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86The atomic number revolution in chemistry: a Kuhnian analysisFoundations of Chemistry 20 (3): 209-217. 2017.This paper argues that the field of chemistry underwent a significant change of theory in the early twentieth century, when atomic number replaced atomic weight as the principle for ordering and identifying the chemical elements. It is a classic case of a Kuhnian revolution. In the process of addressing anomalies, chemists who were trained to see elements as defined by their atomic weight discovered that their theoretical assumptions were impediments to understanding the chemical world. The only…Read more
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7Reflections on the origins and importance of our fieldsMetascience 26 (3): 353-354. 2017.This is an editorial.
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103Book Review: Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and HabermasRehgWilliamCogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and HabermasCambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. 360 pp. $40 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42 (1): 152-154. 2012.This is a book review of Regh's Cogent Science in Context.
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46A new philosophy of science from the history of arcane natural science: Eric Scerri’s: A tale of seven scientists and a new philosophy of science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 (review)Foundations of Chemistry 19 (3): 281-285. 2017.This is a book review of Eric Scerri's book, A Tale of Seven Scientists.
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99Kuhn’s Social Epistemology and the Sociology of ScienceIn William J. Devlin & Alisa Bokulich (eds.), Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 50 Years On, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Vol. 311. Springer. pp. 167-183. 2015.This chapter discusses Kuhn’s conception of the history of science by focussing on two respects in which Kuhn is an historicist historian and philosopher of science. I identify two distinct, but related, aspects of historicism in the work of Hegel and show how these are also found in Kuhn’s work. First, Kuhn held tradition to be important for understanding scientific change and that the tradition from which a scientific idea originates must be understood in evaluating that idea. This makes Kuhn …Read more
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244A selectionist explanation for the success and failures of scienceErkenntnis 67 (1): 81-89. 2007.I argue that van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science is superior to the realists’ explanation. Whereas realists argue that our current theories are successful because they accurately reflect the structure of the world, the selectionist claims that our current theories are successful because unsuccessful theories have been eliminated. I argue that, unlike the explanation proposed by the realist, the selectionist explanation can also account for the failures of once succ…Read more
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98Scientific authorship in the age of collaborative researchStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (3): 505-514. 2006.I examine two challenges that collaborative research raises for science. First, collaborative research threatens the motivation of scientists. As a result, I argue, collaborative research may have adverse effects on what sorts of things scientists can effectively investigate. Second, collaborative research makes it more difficult to hold scientists accountable. I argue that the authors of multi-authored articles are aptly described as plural subjects, corporate bodies that are more than the sum …Read more
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169Philosophy of Science: What are the Key Journals in the Field?Erkenntnis 72 (3): 423-430. 2010.By means of a citation analysis I aim to determine which scholarly journals are most important in the sub-field of philosophy of science. My analysis shows that the six most important journals in the sub-field are Philosophy of Science , British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , Journal of Philosophy , Synthese , Studies in History and Philosophy of Science , and Erkenntnis . Given the data presented in this study, there is little evidence that there is such a field as the history and phil…Read more
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1Meaning and Convention and the Sociology of ScienceEidos: The Canadian Graduate Journal of Philosophy 15 (2): 57-67. 1998.
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41Social epistemologyIn Stathis Psillos & Martin Curd (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, Routledge. 2013.Social epistemology is a wide-ranging field of study concerned with investigating how various social factors, practices, and institutions affect our prospects of gaining and spreading knowledge. Philosophers working in social epistemology have focused on a range of topics, including trust and testimony, the effects of social location on knowing, and whether or not groups of people can have knowledge that is not reducible to the knowledge of the individual members of the group. Much of the work i…Read more
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63The methodological defense of realism scrutinizedStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 54 74-79. 2015.I revisit an older defense of scientific realism, the methodological defense, a defense developed by both Popper and Feyerabend. The methodological defense of realism concerns the attitude of scientists, not philosophers of science. The methodological defense is as follows: a commitment to realism leads scientists to pursue the truth, which in turn is apt to put them in a better position to get at the truth. In contrast, anti-realists lack the tenacity required to develop a theory to its fullest…Read more
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16Metascience and Neurath’s boatMetascience 24 (2): 171-172. 2015.Otto Neurath compared science to a ship at sea on which the sailors have to repair their vessel as they keep it afloat. Metascience is a ship of a similar sort. Do not worry. There are no repairs to report. But changes are being made at Metascience on an ongoing basis, even as we work to meet our production deadlines. With this, our second issue, we would like to announce some further changes with the journal.Ties Nijseen and Christi Lue who have long been responsible for many of the matters rel…Read more
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60COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH, DELIBERATION, AND INNOVATIONEpisteme 11 (3): 291-303. 2014.I evaluate the extent to which we could learn something about how we should be conducting collaborative research in science from the research on groupthink. I argue that Solomon has set us in the wrong direction, failing to recognize that the consensus in scientific specialties is not the result of deliberation. But the attention to the structure of problem-solving that has emerged in the groupthink research conducted by psychologists can help us see when deliberation could lead to problems for …Read more
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1015Invisible hands and the success of sciencePhilosophy of Science 67 (1): 163-175. 2000.David Hull accounts for the success of science in terms of an invisible hand mechanism, arguing that it is difficult to reconcile scientists' self-interestedness or their desire for recognition with traditional philosophical explanations for the success of science. I argue that we have less reason to invoke an invisible hand mechanism to explain the success of science than Hull implies, and that many of the practices and institutions constitutive of science are intentionally designed by scientis…Read more
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David L. Hull, Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16 (2): 191-192. 2002.This is a book review of David Hull's edited volume of collected papers, Science and Selection.
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133Who has scientific knowledge?Social Epistemology 21 (3). 2007.I examine whether or not it is apt to attribute knowledge to groups of scientists. I argue that though research teams can be aptly described as having knowledge, communities of scientists identified with research fields, and the scientific community as a whole are not capable of knowing. Scientists involved in research teams are dependent on each other, and are organized in a manner to advance a goal. Such teams also adopt views that may not be identical to the views of the individual members of…Read more
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Tony Becher & Paul R. Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17 (3): 317-320. 2003.
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35Science and systematicity: Paul Hoyningen-Huene: Systematicity: The nature of science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, xiii+287pp, £41.99 HB (review)Metascience 23 (1): 1-4. 2014.This is a review of Paul Hoyningen-Huene's book, Systematicity: The Nature of Science.
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385Success and truth in the realism/anti-realism debateSynthese 190 (9): 1719-1729. 2013.I aim to clarify the relationship between the success of a theory and the truth of that theory. This has been a central issue in the debates between realists and anti-realists. Realists assume that success is a reliable indicator of truth, but the details about the respects in which success is a reliable indicator or test of truth have been largely left to our intuitions. Lewis (Synthese 129:371–380, 2001) provides a clear proposal of how success and truth might be connected, comparing a test of…Read more
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96Kuhn and the Discovery of ParadigmsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 41 (3): 380-397. 2011.I present a history of Kuhn’s discovery of paradigms, one that takes account of the complexity of the discovery process. Rather than emerging fully formed in Structure , the concept paradigm emerged through a series of phases. Early criticism of Structure revealed that the role of paradigms was unclear. It was only as Kuhn responded to criticism that he finally articulated a precise understanding of the concept paradigm. In a series of publications in the 1970s, he settled on a conception of a p…Read more
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127The Future of The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsTopoi 32 (1): 75-79. 2013.I examine the value and limitations of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In the interests of developing a social epistemology of science, I argue that we should draw on Kuhn’s later work, published in The Road since Structure. There, Kuhn draws attention to the important role that specialty formation plays in resolving crises in science, a topic he did not discuss in Structure. I argue that we need to develop a better understanding of specialty research communities. Kuhn’s later work p…Read more
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71A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism, by Paul Dicken : London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. vii + 214, £28.99 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1): 205-206. 2018.
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27Social Selection, Agents' Intentions, and Functional ExplanationAnalyse & Kritik 24 (1): 72-86. 2002.Jon Elster and Daniel Little have criticized social scientists for appealing to a mechanism of social selection in functional explanations of social practices. Both believe that there is no such mechanism operative in the social world. I develop and defend an account of functional explanation in which a mechanism of social selection figures centrally. In addition to developing an account of social selection, I clarify what functional hypotheses purport to claim, and re-examine the role of agents…Read more
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142The pessimistic induction and the exponential growth of science reassessedSynthese 190 (18): 4321-4330. 2013.My aim is to evaluate a new realist strategy for addressing the pessimistic induction, Ludwig Fahrbach’s (Synthese 180:139–155, 2011) appeal to the exponential growth of science. Fahrbach aims to show that, given the exponential growth of science, the history of science supports realism. I argue that Fahrbach is mistaken. I aim to show that earlier generations of scientists could construct a similar argument, but one that aims to show that the theories that they accepted are likely true. The pro…Read more
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33History of Epistemic Communities and Collaborative ResearchIn James D. Wright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), Elsevier. pp. 867-872. 2015.Studies of epistemic communities and collaborative research in the social sciences have deepened the understanding of how science works, and more specifically how the social dimensions of scientific practice both enable and impede social scientists in realizing their epistemic goals. Two types of studies of epistemic communities are distinguished: general theories of epistemic communities aim to construct accounts of theoretical change applicable to all social scientific specialties, whereas his…Read more
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20Is Science Really a Young Man’s Game?Social Studies of Science 33 (1): 137-49. 2003.It has often been remarked that science is a young man's game. Thomas Kuhn, for example, claims that revolutionary changes in science are almost always initiated by either young scientists or those new to a field. I subject Kuhn's hypothesis to testing. I examine 24 revolutionary scientific figures mentioned in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to determine if young scientists are more likely to make revolutionary discoveries than older scientists. My analysis suggests that middle-aged sci…Read more
K. Brad Wray
Aarhus University
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Aarhus UniversityCentre For Science StudiesRegular Faculty
Aarhus, Denmark
Areas of Specialization
General Philosophy of Science |
Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
General Philosophy of Science |
Epistemology |