Chris Haufe

Philosophies of funding.

Successful scientific practice encompasses broader and more varied modes of investigation than can be captured by focusing on hypothesis-driven research. We examine the emphases that major US and UK funding agencies place on particular modes of research practice and suggest that funding agency guidelines should be informed by a more dynamic and multidimensional account of scientific practice.

Gould’s Laws

Much of Stephen Jay Gould’s legacy is dominated by his views on the contingency of evolutionary history expressed in his classic Wonderful Life. However, Gould also campaigned relentlessly for a “nomothetic” paleontology. How do these commitments hang together? I argue that Gould’s conception of science and natural law combined with his commitment to contingency to produce an evolutionary science centered around the formulation of higher-level evolutionary laws.

Where No Mind Has Gone Before: Exploring Laws in Distant and Lonely Worlds

Do the laws of nature supervene on ordinary, non‐nomic matters of fact? Lange’s criticism of Humean supervenience (HS) plays a key role in his account of natural laws. Though we are sympathetic to his account, we remain unconvinced by his criticism. We focus on his thought experiment involving a world containing nothing but a lone proton and argue that it does not cast sufficient doubt on HS. In addition, we express some concern about locating the lawmakers in an ontology of primitive subjunctive facts and suggest that a ‘mixed’ metaphysics to the lawmaker question might be attractive.

From Necessary Chances to Biological Laws

In this article, I propose a new way of thinking about natural necessity and a new way of thinking about biological laws. I suggest that much of the lack of progress in making a positive case for distinctively biological laws is that we’ve been looking for necessity in the wrong place. The trend has been to look for exceptionlessness at the level of the outcomes of biological processes and to build one’s claims about necessity off of that. However, as Beatty (1995) observed, even when we are lucky enough to find a biological ‘rule’ of some sort, that rule is apt to be a victim of ‘the rule-breaking capabilities of evolutionary change’. If indeed no distinctively biological generalization—even an exceptionless one—is safe, we need to locate necessity elsewhere. A good place to start is, I think, precisely the point at which Beatty sees the possibility of lawhood as breaking down—namely, at the level of chances. 1 The ‘Necessity’ Objection to Biological Laws 2 Necessary Chances   2.1 Necessary chances: random drift   2.2 Necessary chances: fitness 3 But is it Biological? 4 Conclusion 1 The ‘Necessity’ Objection to Biological Laws 2 Necessary Chances   2.1 Necessary chances: random drift   2.2 Necessary chances: fitness   2.1 Necessary chances: random drift   2.2 Necessary chances: fitness 3 But is it Biological? 4 Conclusion

Machine science: what's missing.

Much is missing in J. Evans and A. Rzhetskys Perspective “Machine science” (23 July, p. [399][1]), which needs to be placed within a broader understanding of scientific practice. Recent discussions of data-driven science are misrepresented. Far from “conjectur[ing] that hypotheses are

The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique by Sterelny, Kim

ism. Any attempt to rule out the possibility that ‘enhanced’ motivations will lead to outcomes that are no better than the status quo risks circularity in the definition of moral enhancement. However, the real reason why moral bioenhancement seems unlikely to offer much by way of a solution to the threat of climate change and/or catastrophic misuses of modern science is that we don’t have any such technology and we are unlikely to develop it within the time available to us to avert devastating climate change. Even if we did develop a technology that could magically reshape individuals’ motivations as Persson and Savulescu desire, we would then have to solve the not-inconsiderable problems involved in applying it to ‘hundreds of millions’ [121] of people without presuming or licensing an authoritarianism that would most likely render the project moot. At the end of Unfit for the Future, Persson and Savulescu admit that ‘moral bioenhancement worthy of the name is practically impossible at present and might remain so for so long that we will not master it, nor succeed in applying it on a sufficient scale, in time to help us to deal with the catastrophic problems that we have outlined’ [123]. Nevertheless, the authors suggest that ‘it is a serious mistake to reject moral bioenhancement out of hand because the need for human moral enhancement is so acute that we should not write off any potential effective means without thorough examination’ [121] and that ‘it is important that moral bioenhancement is not written off without good reason’ [123]. This latter claim at least seems eminently plausible, although it is significantly weaker than one might have expected from the opening chapters of the book. Given the existing scientific consensus on the grave threat posed by anthropogenic climate change and the urgent need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases now, talk of ‘moral bioenhancement’ as a potential solution is entirely fantastic. Of course, one can’t help but suspect that the authors themselves do not really believe that moral bioenhancement offers any realistic prospect of avoiding climate change or reducing the risk of the use of weapons of mass destruction. Regardless, they have written a provocative defence of a bold thesis, which contains much to interest, challenge, and entertain their readers.