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Interpreting scientific and engineering practices: Integrating the cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions

In M. Gorman, R. Tweney, D. Gooding & A. Kincannon (eds.), Scientific and Technological Thinking. Erlbaum. pp. 17--56 (2005)

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  1. The cognitive integration of scientific instruments: Information, situated cognition, and scientific practice.Richard Heersmink - 2016 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (4):1-21.
    Researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences, particularly those working in laboratories, use a variety of artifacts to help them perform their cognitive tasks. This paper analyses the relationship between researchers and cognitive artifacts in terms of integration. It first distinguishes different categories of cognitive artifacts used in biological practice on the basis of their informational properties. This results in a novel classification of scientific instruments, conducive to an analysis of the cognitive interactions between researchers and artifacts. It then uses (...)
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  • Joint Acceptance and Scientific Change: A Case Study.Hanne Andersen - 2010 - Episteme 7 (3):248-265.
    Recently, several scholars have argued that scientists can accept scientific claims in a collective process, and that the capacity of scientific groups to form joint acceptances is linked to a functional division of labor between the group members. However, these accounts reveal little about how the cognitive content of the jointly accepted claim is formed, and how group members depend on each other in this process. In this paper, I shall therefore argue that we need to link analyses of joint (...)
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  • Friends at last? Distributed cognition and the cognitive/social divide.Adam Toon - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (1):1-14.
    Distributed cognition (d-cog) claims that many cognitive processes are distributed across groups and the surrounding material and cultural environment. Recently, Nancy Nersessian, Ronald Giere, and others have suggested that a d-cog approach might allow us to bring together cognitive and social theories of science. I explore this idea by focusing on the specific interpretation of d-cog found in Edwin Hutchins' canonical text Cognition in the wild. First, I examine the scope of a d-cog approach to science, showing that there are (...)
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  • A taxonomy of cognitive artifacts: Function, information, and categories.Richard Heersmink - 2013 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (3):465-481.
    The goal of this paper is to develop a systematic taxonomy of cognitive artifacts, i.e., human-made, physical objects that functionally contribute to performing a cognitive task. First, I identify the target domain by conceptualizing the category of cognitive artifacts as a functional kind: a kind of artifact that is defined purely by its function. Next, on the basis of their informational properties, I develop a set of related subcategories in which cognitive artifacts with similar properties can be grouped. In this (...)
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  • Distributed Cognition and the Task of Science.P. D. Magnus - 2007 - Social Studies of Science 37 (2):297--310.
    This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology (...)
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  • The distribution of representation.Lisa M. Osbeck & Nancy J. Nersessian - 2006 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 36 (2):141–160.
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  • How do scientists think? Contributions toward a cognitive science of science.Nancy J. Nersessian - 2024 - Topics in Cognitive Science (00):1-27.
    In this article, I discuss and demonstrate how research into real‐world scientific problem‐solving provides a novel window on the mind and insight into the human capacity to design and utilize resource rich environments at the highly creative end of the cognitive spectrum.
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  • Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science.Nancy J. Nersessian - 2022 - Cambridge, MA: MIT.
    A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge bioengineering (...)
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  • Rethinking Ethnography for Philosophy of Science.Nancy J. Nersessian & Miles MacLeod - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (4):721-741.
    We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative interests of philosophy of science, while maintaining openness and (...)
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  • Inflating the social aspects of cognitive structural realism.Majid D. Beni - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-18.
    Inspired by Ronald Giere’s cognitive approach to scientific models, Cognitive Structural Realism has presented a naturalist account of scientific representation. CSR characterises the structure of theories in terms of cognitive structures. These are informational structures embodied in the brains of scientists. CSR accounts for scientific representation in terms of the dynamical relationship between the organism and its environment. The proposal has been criticised on account of its negligence of social aspects of scientific practice. The present paper aims to chart out (...)
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  • Development, Resilience Engineering, Degeneracy, and Cognitive Practices.Alexander James Gillett - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (3):645-664.
    Drawing on a range of literature, I introduce two new concepts for understanding and exploring distributed cognition: resilience engineering and degeneracy. By re-examining Ed Hutchins’ (1995) ethnographic study of the navigation team I show how a focus on the developmental acquisition of cognitive practices can draw out several crucial insights that have been overlooked. Firstly, that the way in which agents learn and acquire cognitive practices enables a form of resilience engineering: the process by which the system is able to (...)
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  • The teacher bandwidth problem: MOOCs, connectivism and collaborative knowledge.Spyridon Palermos & Ben Kotzee - unknown
    Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have, in recent years, become increasingly popular. An important challenge facing MOOCs is the ‘teacher bandwidth problem’: In the MOOC environment, where there are potentially hundreds of thousands of students, it is impossible for a few teachers to interact with individual students—there is not enough ‘teacher bandwidth’. According to Siemens and Downes’s theory of ‘connectivism’ (Siemens, 2004) one can make up for the lack of teacher bandwidth by relying on collaboration between students; philosophically speaking, however, (...)
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  • Where is the understanding?Adam Toon - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3859-3875.
    Recent work in epistemology and philosophy of science has argued that understanding is an important cognitive state that philosophers should seek to analyse. This paper offers a new perspective on understanding by looking to work in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Understanding is normally taken to be inside the head. I argue that this view is mistaken. Often, understanding is a state that criss-crosses brain, body and world. To support this claim, I draw on extended cognition, a burgeoning framework (...)
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  • Visualizing Scientific Inference.David C. Gooding - 2010 - Topics in Cognitive Science 2 (1):15-35.
    The sciences use a wide range of visual devices, practices, and imaging technologies. This diversity points to an important repertoire of visual methods that scientists use to adapt representations to meet the varied demands that their work places on cognitive processes. This paper identifies key features of the use of visualization in a range of scientific domains and considers the implications of this repertoire for understanding scientists as cognitive agents.
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  • Situating distributed cognition.Lisa M. Osbeck & Nancy J. Nersessian - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (1):1-16.
    We historically and conceptually situate distributed cognition by drawing attention to important similarities in assumptions and methods with those of American ?functional psychology? as it emerged in contrast and complement to controlled laboratory study of the structural components and primitive ?elements? of consciousness. Functional psychology foregrounded the adaptive features of cognitive processes in environments, and adopted as a unit of analysis the overall situation of organism and environment. A methodological implication of this emphasis was, to the extent possible, the study (...)
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  • Towards a philosophy of interdisciplinarity.Jan Schmidt - 2007 - Poiesis and Praxis 5 (1):53-69.
    This paper aims to contribute to the expanding discourse on inter- and transdisciplinarity. Referring to well-established distinctions in philosophy of science, the paper argues in favor of a plurality of four different dimensions: Interdisciplinarity with regard to objects, knowledge/theories, methods/practices, and further, problem perception/problem solving. Different philosophical thought traditions can be related to these distinguishable meanings. The philosophical framework of the four different dimensions will be illustrated by some of the most popular examples of research programs that are labeled interdisciplinary (...)
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  • On the Poietic Character of Technology.Federica Russo - 2016 - Humana Mente 9 (30).
    Large part of contemporary science is in fact technoscience, in the sense that it crucially depends on several technologies for the generation, collection, and analysis of data. This prompts a re-examination of the relations between science and technologies. In this essay, I advance the view that we’d better move beyond the ‘subordination view’ and the ‘instrumental’ view. The first aims to establish the primacy of science over technology, and the second uses technology instrumentally to support a realist position about theoretical (...)
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  • Understanding Scientific Methodology in the Historical and Experimental Sciences via Language Analysis.Jeff Dodick, Shlomo Argamon & Paul Chase - 2009 - Science & Education 18 (8):985-1004.
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  • Beyond the scientific method: Model‐based inquiry as a new paradigm of preference for school science investigations.Mark Windschitl, Jessica Thompson & Melissa Braaten - 2008 - Science Education 92 (5):941-967.
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  • The foundational problem for cognition.Fred Keijzer & Pamela Christine Lyon - unknown
    What is cognition? Despite the existence of a science of cognition there is no clear agreement on what makes certain phenomena cognitive, and others not. Within cognitivism the issue was neglected. Human intelligence was used as a standard, and any process—natural or artificial—that fitted this standard sufficiently could be considered ‘cognitive’. For post-cognitivist psychology the situation is different. It cannot rely on the ‘human standard’ in the same way. One might even say that the need for a post-cognitivist psychology arose (...)
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  • Are Interactive Exhibits at a Science Center Cognitive Artifacts?Marcin Trybulec & Ilona Iłowiecka-Tańska - forthcoming - Foundations of Science:1-25.
    The paper examines the semiotic and cognitive status of interactive exhibits at science centers, taking the Copernicus Science Center in Warsaw (CSC) as an example. Such science centers support bottom-up interactions, encouraging visitors to spontaneously explore the exhibits in various ways. We analyze one distinctive way of interaction, when young visitors ignore an exhibit’s instruction and use it as if it were a kind of a toy or machine to play with (this is particularly common with exhibits that are unfamiliar (...)
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  • Social machines: a philosophical engineering.Spyridon Orestis Palermos - 2017 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (5):953-978.
    In Weaving the Web, Berners-Lee defines Social Machines as biotechnologically hybrid Web-processes on the basis of which, “high-level activities, which have occurred just within one human’s brain, will occur among even larger more interconnected groups of people acting as if the shared a larger intuitive brain”. The analysis and design of Social Machines has already started attracting considerable attention both within the industry and academia. Web science, however, is still missing a clear definition of what a Social Machine is, which (...)
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  • Building Cognition: The Construction of Computational Representations for Scientific Discovery.Sanjay Chandrasekharan & Nancy J. Nersessian - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (8):1727-1763.
    Novel computational representations, such as simulation models of complex systems and video games for scientific discovery, are dramatically changing the way discoveries emerge in science and engineering. The cognitive roles played by such computational representations in discovery are not well understood. We present a theoretical analysis of the cognitive roles such representations play, based on an ethnographic study of the building of computational models in a systems biology laboratory. Specifically, we focus on a case of model-building by an engineer that (...)
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  • Distributed Cognition in Scientific Contexts.Hyundeuk Cheon - 2014 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 45 (1):23-33.
    Even though it has been argued that scientific cognition is distributed, there is no consensus on the exact nature of distributed cognition. This paper aims to characterize distributed cognition as appropriate for philosophical studies of science. I first classify competing characterizations into three types: the property approach, the task approach, and the system approach. It turns out that the property approach and the task approach are subject to criticism. I then argue that the most preferable way to understand distributed cognition (...)
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  • Science and Experience: A Deweyan Pragmatist Philosophy of Science.Matthew J. Brown - 2009 - Dissertation, University of California, San Diego
    I resolve several pressing and recalcitrant problems in contemporary philosophy of science using resources from John Dewey's philosophy of science. I begin by looking at Dewey's epistemological and logical writings in their historical context, in order to understand better how Dewey's philosophy disappeared from the limelight, and I provide a reconstruction of his views. Then, I use that reconstruction to address problems of evidence, the social dimensions of science, and pluralism. Generally, mainstream philosophers of science with an interest in Dewey (...)
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  • How Do Engineering Scientists Think? Model‐Based Simulation in Biomedical Engineering Research Laboratories.Nancy J. Nersessian - 2009 - Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (4):730-757.
    Designing, building, and experimenting with physical simulation models are central problem‐solving practices in the engineering sciences. Model‐based simulation is an epistemic activity that includes exploration, generation and testing of hypotheses, explanation, and inference. This paper argues that to interpret and understand how these simulation models function in creating knowledge and technologies requires construing problem solving as accomplished by a researcher–artifact system. It draws on and further develops the framework of “distributed cognition” to interpret data collected in ethnographic and cognitive‐historical studies (...)
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  • Diversity as Asset.Andrea Bender, Sieghard Beller & Nancy J. Nersessian - 2015 - Topics in Cognitive Science 7 (4):677-688.
    We begin our commentary by summarizing the commonalities and differences in cognitive phenomena across cultures, as found by the seven papers of this topic. We then assess the commonalities and differences in how our various authors have approached the study of cognitive diversity, and speculate on the need for, and potential of, cross-disciplinary collaboration.
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  • Representations at Work.Martin M. Nielsen - 2003 - Outlines. Critical Practice Studies 5 (2):69-77.
    This paper argues that “distributed cognition” facilitates a framework for studying aspects of organizations as socio-technical systems. An approach studying tool use and workflows is laid out and utilized in an analysis of information processing at a post office. Finally, some implications are presented – for organizational as well as cognitive studies. Research on performative representations is called for and, consequently, a widening of the cognition-as-computation framework is suggested.
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  • Interdisciplinarities in Action: Cognitive Ethnography of Bioengineering Sciences Research Laboratories.Nancy J. Nersessian - 2019 - Perspectives on Science 27 (4):553-581.
    The paper frames interdisciplinary research as creating complex, distributed cognitive-cultural systems. It introduces and elaborates on the method of cognitive ethnography as a primary means for investigating interdisciplinary cognitive and learning practices in situ. The analysis draws from findings of nearly 20 years of investigating such practices in research laboratories in pioneering bioengineering sciences. It examines goals and challenges of two quite different kinds of integrative problem-solving practices: biomedical engineering (hybridization) and integrative systems biology (collaborative interdependence). Practical lessons for facilitating (...)
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  • Mathematical Representations in Science: A Cognitive–Historical Case History.Ryan D. Tweney - 2009 - Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (4):758-776.
    The important role of mathematical representations in scientific thinking has received little attention from cognitive scientists. This study argues that neglect of this issue is unwarranted, given existing cognitive theories and laws, together with promising results from the cognitive historical analysis of several important scientists. In particular, while the mathematical wizardry of James Clerk Maxwell differed dramatically from the experimental approaches favored by Michael Faraday, Maxwell himself recognized Faraday as “in reality a mathematician of a very high order,” and his (...)
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  • Visual cognition: Where cognition and culture meet.David C. Gooding - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):688-698.
    Case studies of diverse scientific fields show how scientists use a range of resources to generate new interpretative models and to establish their plausibility as explanations of a domain. They accomplish this by manipulating imagistic representations in particular ways. I show that scientists in different domains use the same basic transformations. Common features of these transformations indicate that general cognitive strategies of interpretation, simplification, elaboration, and argumentation are at work. Social and historical studies of science emphasize the diversity of local (...)
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  • Creativity and emotion: Reformulating the Romantic theory of art.Joseph L. Flanders - forthcoming - Cognitio: Matter and Mind.
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