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59Collaborative explanation and biological mechanismsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 52 67-78. 2015.
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114In this paper, I propose a new way to integrate historical accounts of social interaction in scientific practice with philosophical examination of scientific knowledge. The relation between descriptive accounts of scientific practice, on the one hand, and normative accounts of scientific knowledge, on the other, is a vexed one. This vexatiousness is one instance of the gap between normative and descriptive domains. The general problem of the normative/descriptive divide takes striking and proble…Read more
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84Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology – an IntroductionPhilosophy Compass 8 (12): 1147-1158. 2013.This review surveys three central issues in philosophy of stem cell biology: the nature of stem cells, stem cell experiments, and explanations of stem cell capacities. First, I argue that the fundamental question ‘what is a stem cell?’ has no single substantive answer. Instead, the core idea is explicated via an abstract model, which accounts for many features of stem cell experiments. The second part of this essay examines several of these features: uncertainty, model organisms, and manipulabil…Read more
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63Darwinism in philosophy, social science and public policyBiology and Philosophy 16 (5): 747-749. 2001.
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12The search for the hematopoietic stem cell: social interaction and epistemic success in immunologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 217-237. 2005.Epistemology of science is currently polarized. Descriptive accounts of the social aspects of science coexist uneasily with normative accounts of scientific knowledge. This tension leads students of science to privilege one of these important aspects over the other. I use an episode of recent immunology research to develop an integrative account of scientific inquiry that resolves the tension between sociality and epistemic success. The search for the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) by members of …Read more
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54Stem cells and systems models: clashing views of explanationSynthese 193 (3): 873-907. 2016.This paper examines a case of failed interdisciplinary collaboration, between experimental stem cell research and theoretical systems biology. Recently, two groups of theoretical biologists have proposed dynamical systems models as a basis for understanding stem cells and their distinctive capacities. Experimental stem cell biologists, whose work focuses on manipulation of concrete cells, tissues and organisms, have largely ignored these proposals. I argue that ‘failure to communicate’ in this c…Read more
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105Crucial Stem Cell Experiments? Stem Cells, Uncertainty, and Single-Cell ExperimentsTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (2): 183-205. 2015.I have previously argued that stem cell experiments cannot demonstrate that a single cell is a stem cell (Fagan 2013a, b). Laplane and others dispute this claim, citing experiments that identify stem cells at the singlecell level. This paper rebuts the counterexample, arguing that the alleged ‘crucial stem cell experiments’ do not measure self-renewal for a single cell, do not establish a single cell’s differentiation potential, and, if interpreted as providing results about single cells, fall i…Read more
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5Standards in History: Evaluating Success in Stem Cell ExperimentsIn Henk W. de Regt (ed.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 43--53. 2011.
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49Review of Heather E. Douglas, Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (12). 2009.
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |