Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. From idealizations to social practices in science: the case of phylogenetic trees.Celso Neto - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10865-10884.
    In this paper, I show how idealizations contribute to social activities in science, such as the recruitment of experts to a research project. These contributions have not been explicitly discussed by recent philosophical accounts of scientific idealization. These accounts have focused on how idealizations influence activities like scientific theorization, explanation, and modeling. Other accounts focus on how idealizations influence policy-making and science communication. I expand these accounts by exploring the uses of idealized phylogenetic trees in science. Trees are not only (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Animal Behavior, Population Biology and the Modern Synthesis.Jean-Baptiste Grodwohl - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):597-633.
    This paper examines the history of animal behavior studies after the synthesis period. Three episodes are considered: the adoption of the theory of natural selection, the mathematization of ideas, and the spread of molecular methods in behavior studies. In these three episodes, students of behavior adopted practices and standards developed in population ecology and population genetics. While they borrowed tools and methods from these fields, they made distinct uses that set them relatively apart and led them to contribute, in their (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • When is a cladist not a cladist?Aleta Quinn - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (4):581-598.
    The term “cladist” has distinct meanings in distinct contexts. Communication between philosophers, historians, and biologists has been hindered by different understandings of the term in various contexts. In this paper I trace historical and conceptual connections between several broadly distinct senses of the term “cladist”. I propose seven specific definitions that capture distinct contemporary uses. This serves to disambiguate some cases where the meaning is unclear, and will help resolve apparent disagreements that in fact result from conflicting understandings of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Coordination Instead of Consensus Classification: Insights from Systematics for Bio-Ontologies.Beckett Sterner, Joeri Witteveen & Nico Franz - forthcoming - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences.
    Big data is opening new angles on old questions about scientific progress. Is scientific knowledge cumulative? If yes, how does it make progress? In the life sciences, what we call the Consensus Principle has dominated the design of data discovery and integration tools: the design of a formal classificatory system for expressing a body of data should be grounded in consensus. Based on current approaches in biomedicine and systematic biology, we formulate and compare three types of the Consensus Principle: realist, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Coordinating dissent as an alternative to consensus classification: insights from systematics for bio-ontologies.Beckett Sterner, Joeri Witteveen & Nico Franz - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (1):1-25.
    The collection and classification of data into meaningful categories is a key step in the process of knowledge making. In the life sciences, the design of data discovery and integration tools has relied on the premise that a formal classificatory system for expressing a body of data should be grounded in consensus definitions for classifications. On this approach, exemplified by the realist program of the Open Biomedical Ontologies Foundry, progress is maximized by grounding the representation and aggregation of data on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Pattern Without Process: Eugen Smirnov and the Earliest Project of Numerical Taxonomy (1923–1938).Maxim V. Vinarski - 2022 - Journal of the History of Biology 55 (3):559-583.
    The progress towards mathematization or, in a broader context, towards an increased “objectivity” is one of the main trends in the development of biological systematics in the past century. It is commonplace to start the history of numerical taxonomy with the works of R. R. Sokal and P. H. A. Sneath that in the 1960s laid the foundations of this school of taxonomy. In this article, I discuss the earliest research program in this field, developed in the 1920s by the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark