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45Making Organisms Model Human Behavior: Situated Models in North-American Alcohol Research, since 1950Science in Context 27 (3): 485-509. 2014.ArgumentWe examine the criteria used to validate the use of nonhuman organisms in North-American alcohol addiction research from the 1950s to the present day. We argue that this field, where the similarities between behaviors in humans and non-humans are particularly difficult to assess, has addressed questions of model validity by transforming the situatedness of non-human organisms into an experimental tool. We demonstrate that model validity does not hinge on the standardization of one type o…Read more
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78Performing abstraction: Two ways of modelling arabidopsis thalianaBiology and Philosophy 23 (4): 509-528. 2008.What is the best way to analyse abstraction in scientific modelling? I propose to focus on abstracting as an epistemic activity, which is achieved in different ways and for different purposes depending on the actual circumstances of modelling and the features of the models in question. This is in contrast to a more conventional use of the term ‘abstract’ as an attribute of models, which I characterise as black-boxing the ways in which abstraction is performed and to which epistemological advanta…Read more
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26Documenting the emergence of bio-ontologies: or, why researching bioinformatics requires HPSSBHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (1). 2010.
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83Infrared metaphysics: radiation and theory-choice. Part 2Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (4): 687-706. 2005.We continue our discussion of the competing arguments in favour of the unified theory and the pluralistic theory of radiation advanced by three nineteenth-century pioneers: Herschel, Melloni, and Draper. Our narrative is structured by a consideration of the epistemic criteria relevant to theory-choice; the epistemic focus highlights many little-known aspects of this relatively well-known episode. We argue that the acceptance of light-heat unity in this period cannot be credibly justified on the …Read more
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Naar een open dialoog tussen de wetenschap en de wetenschapsstudiesAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 3. 2007.
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |