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1578Overlapping Ontologies and Indigenous Knowledge. From Integration to Ontological Self-DeterminationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 59 36-45. 2016.Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a mo…Read more
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718Extended Cognition in Science CommunicationPublic Understanding of Science 23 (8): 982-995. 2014.The aim of this article is to propose a methodological externalism that takes knowledge about science to be partly constituted by the environment. My starting point is the debate about extended cognition in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. Externalists claim that human cognition extends beyond the brain and can be partly constituted by external devices. First, I show that most studies of public knowledge about science are based on an internalist framework that excludes the environm…Read more
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173Disagreement in Scientific OntologiesJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie (1): 1-13. 2013.The aim of this article is to discuss the nature of disagreement in scientific ontologies in the light of case studies from biology and cognitive science. I argue that disagreements in scientific ontologies are usually not about purely factual issues but involve both verbal and normative aspects. Furthermore, I try to show that this partly non-factual character of disagreement in scientific ontologies does not lead to a radical deflationism but is compatible with a “normative ontological realism…Read more
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514Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 65 (2). 2011.
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660A rediscovery of scientific collections as material heritage? The case of university collections in GermanyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4): 652-659. 2013.The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, we present the outlines of a history of university collections in Germany. On the other hand, we discuss this history as a case study of the changing attitudes of the sciences towards their material heritage. Based on data from 1094 German university collections, we distinguish three periods that are by no means homogeneous but offer a helpful starting point for a discussion of the entangled institutional and epistemic factors in the histo…Read more
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672The objectivity of local knowledge. Lessons from ethnobiologySynthese 194 (12): 4705-4720. 2017.This article develops an account of local epistemic practices on the basis of case studies from ethnobiology. I argue that current debates about objectivity often stand in the way of a more adequate understanding of local knowledge and ethnobiological practices in general. While local knowledge about the biological world often meets criteria for objectivity in philosophy of science, general debates about the objectivity of local knowledge can also obscure their unique epistemic features. In modi…Read more
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Wageningen University and ResearchCommunication, Philosophy and Technology (CPT)Associate Professor
Wageningen, Gelderland, Netherlands