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159How practical know‐how contextualizes theoretical knowledge: Exporting causal knowledge from laboratory to naturePhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 707-719. 2008.Leading philosophical accounts presume that Thomas H. Morgan’s transmission theory can be understood independently of experimental practices. Experimentation is taken to be relevant to confirming, rather than interpreting, the transmission theory. But the construction of Morgan’s theory went hand in hand with the reconstruction of the chief experimental object, the model organism Drosophila melanogaster . This raises an important question: when a theory is constructed to account for phenomena in…Read more
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12The Pluralist StanceIn Stephen H. Kellert, Helen E. Longino & C. Kenneth Waters (eds.), ¸ Itekellersetal:Sp, . 2006.This essay introduces the volume Scientific Pluralism (Volume 19 of Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science). Varieties of recent pluralisms are surveyed, the difference between monism and pluralism vis a vis the sciences is clarified, and the authors’ notion of scientific pluralism is advanced.
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119What Concept Analysis in Philosophy of Science Should BeHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 26 (1): 29-58. 2004.What should philosophers of science accomplish when they analyze scientific concepts and interpret scientific knowledge? What is concept analysis if it is not a description of the way scientists actually think? I investigate these questions by using Hans Reichenbach's account of the descriptive, critical, and advisory tasks of philosophy of science to examine Karola Stotz and Paul Griffiths' idea that poll-based methodologies can test philosophical analyses of scientific concepts. Using Reichenb…Read more
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85Tempered realism about the force of selectionPhilosophy of Science 58 (4): 553-573. 1991.Darwinians are realists about the force of selection, but there has been surprisingly little discussion about what form this realism should take. Arguments about the units of selection in general and genic selectionism in particular reveal two realist assumptions: (1) for any selection process, there is a uniquely correct identification of the operative selective forces and the level at which each impinges; and (2) selective forces must satisfy the Pareto-style requirement of probabilistic causa…Read more
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62Natural selection without survival of the fittestBiology and Philosophy 1 (2): 207-225. 1986.Susan Mills and John Beatty proposed a propensity interpretation of fitness (1979) to show that Darwinian explanations are not circular, but they did not address the critics' chief complaint that the principle of the survival of the fittest is either tautological or untestable. I show that the propensity interpretation cannot rescue the principle from the critics' charges. The critics, however, incorrectly assume that there is nothing more to Darwin's theory than the survival of the fittest. Whi…Read more
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2Philosophical Perspectives on Causal Reasoning in Biology (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. forthcoming.
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Scientific Pluralism, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Vol 19) (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. 2006.
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155What was classical genetics?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (4): 783-809. 2004.I present an account of classical genetics to challenge theory-biased approaches in the philosophy of science. Philosophers typically assume that scientific knowledge is ultimately structured by explanatory reasoning and that research programs in well-established sciences are organized around efforts to fill out a central theory and extend its explanatory range. In the case of classical genetics, philosophers assume that the knowledge was structured by T. H. Morgan’s theory of transmission and t…Read more
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44Taking Analogical Inference Seriously: Darwin's Argument from Artificial SelectionPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986. 1986.Although historians have carefully examined exactly what role the analogy between artificial and natural selection might have played in Charles Darwin's discovery of natural selection, philosophers have not devoted much attention to the way Darwin employed the analogy to justify his theory. I suggest that philosophers tend to belittle the role that analogies play in the justification of scientific theories because they don't understand the special nature of analogical inference. I present a nove…Read more
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Julian Huxley: Biologist and Statesman of ScienceJournal of the History of Biology 27 (2): 363-366. 1994.
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94The Poverty of Pluralism: A Reply to Sterelny and KitcherJournal of Philosophy 87 (3): 151-158. 1990.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |