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690Ontologies and Politics of Biogenomic 'Race'Theoria. A Journal of Social and Political Theory (South Africa) 60 (3): 54-80. 2013.All eyes are turned towards genomic data and models as the source of knowledge about whether human races exist or not. Will genomic science make the final decision about whether racial realism (e.g., racial population naturalism) or anti-realism (e.g., racial skepticism) is correct? We think not. We believe that the results of even our best and most impressive genomic technologies underdetermine whether bio-genomic races exist, or not. First, different sub-disciplines of biology interested …Read more
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674Schaffner’s Model of Theory Reduction: Critique and ReconstructionPhilosophy of Science 76 (2): 119-142. 2009.Schaffner’s model of theory reduction has played an important role in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology. Here, the model is found to be problematic because of an internal tension. Indeed, standard antireductionist external criticisms concerning reduction functions and laws in biology do not provide a full picture of the limits of Schaffner’s model. However, despite the internal tension, his model usefully highlights the importance of regulative ideals associated with the search for…Read more
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664Prediction in selectionist evolutionary theoryPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 889-901. 2009.Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.
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644Parts and theories in compositional biologyBiology and Philosophy 21 (4): 471-499. 2006.I analyze the importance of parts in the style of biological theorizing that I call compositional biology. I do this by investigating various aspects, including partitioning frames and explanatory accounts, of the theoretical perspectives that fall under and are guided by compositional biology. I ground this general examination in a comparative analysis of three different disciplines with their associated compositional theoretical perspectives: comparative morphology, functional morphology, and …Read more
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553Race and BiologyIn Linda Alcoff, Luvell Anderson & Paul Taylor (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race, Routledge. forthcoming.The ontology of race is replete with moral, political, and scientific implications. This book chapter surveys proposals about the reality of race, distinguishing among three levels of analysis: biogenomic, biological, and social. The relatively homogeneous structure of human genetic variation casts doubt upon the practice of postulating distinct biogenomic races that might be mapped onto socially recognized race categories.
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543Estilos de investigación científica, modelos e insectos socialesIn Edna Suárez Díaz (ed.), Variedad Infinita. Ciencia y representación. Un enfoque histórico y filosófico, Unam and Editorial Limusa, Mexico. 2007.
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530Editorial: Systematics, Darwinism, and the Philosophy of ScienceActa Biotheoretica 57 (1-2): 1-3. 2009.
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482Maps and ModelsIn Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling, . forthcoming.Maps and mapping raise questions about models and modeling and in science. This chapter archives map discourse in the founding generation of philosophers of science (e.g., Rudolf Carnap, Nelson Goodman, Thomas Kuhn, and Stephen Toulmin) and in the subsequent generation (e.g., Philip Kitcher, Helen Longino, and Bas van Fraassen). In focusing on these two original framing generations of philosophy of science, I intend to remove us from the heat of contemporary discussions of abstraction, represent…Read more
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425Cutting the Cord: A Corrective for World Navels in Cartography and ScienceCartographic Journal 57 (2): 147-159. 2019.A map is not its territory. Taking a map too seriously may lead to pernicious reification: map and world are conflated. As one family of cases of such reification, I focus on maps exuding the omphalos syndrome, whereby a centred location on the map is taken to be the world navel of, for instance, an empire. I build on themes from my book _When Maps Become the World_, in which I analogize scientific theories to maps, and develop the tools of assumption archaeology and integration platforms. Here …Read more
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291Mapping the Deep Blue OceansIn Timothy Tambassi (ed.), The Philosophy of GIS. pp. 99-123. 2019.The ocean terrain spanning the globe is vast and complex—far from an immense flat plain of mud. To map these depths accurately and wisely, we must understand how cartographic abstraction and generalization work both in analog cartography and digital GIS. This chapter explores abstraction practices such as selection and exaggeration with respect to mapping the oceans, showing significant continuity in such practices across cartography and contemporary GIS. The role of measurement and abstraction—…Read more
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255Part-whole scienceSynthese 178 (3): 397-427. 2011.A scientific explanatory project, part-whole explanation, and a kind of science, part-whole science are premised on identifying, investigating, and using parts and wholes. In the biological sciences, mechanistic, structuralist, and historical explanations are part-whole explanations. Each expresses different norms, explananda, and aims. Each is associated with a distinct partitioning frame for abstracting kinds of parts. These three explanatory projects can be complemented in order to provide an…Read more
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184The Structure of Scientific TheoriesStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015.Scientific inquiry has led to immense explanatory and technological successes, partly as a result of the pervasiveness of scientific theories. Relativity theory, evolutionary theory, and plate tectonics were, and continue to be, wildly successful families of theories within physics, biology, and geology. Other powerful theory clusters inhabit comparatively recent disciplines such as cognitive science, climate science, molecular biology, microeconomics, and Geographic Information Science (GIS).…Read more
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179Character analysis in cladistics: Abstraction, reification, and the search for objectivityActa Biotheoretica 57 (1-2): 129-162. 2009.The dangers of character reification for cladistic inference are explored. The identification and analysis of characters always involves theory-laden abstraction—there is no theory-free “view from nowhere.” Given theory-ladenness, and given a real world with actual objects and processes, how can we separate robustly real biological characters from uncritically reified characters? One way to avoid reification is through the employment of objectivity criteria that give us good methods for identify…Read more
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50Ontologies and Politics of Biogenomic 'Race'Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 60 (136): 54-80. 2013.
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41Rasmus G. Winther, Review of Ants at Work: How an Insect Society Is Organized by Deborah Gordon (review)Philosophy of Science 68 (2): 268-270. 2001.
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38Character Analysis in Cladistics: Abstraction, Reification, and the Search for ObjectivityActa Biotheoretica 57 (1): 307-307. 2009.
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32Prediction in Selectionist Evolutionary TheoryPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 889-901. 2009.Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.
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30When Maps Become the WorldUniversity of Chicago Press. 2020.Map making and, ultimately, _map thinking_ is ubiquitous across literature, cosmology, mathematics, psychology, and genetics. We partition, summarize, organize, and clarify our world via spatialized representations. Our maps and, more generally, our representations seduce and persuade; they build and destroy. They are the ultimate record of empires and of our evolving comprehension of our world. This book is about the promises and perils of map thinking. Maps are purpose-driven abstractions, dis…Read more
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28Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of A. W. F. Edwards with Commentaries.Cambridge University Press. 2018.A. W. F. Edwards is one of the most influential mathematical geneticists in the history of the discipline. One of the last students of R. A. Fisher, Edwards pioneered the statistical analysis of phylogeny in collaboration with L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, and helped establish Fisher's concept of likelihood as a standard of statistical and scientific inference. In this book, edited by philosopher of science Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Edwards's key papers are assembled alongside commentaries by leading sc…Read more
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21Review of Stephen Stich /Collected Papers. Volume 2. Knowledge, Rationality, and Morality/ (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 201308. 2013.
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21A Beginner’s Guide to the New Population Genomics of Homo sapiensThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 135-151. 2019.It is important to understand the science underlying philosophical debates. In particular, careful reflection is needed on the scientific study of the origins of Homo sapiens, the division of current human populations into ethnicities, populations, or races, and the potential impact of genomics on personalized medicine. Genomic approaches to the origins and divisions of our species are among the most multi-dimensional areas of contemporary science, combining mathematical modeling, computer scien…Read more
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14Remapping Race in a Global Context (edited book)Routledge. 2021.Investigating the reality and significance of racial categories, Remapping Race in a Global Context examines the role of race in human genomics, biomedicine, and struggles for social justice around the world. In this book, biologists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers inspect critical questions around the biological reality of race and how it has been understood in different national and regional contexts. The essays also examine debates on the usefulness of race in medical and epide…Read more
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2Ontologies and Politics of Biogenomic'Race'Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 60 (136): 54-80. 2013.
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Philosophical cartographyIn Inkeri Koskinen, David Ludwig, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli & Luis Reyes-Galindo (eds.), Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge. 2021.
Santa Cruz, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |