents’, should be replaced by: science discovers because it invents. As a consequence scientific theory becomes an instrument of design. (shrink)

There is growing need for hybrid curricula that integrate constructivist methods from Science and Technology Studies (STS) into both engineering and policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, institutional and disciplinary barriers have made implementing such curricula difficult at many institutions. While several programs have recently been launched that mix technical training with consideration of “societal” or “ethical issues,” these programs often lack a constructivist element, leaving newly-minted practitioners entering practical fields ill-equipped to unpack the politics of knowledge (...) and technology or engage with skeptical publics. This paper presents a novel format for designing interdisciplinary coursework that combines conceptual content from STS with training in engineering and policy. Courses following this format would ideally be team taught by instructors with advanced training in diverse fields, and hence co-learning between instructors and disciplines is a key element of the format. Several instruments for facilitating both student and instructor collaborative learning are introduced. The format is also designed for versatility: in addition to being adaptable to both technical and policy training environments, topics are modularized around a conceptual core so that issues ranging from biotech to nuclear security can be incorporated to fit programmatic needs and resources. (shrink)

The paper presents findings from an ethnography of dysmorphology, a specialism in genetic medicine, to explore genetic counselling as a process through which parents ‘become informed.’ Current professional and policy debate over the use of genetic technology in medicine emphasises the need for informed choice making, and for genetic services that provide parents with what is referred to as ‘non-directive genetic counselling.’ In the paper the process of becoming informed is shown to be very specific and to have its own (...) effects. Specifically, genetics is performed in dysmorphology as a space of ambiguity and uncertainty. In addition, parents are engaged by the clinic as participants in the very processes through which their child, and perhaps their family, are clinically classified. The paper examines the effects of parents’ immersion in this clinical space of deferral to suggest how the need for reproductive choice, and calculation, is predicated upon clinical processes that shift parents between the experience of definition and uncertainty. The paper thus troubles simple stories about autonomous and informed choice, particularly reproductive choice, as icons of contemporary versions of what it is to be fully human. (shrink)

What is a valid measuring instrument? Recent philosophy has attended to logic of justification of measures, such as construct validation, but not to the question of what it means for an instrument to be a valid measure of a construct. A prominent approach grounds validity in the existence of a causal link between the attribute and its detectable manifestations. Some of its proponents claim that, therefore, validity does not depend on pragmatics and research context. In this paper, I cast doubt (...) on the possibility of a context-independent causal account of validity. I assess several versions, arguing that all of them fail to judge the validity of measuring instruments correctly. Because different research purposes require different properties from measuring instruments, no account of validity succeeds without referring to the specific research purpose that creates the need for measurement in the first place. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to analyze the problem of the relationship between chemistry and physics, by focusing on the widely discussed case of the atomic orbitals. We will begin by remembering the difference between the physical and the chemical interpretation of the concept of orbital. Then, we will refer to the claim made in 1999 that atomic orbitals have been directly imaged for the first time. On this basis, we will analyze the problem from a new approach, (...) by comparing the concept of orbital used in physics with the concept of orbital used in chemistry. Such an analysis will allow us to argue for an ontological pluralism that admits the coexistence of different ontologies without priorities or metaphysical privileges. From this philosophical framework, the concepts of chemical orbital and physical orbital correspond to two different ontologies. As a consequence, chemical orbitals are real entities belonging to the ontology of molecular chemistry, and can be observed like any other entity not belonging to the quantum mechanical ontology. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n3p309. (shrink)

We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best characterised as robustness analysis: the systematic examination of the robustness of modelling results with respect to particular modelling assumptions. We argue that this practise has epistemic value by extending William Wimsatt's account of robustness analysis as triangulation via independent means of determination. For economists robustness analysis is a crucial methodological strategy because their models are often based on idealisations and abstractions, and it is usually difficult to tell (...) which idealisations are truly harmful. (shrink)

This paper examines the biosemiotic approach to the study of life processes by fashioning a series of questions that any worthwhile semiotic study of life should ask. These questions can be understood simultaneously as: (1) questions that distinguish a semiotic biology from a non-semiotic (i.e., reductionist–physicalist) one; (2) questions that any student in biosemiotics should ask when doing a case study; and (3) still currently unanswered questions of biosemiotics. In addition, some examples of previously undertaken biosemiotic case studies are examined (...) so as to suggest a broad picture of how such a biosemiotic approach to biology might be done. (shrink)

We can understand objectivity, in the broadest sense of the term, as epistemic accountability to the real. Since at least the 1986 publication of Sandra Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism, so-called standpoint epistemologists have sought to build an understanding of such objectivity that does not essentially anchor it to a dislocated, ‘view from nowhere’ stance on the part of the judging subject. Instead, these theorists have argued that a proper understanding of objectivity must recognize that different agential standpoints offer (...) different access to objective truths, with some standpoints holding better epistemic potential than others. As Harding puts it, standpoint epistemology calls for “a critical evaluation of which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims” so as to identify those standpoints that “produce empirically more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations” (1991, 142, 149). Which standpoints enable the most objectivity with respect to a particular inquiry is, for the standpoint theorists, always an empirical at least as much as a conceptual question; it requires attention to the actual, material relationship between knowers, knowledge practices, and objects known. Standpoint epistemology was developed primarily by self-identiªed feminist epistemologists. Virtually all developments of standpoint episte-. (shrink)

Surprisingly, modified versions of the confirmation theory (Carnap and Hempel) and truth approximation theory (Popper) turn out to be smoothly sythesizable. The glue between the two appears to be the instrumentalist methodology, rather than that of the falsificationalist. The instrumentalist methodology, used in the separate, comparative evaluation of theories in terms of their successes and problems (hence, even if already falsified), provides in theory and practice the straight road to short-term empirical progress in science ( à la Laudan). It is (...) also argued that such progress is also functional for all kinds of truth approximation: observational, referential, and theoretical. This sheds new light on the long-term dynamics of science and hence on the relation between the main epistemological positions, viz., instrumentalism (Toulmin, Laudan), constructive empiricism (Van Fraassen), referential realism (Hacking, Cartwright), and theory realism of a non-essentialist nature (constructive realism à la Popper). Readership: Open minded philosophers and scientists. The book explains and justifies the scientist's intuition that the debate among philosophers about instrumentalism and realism has almost no practical consequences. (shrink)

Accounts of mental disorders focusing either on the brain as neurophysiological substrate or on systematic connections between symptoms are insufficient to account for the multifactorial nature of mental illnesses. Recently, multiplexes have been suggested to provide a holistic view of psychopathology that integrates data from different factors, at different scales, or across time. Intuitively, these multi-layered network structures present quite appealing models of mental disorders that can be constructed by powerful computational machinery based on increasing amounts of real-world data. In (...) this paper, I systematically examine what challenges psychopathology models face and to what extent different species of psychopathology models can address them. My analysis highlights that while multiplexes, as they are usually conceived, appear promising, they suffer from the same problems as other approaches. To remedy this, I suggest, we must go a step further and combine different kinds of multiplexes into 4D models. Once we embrace 4D multiplexes and identify appropriate ways to constrain them, we might unlock the true potential of multiplexes for making headway in psychopathology research. (shrink)

Mathematical theorems are cultural artifacts and may be interpreted much as works of art, literature, and tool-and-craft are interpreted. The Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus, the Central Limit Theorem of Statistics, and the Statistical Continuum Limit of field theories, all show how the world may be put together through the arithmetic addition of suitably prescribed parts (velocities, variances, and renormalizations and scaled blocks, respectively). In the limit — of smoothness, statistical independence, and large N — higher-order parts, such as accelerations, (...) are, for the most, part irrelevant, affirming that, in the end, most of the world's particulars may be averaged over (a very un-Scriptural point of view). (We work out all of this in technical detail, including a nice geometric picture of stochastic integration, and a method of calculating the variance of the sum of dependent random variables using renormalization group ideas.) These fundamental theorems affirm a culture that is additive, ahistorical, Cartesian, and continuist, sharing in what might be called a species of modern culture. We understand mathematical results as useful because, like many other such artifacts, they have been adapted to fit the world, and the world has been adapted to fit their capacities. Such cultural interpretation is in effect motivation for the mathematics, and might well be offered to students as a way of helping them understand what is going on at the blackboard. Philosophy of mathematics might want to pay more attention to the history and detailed technical features of sophisticated mathematics, as a balance to the usual concerns that arise in formalist or even Platonist positions. (shrink)

The concept of observability of entities in physical science is typically analysed in terms of the nature and significance of a dichotomy between observables and unobservables. In the present work, however, this categorization is resisted and observability is analysed in a descriptive way in terms of the information which one can receive through interaction with objects in the world. The account of interaction and the transfer of information is done using applicable scientific theories. In this way, the question of observability (...) of scientific entities is put to science itself. The result is a demonstration that observability has many dimensions, some more epistemically significant than others. (shrink)

Again and again utopian hopes are connected with the life sciences (no hunger, health for everyone; life without diseases, longevity), but simultaneously serious research shows uncertain, incoherent, and ambivalent results. It is unrealistic to expect that these uncertainties will disappear. We start by providing a not exhaustive list of five different types of uncertainties end-users of nutrigenomics have to cope with without being able to perceive them as risks and to subject them to risk-analysis. First, genes connected with the human (...) body or nutrients can have different functions in interaction with their environment (for instance, one nutrient can be healthy for the heart, but can also be a high risk in relation to cancer). Secondly, uncertainties are formed by risk analyses. Will it be possible to calculate a certain risk of getting a certain condition with a certain lifestyle? Will it be difficult to separate the genetic component and the lifestyle component? How high will these risks be? How will these risks be handled by the actors? In the case of personal genotyping, it is unclear how frequent an adverse polymorphism will occur. Will every individual have a certain vulnerability to a certain disease or will it only be applicable to a small group of the population or particular populations? Thirdly, dietary advices are subject to uncertainties and still to be developed professional standards: some will have adverse outcomes, some will not delay the disease, and some will assume uncertain associations between nutrients, lifestyle, and genetic vulnerabilities. Fourth, with regard to the usefulness of tests it is uncertain to what extent risks indications about obesity and diabetes and other vulnerabilities really influence people to live healthier and therefore will help to prevent these conditions. Fifth, it is uncertain how and what nutrigenomics products will be developed and used. Will it be possible to develop more effectively health improving products? Or is this too difficult and will nutrigenomics continue to be used in not always justified health claims as a commercial and marketing tool? Present-day ethics and theories of responsibilities presuppose that uncertainties will disappear and concentrate on what seems to be fixed and stable in science. We develop provisional thoughts that assume that the dynamic of science to produce uncertainties and dilemmas is endemic, and we stress the need for consumers to institutionalize value searching, exploring, and deliberating devices in the health and food sector to find out the most important uncertainties and correspondingly socially desirable research priorities. (shrink)

Recent attention given to the upstart movement of experimental philosophy is much deserved. But now that experimental philosophy is beginning to enter a stage of maturity, it is time to consider its relation to other philosophical traditions that have issued similar assaults against ingrained and potentially misguided philosophical habits. Experimental philosophy is widely known for rejecting a philosophical reliance on intuitions as evidence in philosophical argument. In this it shares much with another branch of empiricist philosophy, namely, pragmatism. Taking Kwame (...) Anthony Appiah's forthright and cautious endorsement of experimental philosophy as my model, I show that experimental philosophy and pragmatist philosophy share more than adherents of either philosophical method have yet to allow. I then use this comparison to show how the new experimentalisms could benefit from a rereading of century-old pragmatist insights about philosophical methodology. (shrink)

Since the practice turn, the role technologies play in the production of scientific knowledge has become a prominent topic in science studies. Much existing scholarship, however, either limits technology to merely mechanical instrumentation or uses the term for a wide variety of items. This article argues that technologies in scientific practice can be understood as a result of past scientific knowledge becoming sedimented in materials, like model organisms, synthetic reagents or mechanical instruments, through the routine use of these materials in (...) subsequent research practice. The proposed theoretical interpretation of technology is examined through a case where a model organism—Drosophila melanogaster—acted as a technology for investigating a contested biological effect of a mechanical instrument: Hermann J. Muller’s experiments on X-ray mutagenicity in the 1920s. The article reconstructs how Muller employed two synthetic Drosophila stocks as tests for measuring X-rays’ capacity to cause genetic aberration. It argues that past scientific knowledge sedimented in the Drosophila stocks influenced Muller’s perception of X-ray-induced mutation. It further describes how Muller’s concept of X-ray mutagenicity sedimented through the adoption of X-ray machines as a ready-made resource for producing mutants by other geneticists, for instance George Beadle and Edward Tatum in their experiments on Neurospora crassa, despite ongoing disputes surrounding Muller’s conclusions. Technological sedimentation is proposed as a potential explanation why sedimentation and disputation may often coexist in the history of science. (shrink)

In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens's proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme's principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accommodate a reliabilism which (...) has been freed from its inessential ties to naturalism. Unlike naturalistic epistemologists, the Strong Programme's sociologistic reliabilist insists that all scientific facts are the product of both natural and social causal phenomena. Anticipating objections, I draw on Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations to explain how the sociologistic reliabilist can account for standard intuitions about the objective elements of knowledge. I also explain how the Strong Programme theorist can distinguish between a belief's seeming reliable and its being reliable. (shrink)

Joseph Rouse has drawn from Heidegger’s early philosophy to develop what he calls a “practical hermeneutics of science.” With this, he has not only become an important player in the recent trend towards practice-based conceptualisations of science, he has also emerged as the predominant expositor of Heidegger’s philosophy of science. Yet, there are serious shortcomings in both Rouse’s theory of science and his interpretation of Heidegger. In the first instance, Rouse’s practical hermeneutics appears confused on the topic of realism. In (...) the second instance, Rouse suppresses Heidegger’s distinction between existence and essence, and hence fails to grasp the latter’s corollary distinction between scientic research and everyday practice. I argue that, by accepting a correction in his interpretation of Heidegger, Rouse would find the means to resolve the debilitating tensions in his stance towards realism. (shrink)

Our concern is in explaining how and why models give us useful knowledge. We argue that if we are to understand how models function in the actual scientific practice the representational approach to models proves either misleading or too minimal. We propose turning from the representational approach to the artefactual, which implies also a new unit of analysis: the activity of modelling. Modelling, we suggest, could be approached as a specific practice in which concrete artefacts, i.e., models, are constructed with (...) the help of specific representational means and used in various ways, for example, for the purposes of scientific reasoning, theory construction and design of experiments and other artefacts. Furthermore, in this activity of modelling the model construction is intertwined with the construction of new phenomena, theoretical principles and new scientific concepts. We will illustrate these claims by studying the construction of the ideal heat engine by Sadi Carnot. (shrink)

The anti-metaphysical argument against scientific realism is the following: Knowledge of unobservable entities implies metaphysical knowledge; There is no metaphysical knowledge. Therefore, there is no knowledge of unobservable entities. This argument has strangely received little attention in the profuse literature on scientific realism. This paper claims that the AMA is logically more fundamental than both the pessimistic meta-induction and the underdetermination argument. The second and main claim of this paper is that the instrumentalists’ use of AMA is incoherent. The gist (...) of my argument is that experimental knowledge requires minimally metaphysical knowledge, and that minimally metaphysical knowledge—when associated with empirical knowledge—suffices to yield a minimal knowledge of the unobservable. I then examine and reject two possible responses: minimally metaphysical instrumentalism and algebraic instrumentalism. (shrink)

Relying on the notion of “overlapping perspectives,” this paper argues that entity realism and perspectivism are complementary. According to entity realism, it is justified to maintain a positive attitude toward the existence of unobservable entities with which multiple experimental interactions are possible. Perspectivism also explains that our beliefs about these entities are bounded by historically contingent theoretical and instrumental perspectives. The argument of the paper is developed through a discussion of Ronald Giere’s versions of realism: entity realism, constructive realism, and (...) perspectival realism. (shrink)

In experimental settings, scientists often “make” new things, in which case the aim is to intervene in order to produce experimental objects and processes—characterized as ‘effects’. In this discussion, I illuminate an important performative function in measurement and experimentation in general: intervention-based experimental production (IEP). I argue that even though the goal of IEP is the production of new effects, it can be informative for causal details in scientific representations. Specifically, IEP can be informative about causal relations in: regularities under (...) study; ‘intervention systems’, which are measurement/experimental systems; and new technological systems. (shrink)

In experimental settings, scientists often “make” new things, in which case the aim is to intervene in order to produce experimental objects and processes—characterized as ‘effects’. In this discussion, I illuminate an important performative function in measurement and experimentation in general: intervention-based experimental production. I argue that even though the goal of IEP is the production of new effects, it can be informative for causal details in scientific representations. Specifically, IEP can be informative about causal relations in: regularities under study; (...) ‘intervention systems’, which are measurement/experimental systems; and new technological systems. (shrink)

The ways in which the various activities of synthetic biology connect to those of conventional biology display both a multiplicity and variety that reflect the multiplicity and variety of meanings for which the term synthetic biology has been invoked, today as in the past. Central to this variety, as well as to the connection itself, is the complex relationship between knowing and making that has prevailed in the life sciences. That relationship is the focus of this article. More specifically, my (...) aim is to explore the different assumptions about how knowing is related to making that have prevailed, implicitly or explicitly in the various activities—now or in the past—subsumed under the name synthetic biology. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper focuses on the opening of a discursive space: the emergence of informational and scriptural representations of life and their self-negating consequences for the construction of biological meaning. It probes the notion of writing and the book of life and shows how molecular biology's claims to a status of language and texuality undermines its own objective of control. These textual significations were historically contingent. The informational representations of heredity and life were not an outcome of the internal cognitive (...) momentum of molecular biology; they were not a logical necessity of the unravelling of the base-pairing of the DNA double-helix. They were transported into molecular biology still within the protein paradigm of the gene in the 1940s and permeated nearly every discipline in the life and social sciences. These information-based models, metaphors, linguistic, and semiotic tools which were central to the formulation of the genetic code were transported into molecular biology from cybernetics, information theory, electronic computing, and control and communication systems — technosciences that were deeply embedded with the military experiences of world war II and the Cold War. The information discourse thus became fixed in molecular biology not because it worked in the narrow epistemic sense (it did not), but because it positioned molecular biology within postwar discourse and culture, perhaps within the transition to a post-modern information-based society. (shrink)

My paper examines the potential of Gaston Bachelard’s concept of phenomenotechnique through a critique of its historical reception and an analysis of its epistemological implications. Vis-a-vis constructivist and pragmatist interpretations, I argue that the core issue at stake in this concept is not just to regard scientific knowledge as ‘fabricated’ through technical means, but also to understand the radical difference that lies between the experience of a world given to and measured by scientists, and one that is ontologically expanded by (...) the conceptual creations of science. In his reflections on the ‘phenomenotechnical realisation’ of noumena in microphysics, mathematics and chemistry, Bachelard not only anticipated a new epistemic modality which has become eminent now in computerised, data-centric approaches to nature and culture; he also became one of the first philosophers to explore the human experience of a reality inherently built from, and no longer just described by mathematical tools and models. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature concerning scientific experimentation, the notion of robustness has been solely discussed in relation to experimental results. In this paper, I propose a novel sense of experimental robustness that applies to experimental procedures. I call the foregoing sense of robustness procedure robustness and characterize it as the capacity of an experimental procedure to maintain its intended function invariant during the experimental process despite possible variations in its inputs. I argue that PR is a precondition for what I (...) call result robustness, which refers to the traditional sense of experimental robustness, namely the existence of convergent experimental results obtained through different and independent means of detection. Furthermore, I argue, PR and RR constitute useful experimental strategies in the context of high-energy physics experiments, but these strategies are not without limitations. (shrink)

In the traditional conception of science one assumes that science produces results which are certain and precise. It is argued that this picture is flawed and needs to be replaced with a view where uncertainty and imprecision are an integral part of the scientific enterprise. Uncertainty is still poorly understood by many practising scientists. However, several developments in science indicate that some epistemological uncertainty, e.g. due to processes of abstraction and idealization, will always follow advances in scientific knowledge. There are (...) also other developments that indicate some principal ontological uncertainties, i.e. uncertainties that are due to how the world is. Complexity is one such example. Remarks on post-normal science are thus included. This paper argues, therefore, that scientific uncertainty is a multi-dimensional concept, and that it is unavoidable because it is often the result as much as the cause of new knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a novel argument for scientific realism. In contrast to most recent defenses of SR, my defense of SR does not rely on the no-miracles argument. Instead, I take a more unconventional approach: I focus on the different kinds of justification available to different individuals in relation to different kinds of propositions. I maintain that this alternative focus shows that most people are warranted in believing many propositions about unobservables. The paper is divided into three main (...) sections. In the first, I rehearse the main moves in the recent debate about SR. In the second, I argue that the discussion in section one enables us to see that most of the arguments in the recent debate about SR mistake their target: instead of being about SR, they are about meta-SR. I argue that what I call the JJ-principle should be rejected and, further, that if the JJ-principle is rejected, then meta-SR may be cleaved from SR. This enables me to advance to a position I call thin realism in the third and final section of the paper. (shrink)