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  1. Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination (1981).William C. Wimsatt - 2012 - In Lena Soler (ed.), Characterizing the robustness of science: after the practice turn in philosophy of science. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 61-78.
    The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...)
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  • Data Journeys in the Sciences.Sabina Leonelli & Niccolò Tempini (eds.) - 2020 - Springer.
    This groundbreaking, open access volume analyses and compares data practices across several fields through the analysis of specific cases of data journeys. It brings together leading scholars in the philosophy, history and social studies of science to achieve two goals: tracking the travel of data across different spaces, times and domains of research practice; and documenting how such journeys affect the use of data as evidence and the knowledge being produced. The volume captures the opportunities, challenges and concerns involved in (...)
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  • Philosophy of Mathematical Practice — Motivations, Themes and Prospects†.Jessica Carter - 2019 - Philosophia Mathematica 27 (1):1-32.
    A number of examples of studies from the field ‘The Philosophy of Mathematical Practice’ (PMP) are given. To characterise this new field, three different strands are identified: an agent-based, a historical, and an epistemological PMP. These differ in how they understand ‘practice’ and which assumptions lie at the core of their investigations. In the last part a general framework, capturing some overall structure of the field, is proposed.
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  • (1 other version)Interlevel experiments and multilevel mechanisms in the neuroscience of memory.Carl F. Craver - 2002 - Philosophy of Science Supplemental Volume 69 (3):S83-S97.
    The dominant neuroscientific theory of spatial memory is, like many theories in neuroscience, a multilevel description of a mechanism. The theory links the activities of molecules, cells, brain regions, and whole organisms into an integrated sketch of an explanation for the ability of organisms to navigate novel environments. Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, (...)
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  • How to Talk About the Body? the Normative Dimension of Science Studies.Bruno Latour - 2004 - Body and Society 10 (2-3):205-229.
    Science studies has often been against the normative dimension of epistemology, which made a naturalistic study of science impossible. But this is not to say that a new type of normativity cannot be detected at work inscience studies. This is especially true in the second wave of studies dealing with the body, which has aimed at criticizing the physicalization of the body without falling into the various traps of a phenomenology simply added to a physical substrate. This article explores the (...)
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  • Emotions as natural and normative kinds.Paul E. Griffiths - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):901-911.
    In earlier work I have claimed that emotion and some emotions are not `natural kinds'. Here I clarify what I mean by `natural kind', suggest a new and more accurate term, and discuss the objection that emotion and emotions are not descriptive categories at all, but fundamentally normative categories.
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  • (1 other version)Strategies for discovering mechanisms: Schema instantiation, modular subassembly, forward/backward chaining.Lindley Darden - 2002 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3):S354-S365.
    Discovery proceeds in stages of construction, evaluation, and revision. Each of these stages is constrained by what is known or conjectured about what is being discovered. A new characterization of mechanism aids in specifying what is to be discovered when a mechanism is sought. Guidance in discovering mechanisms may be provided by the reasoning strategies of schema instantiation, modular subassembly, and forward/backward chaining. Examples are found in mechanisms in molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, and evolutionary biology.
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  • (1 other version)Interlevel Experiments and Multilevel Mechanisms in the Neuroscience of Memory.Carl F. Craver - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S83-S97.
    The dominant neuroscientific theory of spatial memory is, like many theories in neuroscience, a multilevel description of a mechanism. The theory links the activities of molecules, cells, brain regions, and whole organisms into an integrated sketch of an explanation for the ability of organisms to navigate novel environments. Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, (...)
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  • (1 other version)How biologists conceptualize genes: an empirical study.Karola Stotz, Paul E. Griffiths & Rob Knight - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (4):647-673.
    Philosophers and historians of biology have argued that genes are conceptualized differently in different fields of biology and that these differences influence both the conduct of research and the interpretation of research by audiences outside the field in which the research was conducted. In this paper we report the results of a questionnaire study of how genes are conceptualized by biological scientists at the University of Sydney, Australia. The results provide tentative support for some hypotheses about conceptual differences between different (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Scientific Progress.I. Niiniluoto - 2012 - In Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Scientific fictions as rules of inference.Mauricio Suárez - 2008 - In Mauricio Suárez (ed.), Fictions in Science: Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization. New York: Routledge. pp. 158--178.
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  • Experiments in history and philosophy of science.Friedrich Steinle - 2002 - Perspectives on Science 10 (4):408-432.
    : The increasing attention on experiment in the last two decades has led to important insights into its material, cultural and social dimensions. However, the role of experiment as a tool for generating knowledge has been comparatively poorly studied. What questions are asked in experimental research? How are they treated and eventually resolved? And how do questions, epistemic situations, and experimental activity cohere and shape each other? In my paper, I treat these problems on the basis of detailed studies of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Strategies for Discovering Mechanisms: Schema Instantiation, Modular Subassembly, Forward/Backward Chaining.Lindley Darden - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S354-S365.
    Discovery proceeds in stages of construction, evaluation, and revision. Each of these stages is constrained by what is known or conjectured about what is being discovered. A new characterization of mechanism aids in specifying what is to be discovered when a mechanism is sought. Guidance in discovering mechanisms may be provided by the reasoning strategies of schema instantiation, modular subassembly, and forward/backward chaining. Examples are found in mechanisms in molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, and evolutionary biology.
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  • Theory and observation in science.Jim Bogen - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Scientists obtain a great deal of the evidence they use by observingnatural and experimentally generated objects and effects. Much of thestandard philosophical literature on this subject comes from20th century logical positivists and empiricists, theirfollowers, and critics who embraced their issues and accepted some oftheir assumptions even as they objected to specific views. Theirdiscussions of observational evidence tend to focus on epistemologicalquestions about its role in theory testing. This entry follows theirlead even though observational evidence also plays important andphilosophically interesting roles (...)
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  • Exploratory concept formation and tool development in neuroscience.Philipp Haueis - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (2):354 - 375.
    Developing tools is a crucial aspect of experimental practice, yet most discussions of scientific change traditionally emphasize theoretical over technological change. To elaborate on the role of tools in scientific change, I offer an account that shows how scientists use tools in exploratory experiments to form novel concepts. I apply this account to two cases in neuroscience and show how tool development and concept formation are often intertwined in episodes of tool-driven change. I support this view by proposing common normative (...)
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  • The Kindness of Psychopaths.Zdenka Brzović, Marko Jurjako & Predrag Šustar - 2017 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 31 (2):189-211.
    Psychopathy attracts considerable interdisciplinary interest. The idea of a group of people with abnormal morality and interpersonal relations raises important philosophical, legal, and clinical issues. However, before engaging these issues, we ought to examine whether this category is scientifically grounded. We frame the issue in terms of the question whether ‘psychopathy’ designates a natural kind according to the cluster approaches. We argue that currently there is no sufficient evidence for an affirmative answer to this question. Furthermore, we examine three ways (...)
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  • 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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  • Are computer simulations experiments? And if not, how are they related to each other?Claus Beisbart - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (2):171-204.
    Computer simulations and experiments share many important features. One way of explaining the similarities is to say that computer simulations just are experiments. This claim is quite popular in the literature. The aim of this paper is to argue against the claim and to develop an alternative explanation of why computer simulations resemble experiments. To this purpose, experiment is characterized in terms of an intervention on a system and of the observation of the reaction. Thus, if computer simulations are experiments, (...)
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  • Rethinking the role of theory in exploratory experimentation.David Colaço - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (5-6):38.
    To explain their role in discovery and contrast them with theory-driven research, philosophers of science have characterized exploratory experiments in terms of what they lack: namely, that they lack direction from what have been called “local theories” of the target system or object under investigation. I argue that this is incorrect: it’s not whether or not there is direction from a local theory that matters, but instead how such a theory is used to direct an experiment that matters. Appealing to (...)
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  • Concepts as Tools in the Experimental Generation of Knowledge in Cognitive Neuropsychology.Uljana Feest - 2010 - Spontaneous Generations 4 (1):173-190.
    This paper asks (a) how new scientific objects of research are onceptualized at a point in time when little is known about them, and (b) how those conceptualizations, in turn, figure in the process of investigating the phenomena in question. Contrasting my approach with existing notions of concepts and situating it in relation to existing discussions about the epistemology of experimentation, I propose to think of concepts as research tools. I elaborate on the conception of a tool that informs my (...)
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  • Experimental Modeling in Biology: In Vivo Representation and Stand-ins As Modeling Strategies.Marcel Weber - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):756-769.
    Experimental modeling in biology involves the use of living organisms (not necessarily so-called "model organisms") in order to model or simulate biological processes. I argue here that experimental modeling is a bona fide form of scientific modeling that plays an epistemic role that is distinct from that of ordinary biological experiments. What distinguishes them from ordinary experiments is that they use what I call "in vivo representations" where one kind of causal process is used to stand in for a physically (...)
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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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  • Models, Simulations, and Their Objects.Sergio Sismondo - 1999 - Science in Context 12 (2):247-260.
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  • Process epistemology in the COVID-19 era: rethinking the research process to avoid dangerous forms of reification.John Dupré & Sabina Leonelli - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-22.
    Whether we live in a world of autonomous things, or a world of interconnected processes in constant flux, is an ancient philosophical debate. Modern biology provides decisive reasons for embracing the latter view. How does one understand the practices and outputs of science in such a dynamic, ever-changing world - and particularly in an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where scientific knowledge has been regarded as bedrock for decisive social interventions? We argue that key to answering this question (...)
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  • When one model is not enough: Combining epistemic tools in systems biology.Sara Green - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2):170-180.
    In recent years, the philosophical focus of the modeling literature has shifted from descriptions of general properties of models to an interest in different model functions. It has been argued that the diversity of models and their correspondingly different epistemic goals are important for developing intelligible scientific theories. However, more knowledge is needed on how a combination of different epistemic means can generate and stabilize new entities in science. This paper will draw on Rheinberger’s practice-oriented account of knowledge production. The (...)
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  • Problemas contemporáneos en la filosofía de la bioquímica.Gabriel Felipe Vallejos Baccelliere - 2022 - Culturas Cientificas 3 (1):45-77.
    Si bien en la filosofía de las ciencias ya se han explorado algunos ejemplos provenientes de la bioquímica como casos de estudio, la filosofía de la bioquímica es una subdisciplina naciente. En este artículo estudiaremos dos problemas filosóficos de relevancia contemporánea en esta ciencia. Por un lado, examinaremos las bases epistemológicas del problema del plegamiento de proteínas. En particular lo relacionado con la predicción de la estructura tridimensional de las proteínas a partir de su secuencia, asunto que ha dado mucho (...)
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  • Radiocarbon Dating in Archaeology: Triangulation and Traceability.Alison Wylie - 2020 - In Sabina Leonelli & Niccolò Tempini (eds.), Data Journeys in the Sciences. Springer. pp. 285-301.
    When radiocarbon dating techniques were applied to archaeological material in the 1950s they were hailed as a revolution. At last archaeologists could construct absolute chronologies anchored in temporal data backed by immutable laws of physics. This would make it possible to mobilize archaeological data across regions and time-periods on a global scale, rendering obsolete the local and relative chronologies on which archaeologists had long relied. As profound as the impact of 14C dating has been, it has had a long and (...)
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  • Dreaming of a Universal Biology: Synthetic Biology and the Origins of Life.Massimiliano Simons - 2021 - Hyle: International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 27:91-116.
    Synthetic biology aims to synthesize novel biological systems or redesign existing ones. The field has raised numerous philosophical questions, but most especially what is novel to this field. In this article I argue for a novel take, since the dominant ways to understand synthetic biology’s specificity each face problems. Inspired by the examination of the work of a number of chemists, I argue that synthetic biology differentiates itself by a new regime of articulation, i.e. a new way of articulating the (...)
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  • Beyond theoretical reduction and layer-cake antireduction: How DNA retooled genetics and transformed biological practice.C. Kenneth Waters - unknown
    Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA led to developments that transformed many biological sciences. But what were the relevant developments and how did they transform biology? Much of the philosophical discussion concerning this question can be organized around two opposing views: theoretical reductionism and layer-cake antireductionism. Theoretical reductionist and their anti-reductionist foes hold two assumptions in common. First, both hold that biological knowledge is structured like a layer cake, with some biological sciences, such as molecular biology cast (...)
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  • ‘Models of’ and ‘Models for’: On the Relation between Mechanistic Models and Experimental Strategies in Molecular Biology.Emanuele Ratti - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (2):773-797.
    Molecular biologists exploit information conveyed by mechanistic models for experimental purposes. In this article, I make sense of this aspect of biological practice by developing Keller’s idea of the distinction between ‘models of’ and ‘models for’. ‘Models of (phenomena)’ should be understood as models representing phenomena and are valuable if they explain phenomena. ‘Models for (manipulating phenomena)’ are new types of material manipulations and are important not because of their explanatory force, but because of the interventionist strategies they afford. This (...)
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  • Portfolios of Worth: Capitalizing on Basic and Clinical Problems in Biomedical Research Groups.Sarah de Rijcke, Thomas Franssen & Alexander Rushforth - 2019 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 44 (2):209-236.
    How are “interesting” research problems identified and made durable by academic researchers, particularly in situations defined by multiple evaluation principles? Building on two case studies of research groups working on rare diseases in academic biomedicine, we explore how group leaders arrange their groups to encompass research problems that latch onto distinct evaluation principles by dividing and combining work into “basic-oriented” and “clinical-oriented” spheres of inquiry. Following recent developments in the sociology of valuation comparing academics to capitalist entrepreneurs in pursuit of (...)
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  • The rationality of scientific reasoning in the context of pursuit: Drawing appropriate distinctions.Dunja Seselja, Laszlo Kosolosky & Christian Strasser - 2012 - Philosophica 86 (3):51-82.
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  • Gene.Hans-Jörg Rheinberger - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Algorithmic rationality: Epistemology and efficiency in the data sciences.Ian Lowrie - 2017 - Big Data and Society 4 (1).
    Recently, philosophers and social scientists have turned their attention to the epistemological shifts provoked in established sciences by their incorporation of big data techniques. There has been less focus on the forms of epistemology proper to the investigation of algorithms themselves, understood as scientific objects in their own right. This article, based upon 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Russian data scientists, addresses this lack through an investigation of the specific forms of epistemic attention paid to algorithms by data scientists. (...)
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  • Towards a Methodology for Integrated History and Philosophy of Science.Raphael Scholl & Tim Räz - 2016 - In Tim Räz & Raphael Scholl (eds.), The Philosophy of Historical Case Studies. Springer Verlag.
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  • What is a Humanized Mouse? Remaking the Species and Spaces of Translational Medicine.Gail Davies - 2012 - Body and Society 18 (3-4):126-155.
    This article explores the development of a novel biomedical research organism, and its potential to remake the species and spaces of translational medicine. The humanized mouse is a complex experimental object in which mice, rendered immunodeficient through genetic alteration, are engrafted with human stem cells in the hope of reconstituting a human immune system for biomedical research and drug testing. These chimeric organisms have yet to garner the same commentary from social scientists as other human–animal hybrid forms. Yet, they are (...)
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  • Science as (Historical) Narrative.M. Norton Wise - 2011 - Erkenntnis 75 (3):349-376.
    The traditional mode of explanation in physics via deduction from partial differential equations is contrasted here with explanation via simulations. I argue that the different technologies employed constitute different languages, which support different sorts of narratives. The narratives that accompany simulations and articulate their meaning are typically historical or natural historical in kind. They explain complex phenomena by growing them rather than by referring them to general laws. Examples of such growth simulations and growth narratives come from the evolution of (...)
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  • Synthetic biology as a technoscience: The case of minimal genomes and essential genes.Massimiliano Simons - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 85:127-136.
    This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific organisms (...)
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  • Pluralization through epistemic competition: scientific change in times of data-intensive biology.Fridolin Gross, Nina Kranke & Robert Meunier - 2019 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (1):1.
    We present two case studies from contemporary biology in which we observe conflicts between established and emerging approaches. The first case study discusses the relation between molecular biology and systems biology regarding the explanation of cellular processes, while the second deals with phylogenetic systematics and the challenge posed by recent network approaches to established ideas of evolutionary processes. We show that the emergence of new fields is in both cases driven by the development of high-throughput data generation technologies and the (...)
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  • In Search of Mitochondrial Mechanisms: Interfield Excursions between Cell Biology and Biochemistry.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2007 - Journal of the History of Biology 40 (1):1-33.
    Developing models of biological mechanisms, such as those involved in respiration in cells, often requires collaborative effort drawing upon techniques developed and information generated in different disciplines. Biochemists in the early decades of the 20th century uncovered all but the most elusive chemical operations involved in cellular respiration, but were unable to align the reaction pathways with particular structures in the cell. During the period 1940-1965 cell biology was emerging as a new discipline and made distinctive contributions to understanding the (...)
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  • How Does One “Open” Science? Questions of Value in Biological Research.Sabina Leonelli & Nadine Levin - 2017 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 42 (2):280-305.
    Open Science policies encourage researchers to disclose a wide range of outputs from their work, thus codifying openness as a specific set of research practices and guidelines that can be interpreted and applied consistently across disciplines and geographical settings. In this paper, we argue that this “one-size-fits-all” view of openness sidesteps key questions about the forms, implications, and goals of openness for research practice. We propose instead to interpret openness as a dynamic and highly situated mode of valuing the research (...)
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  • Ontologically simple theories do not indicate the true nature of complex biological systems: three test cases.Michael Fry - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (2):1-44.
    A longstanding philosophical premise perceives simplicity as a desirable attribute of scientific theories. One of several raised justifications for this notion is that simple theories are more likely to indicate the true makeup of natural systems. Qualitatively parsimonious hypotheses and theories keep to a minimum the number of different postulated entities within a system. Formulation of such ontologically simple working hypotheses proved to be useful in the experimental probing of narrowly defined bio systems. It is less certain, however, whether qualitatively (...)
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  • Bending Molecules or Bending the Rules? The Application of Theoretical Models in Fragrance Chemistry.Ann-Sophie Barwich - 2015 - Perspectives on Science 23 (4):443-465.
    What does it take for a scientific model to represent? Scientific models have received a great deal of attention in recent philosophical literature. Following Morgan and Morrison’s account of “Models as Mediators”, analysis of how models represent has changed from questioning what properties of models can be said to correlate with the world to asking how models are used to relate to an intended target-system. This turn to a practice-oriented approach of understanding models was a response to a general philosophical (...)
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  • Vitalism, Holism, and Metaphorical Dynamics of Hans Spemann’s “Organizer” in the Interwar Period.Christina Brandt - 2022 - Journal of the History of Biology 55 (2):285-320.
    This paper aims to provide a fresh historical perspective on the debates on vitalism and holism in Germany by analyzing the work of the zoologist Hans Spemann (1869–1941) in the interwar period. Following up previous historical studies, it takes the controversial question about Spemann’s affinity to vitalistic approaches as a starting point. The focus is on Spemann’s holistic research style, and on the shifting meanings of Spemann’s concept of an organizer. It is argued that the organizer concept unfolded multiple layers (...)
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  • Building to Discover: A Common Coding Model.Sanjay Chandrasekharan - 2009 - Cognitive Science 33 (6):1059-1086.
    I present a case study of scientific discovery, where building two functional and behavioral approximations of neurons, one physical and the other computational, led to conceptual and implementation breakthroughs in a neural engineering laboratory. Such building of external systems that mimic target phenomena, and the use of these external systems to generate novel concepts and control structures, is a standard strategy in the new engineering sciences. I develop a model of the cognitive mechanism that connects such built external systems with (...)
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  • Tracing Organizing Principles: Learning from the History of Systems Biology.Sara Green & Olaf Wolkenhauer - 2013 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 35 (4):553-576.
    With the emergence of systems biology the notion of organizing principles is being highlighted as a key research aim. Researchers attempt to ‘reverse engineer’ the functional organization of biological systems using methodologies from mathematics, engineering and computer science while taking advantage of data produced by new experimental techniques. While systems biology is a relatively new approach, the quest for general principles of biological organization dates back to systems theoretic approaches in early and mid-20th century. The aim of this paper is (...)
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  • Cancer, Viruses, and Mass Migration: Paul Berg’s Venture into Eukaryotic Biology and the Advent of Recombinant DNA Research and Technology, 1967–1980.Doogab Yi - 2008 - Journal of the History of Biology 41 (4):589-636.
    The existing literature on the development of recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering tends to focus on Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer's recombinant DNA cloning technology and its commercialization starting in the mid-1970s. Historians of science, however, have pointedly noted that experimental procedures for making recombinant DNA molecules were initially developed by Stanford biochemist Paul Berg and his colleagues, Peter Lobban and A. Dale Kaiser in the early 1970s. This paper, recognizing the uneasy disjuncture between scientific authorship and legal invention (...)
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  • ‘Genetic Coding’ Reconsidered : An Analysis of Actual Usage.Ulrich E. Stegmann - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (3):707-730.
    This article reconsiders the theoretical role of the genetic code. By drawing on published and unpublished sources from the 1950s, I analyse how the code metaphor was actually employed by the scientists who first promoted its use. The analysis shows that the term ‘code’ picked out mechanism sketches, consisting of more or less detailed descriptions of ordinary molecular components, processes, and structural properties of the mechanism of protein synthesis. The sketches provided how-possibly explanations for the ordering of amino acids by (...)
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  • Vampires: Social constructivism, realism, and other philosophical undead.Joseph Rouse - 2002 - History and Theory 41 (1):60–78.
    Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science by Andre Kukla The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking.
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  • The Everyday World of Simulation Modeling: The Development of Parameterizations in Meteorology.Mikaela Sundberg - 2009 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 34 (2):162-181.
    This article explores the practice of simulation modeling by investigating how parameterizations are constructed and integrated into existing frameworks. Parameterizations are simplified process descriptions adapted for simulation models. On the basis of a study of meteorological research, the article presents predictive and representative construction as two different ways of developing parameterizations and the trade-offs involved in this work. Because the overall aim in predictive construction is to improve weather forecasts, the most practical solutions are chosen over the best theoretical solutions. (...)
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