Adrian Currie

Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the same characteristics and value associated with creativity. Second, we develop a ‘product-first’ account of creativity by which a process is creative just in case it gives rise to products deserving of certain forms of aesthetic engagement.

I develop an account of the relationship between aesthetics and knowledge, focusing on scientific practice. Cognitivists infer from ‘partial sensitivity’—aesthetic appreciation partly depends on doxastic states—to ‘factivity’, the idea that the truth or otherwise of those beliefs makes a difference to aesthetic appreciation. Rejecting factivity, I develop a notion of ‘epistemic engagement’: partaking genuinely in a knowledge-directed process of coming to epistemic judgements, and suggest that this better accommodates the relationship between the aesthetic and the epistemic. Scientific training (and other knowledge-directed activities), I argue, involves ‘attunement’: the co-option of aesthetic judgements towards epistemic ends. Thus, the connection between aesthetic appreciation and knowledge is psychological and contingent. This view has consequences for the warrant of aesthetic judgement in science, namely, the locus of justification is those processes of attunement, not the aesthetic judgements themselves.

It is often thought that the vindication of experimental work lies in its capacity to be revelatory of natural systems. I challenge this idea by examining laboratory experiments in ecology. A central task of community ecology involves combining mathematical models and observational data to identify trophic interactions in natural systems. But many ecologists are also lab scientists: constructing microcosm or ‘bottle’ experiments, physically realizing the idealized circumstances described in mathematical models. What vindicates such ecological experiments? I argue that ‘extrapolationism’, the view that ecological lab work is valuable because it generates truths about natural systems, does not exhaust the epistemic value of such practices. Instead, bottle experiments also generate ‘understanding’ of both ecological dynamics and empirical tools. Some lab work, then, aids theoretical understanding, as well as targeting hypotheses about nature. 1Introduction2Trophic Interactions and Observational Techniques3Cryptic Dynamics in Bottle Experiments4Extrapolationism 4.1Ecological possibility and actuality4.2Ecological heterogeneity5Understanding 5.1The epistemic good of understanding5.2Bottle experiments as understanding-generators5.3How understanding travels6Conclusion.