Martin Carrier

Science in the context of application

Part I: Changing Conditions of Scientific Research 1. Science and Technology 2. The Role of Instruments 3. Institutional Changes in Applied Research 4. Shifts in the Ontology: Part II: Science, Values, and Society 5. Commercialization, Politicization and Medialization of Research 6. Freedom of Research or social Accountability 7. Historical Transformations in Science.

Experimental Success and the Revelation of Reality: The Miracle Argument for Scientific Realism

The paper addresses the so-called miracle argument in favor of scientific realism and examines the viability of scientific realism as an explanation for the success of science. Scientific realism is committed to the claims that the theoretical terms in the mature sciences typically refer to real objects and that the theoretical laws in such sciences are typically approximately true. Instrumentalism or non-realism draws on the principles that factual claims need to be confirmed empirically and that experience fails to single out true assumptions. The miracle argument says that if a theory referred to fictitious objects, it would be miraculous that it is able to correctly predict observable effects. This argument transforms scientific realism into a hypothesis that is testable by the history of science. I perform such tests and conclude that the only type of realism that appears to be in agreement with the historical record is “realism of natural kinds.” Theories that enjoy distinguished explanatory success truthfully establish equivalence relations among phenomena.

What is right with the miracle argument: Establishing a taxonomy of natural kinds

IT CERTAINLY strikes us as one of the most remarkable types of scientific achievement when apparently disparate phenomena are unified theoretically. What appeared to be disparate to the untutored eye turns out to arise from the same underlying mechanism and thus to be identical in kind. When a door slams because the windows are open and it is windy outside, this happens due to the same cause and according to the same mechanism that makes a plane lift off the ground. The prima facie conclusion is that science succeeds in going beyond the specious distinctions of the senses. It teaches us what things are truly alike. My aim in this paper is to examine the viability of this popular view. And the result will be that the view is basically correct. More precisely, I will try to show, first, that in some distinguished cases science arguably manages to induce the right classification or taxonomy among the phenomena, and that, second, this is the only access to reality that science is justifiably able to gain. Accordingly, what I am aiming to do is to support a particular and comparatively weak form of scientific realism. Scientific realism contends that claims about certain unobservable ‘items’ which emerge from the theoretical or experimental activity of scientists are literally true; these claims faithfully refer to what is, as it were, going on behind the scenes. There is some quarrel, however, about what these ‘items’ are legitimately supposed to be. The leading brand of this doctrine is theoryrealism. According to this position, the successful theories of mature science are approximately true. That is, these theories correctly portray the notdirectly-observable processes and mechanisms that make the phenomena occur the way they do. A more attenuated version of scientific realism is entity-realism. On the one hand, entity-realism is an immediate consequence of theory-realism. The truth of a theory implies the existence of its theoretical entities. On the other hand, there is also a more autonomous type of entity-realism which is advanced on the basis of experiment-centered arguments. In this version, entity-realism says that the capacity to manipulate certain unobservable entities, and, in particular, to manipulate them in order to experiment on something else, gives

Science in the Context of Application: Methodological Change, Conceptual Transformation, Cultural Reorientation

The heavy application pressure under which science operates, its increased dependency on technical apparatus for experimentation, visualization, and modelling, and its technological ambitions to manage the complexities of highly developed societies have prompted claims to the effect that science as such has undergone a profound methodological and institutional transformation during the past decades. Application-oriented research is not the same as “applied science” in that it does not consist in the transfer of basic knowledge to practical challenges. Instead, application-oriented research emphasizes intervention to the point that theoretical representation may be receding into the background. Shaping the world, rather than understanding it, appears to be the chief objective of contemporary science. The contributions to the volume attempt to identify, explore and assess the changing conditions of scientific research. The three central questions asked are: Does science proceed differently, and if so, how? Does science affect society differently, and if so, how? Is science conceived differently, and if so, how?

Underdetermination as an epistemological test tube: expounding hidden values of the scientific community

Duhem–Quine underdetermination plays a constructive role in epistemology by pinpointing the impact of non-empirical virtues or cognitive values on theory choice. Underdetermination thus contributes to illuminating the nature of scientific rationality. Scientists prefer and accept one account among empirical equivalent alternatives. The non-empirical virtues operating in science are laid open in such theory choice decisions. The latter act as an epistemological test tube in making explicit commitments to how scientific knowledge should be like.

Knowledge, Politics, and Commerce: Science Under the Pressure of Practice

The most questionable aspect of commercialized research is its biased research agenda, while its epistemic characteristics mostly agree with epistemic research. This claims runs counter to a widespread sentiment that economically driven or “instrumental” research suffers from a decline in credibility and depth. Epistemic and application-driven research can be distinguished by their institutional research goals, which provide different stop-rules for projects and modes of topic selection. Application-oriented research is not beset with a general tendency toward superficiality, nor does it generally lack creativity and innovativeness. Only under specific circumstances is the quality of knowledge degraded by its production in the context of application. Yet the external determination of the research agenda which characterizes application-oriented research may produce biases that need to be compensated for moral reasons by science in the public interest.

The Aim And Structure Of Methodological Theory

One of the challenges Kuhn’s work poses to philosophy of science concerns the insight that theory-choice and, accordingly, theory-change is governed by a more complex and subtle procedure than anticipated. In particular, this procedure is claimed to inevitably and justifiedly leave room for individual preferences so that theory-choice fails to be determined unambiguously by criteria with epistemic bearing. This methodological uncertainty can be labeled as Kuhn-underdetermination. Unlike Duhem-Quine underdetermination, it does not require empirical equivalence but rather refers to a situation in which alternative theories have their strengths and faults in different areas and in different respects so that no clear overall picture emerges. Overarching methodological theories can be construed as attempts to overcome the limits set by Kuhn underdetermination. In this perspective, theories like Lakatosianism and Bayesianism provide rules for epistemic judgments that are intended to make a clear evaluation of the credentials of rivaling scientific theories possible. The two methodological theories are supposed to serve as guidelines for methodological judgment or at least to explain with hindsight why a particular theory was picked. However, on closer scrutiny the two methodological theories founder in this task of accounting for theory choice decisions. The criteria of excellence they specify are liable to uncertainties of the same sort as the more traditional virtues they are intended to replace. The paper proposes an alternative picture: methodological theories suggest general maxims and rules that guide the confirmation process rather than provide criteria for specific theory-choice decisions. Methodological theories serve to connect and unify such maxims and rules. Traditionally, lists of methodological virtues are drawn up ad hoc. One could easily add further criteria or delete others. By contrast, methodological theories provide a coherent approach to appreciating scientific theories and comparing their explanatory achievements. And they give a rationale for why these rules rather than others deserve to be preferred.

How to serve the customer and still be truthful: methodological characteristics of applied research

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Explanatory Loops and the Limits of Genetic Reductionism

We reconstruct genetic determinism as a reductionist thesis to the effect that the molecular properties of cells can be accounted for to a great extent by their genetic outfit. The non‐reductionist arguments offered at this molecular level often use the relationship between structure and function as their point of departure. By contrast, we develop a non‐reductionist argument that is confined to the structural characteristics of biomolecules; no appeal to functions is made. We raise two kinds of objections against the reducibility claim underlying genetic determinism. First, some conceptual distinctions at the protein level cannot be captured on a genetic basis. A one‐to‐many relationship between DNA sequences and proteins emerges from them. Second, the relationship between genes and proteins is characterized by explanatory loops or reciprocal explanatory dependence. The presence of proteins is explained by the transcription from corresponding DNA sequences, and the latter is in turn accounted for by the action of proteins. By contrast, a reductive account requires a unidirectional explanatory dependence.

Changing Laws and Shifting Concepts

“Semantic incommensurability”, i.e., non-translatability of concepts taken from different theories, is at the focus of the argument. I attempt to give a rational reconstruction of the notion underlying the writings of Feyerabend and the later Kuhn. I claim that such a coherent notion can be identified and that relevant instances exist. Incommensurability is brought about by theoretical incompatibility. The translation failure between incommensurable concepts arises from the impossibility of jointly fulfilling two conditions of adequacy that the context theory of meaning places on translations. Potential conceptual analogs either fail to preserve the conditions of application or to reproduce the relevant inferential relations. This feature turns out to be correlated with a cross-classification of the pertinent scientific kinds. These relations between incommensurable concepts are sufficient for making an empirical comparison of the claims couched in these concepts possible.