Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...) adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Philosophers have yet to provide a systematic analysis of the relationship between historical science and model-based science. In this paper I argue that prototypical model-based sciences exhibit features understood to be central to historical science. Philosophers of science have argued that historical scientists are distinctly concerned with inference to the best explanation, that explanations in historical science tend to increase in complexity over time, and that the explanations take the form of narratives. Using general circulation models in climate science as (...) a reference, I illustrate how simulation models in model-based science share these features exhibited by historical science. That model based sciences share these features raises important philosophical questions about how we should understand prototypical types of scientific enquiry, including the relationship between experimental science, historical science, and model-based science. I conclude by exploring several options for how to accommodate the noted similarities within a more general taxonomy of the sciences. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have paid close attention to climate simulations as means of projecting the severity and effects of climate change, but have neglected the full diversity of methods in climate science. This paper shows the philosophical richness of another method in climate science: the practice of using paleoclimate analogues to inform our climate projections. First, I argue that the use of paleoclimate analogues can offer important insights to philosophers of the historical sciences. Rather than using the present as a (...) guide to the past, as is common in the historical sciences, paleoclimate analogues involve using the past as a guide to the future. I thereby distinguish different methods in the historical sciences and argue that these distinctions bear on debates over whether the historical sciences can produce generalizations or predictions. Second, I suggest that paleoclimate analogues might actually be considered a type of climate model, and, as such, their use expands on common characterizations of models to include those that are full-scale, naturally occurring, and non-manipulable. (shrink)

In the recent book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, E. V. R. Kojonen argues that a biological design inference is still possible in light of mainstream evolutionary theory and that evolution and design need not be in explanatory tension. This collection of essays is the product of a symposium held in March 2022, which interacted with the claims of the book. Contributors come from diverse academic backgrounds across philosophy, science, and theology, and both critique and extend Kojonen's argument. Here, (...) each contribution is introduced along with some important connections between them and key questions which remain open. (shrink)

Perhaps no term in the geological lexicon excites more passions than uniformitarianism, whose motto is “the present is the key to the past.” The term is controversial in part because it contains several meanings, which have been implicated in creating a situation of “semantic chaos” in the geological literature. Yet I argue that debates about uniformitarianism do not arise from a simple chaos of meanings. Instead, they arise from legitimate disagreements about substantive questions. This paper examines these questions and relates (...) them to several “forms of understanding” pursued by researchers in geohistory. (shrink)

In both scientific and popular circles it is often said that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. Although the urgency of our present environmental crises is not in doubt, such claims of a present mass extinction are highly controversial scientifically. Our aims are, first, to get to the bottom of this scientific debate by shedding philosophical light on the many conceptual and methodological challenges involved in answering this scientific question, and, second, to offer new philosophical perspectives (...) on what the value of asking this question has been — and whether that value persists today. We show that the conceptual challenges in defining ‘mass extinction’, uncertainties in past and present diversity assessments, and data incommensurabilities undermine a straightforward answer to the question of whether we are in, or entering, a sixth mass extinction today. More broadly we argue that an excessive focus on the mass extinction framing can be misleading for present conservation efforts and may lead us to miss out on the many other valuable insights that Earth’s deep time can offer in guiding our future. (shrink)

Sex is often thought of as a straightforwardly binary categorical variable. Yet there is considerable variation in would-be sex traits; from genitals and hormones to morphology, neurology and behaviour, there is rarely if ever a categorical binary. We introduce a strategy that researchers use to deal with this variation: Individualising Variation (IV). IV involves treating non-binary and gradual variation as idiosyncratic, as individual differences rather than sex-based differences. Using the contrasting cases of sex identification in field ornithology and the debate (...) about sex differences in neuroscience, we illustrate IV and investigate its epistemic and conceptual consequences. We argue that IV stabilises the ontological picture of sex as categorical and binary. While IV can be an epistemically benign research strategy in some cases, we argue that it can also be epistemically detrimental. This is because of its ability to mask evidence that would otherwise challenge related assumptions about the phenomenon of interest, such as what sexes are and what they look like. We also identify an alternative strategy, De- individualising Variation, which works against IV and helps life scientists recognise variation beyond categorical binaries. (shrink)

The optimism vs. pessimism debate about the historical sciences is often framed in terms of arguments about the relative importance of overdetermination vs. underdetermination of historical claims by available evidence. While the interplay between natural processes that create multiple traces of past events (thereby conducive of overdetermination) and processes that erase past information (whence underdetermination) cannot be ignored, I locate the root of the debate in the epistemic granularity, or intuitively the level of detail, that pervades any historical claim justification (...) network. To reveal the role played by granularity, I elaborate a model of historical claim justification. This model maps out the different elements that enter the justification of historical claims (incl., actual and inferred states of affairs, dating and information reconstructing theories). It also incorporates the different types of processes that affect traces of past events (information creating, preserving, modifying, and destroying processes). Granularity is shown to play a pivotal role in all elements of this model, and thereby in the inferred justification of any historical claim. As a result, while upward or downward shifts in granularity may explain changes about claims being considered as overdetermined or underdetermined, epistemic granularity constitutes an integral part of evidential reasoning in the historical sciences (and possibly elsewhere). (shrink)

Using past episodes of climate change as a source of evidence to inform our projections about contemporary climate change requires establishing the extent to which episodes in the deep past are analogous to the current crisis. However, many scientists claim that contemporary rates of climate change (e.g., rates of carbon emissions or temperature change) are unprecedented, including compared to episodes in the deep past. If so, this would limit the utility of paleoclimate analogues. In this paper, I show how a (...) data adjustment procedure called “temporal scaling,” which must be applied to both contemporary and past rate data, complicates the claim that contemporary rates are truly unprecedented. On top of giving actionable recommendations to scientists, this paper advances the philosophical literature concerning the use of models that are known to be somewhat disanalogous to their target systems. (shrink)