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24Kon-Tiki ExperimentsPhilosophy of Science 87 (2): 213-236. 2020.We identify a species of experiment—Kon-Tiki experiments—used to demonstrate the competence of a cause to produce a certain effect, and we examine their role in the historical sciences. We argue that Kon-Tiki experiments are used to test middle-range theory, to test assumptions within historical narratives, and to open new avenues of inquiry. We show how the results of Kon-Tiki experiments are involved in projective inferences, and we argue that reliance on projective inferences does not provide…Read more
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55Venomous Dinosaurs and Rear-Fanged Snakes: Homology and Homoplasy Characterized (review)Erkenntnis 79 (3): 701-727. 2014.I develop an account of homology and homoplasy drawing on their use in biological inference and explanation. Biologists call on homology and homoplasy to infer character states, support adaptationist explanations, identify evolutionary novelties and hypothesize phylogenetic relationships. In these contexts, the concepts must be understood phylogenetically and kept separate: as they play divergent roles, overlap between the two ought to be avoided. I use these considerations to criticize an other…Read more
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92The Mystery of the Triceratops’s Mother: How to be a Realist About the Species CategoryErkenntnis 81 (4): 795-816. 2016.Can we be realists about a general category but pluralists about concepts relating to that category? I argue that paleobiological methods of delineating species are not affected by differing species concepts, and that this underwrites an argument that species concept pluralists should be species category realists. First, the criteria by which paleobiologists delineate species are ‘indifferent’ to the species category. That is, their method for identifying species applies equally to any species c…Read more
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114Narratives, mechanisms and progress in historical scienceSynthese 191 (6): 1-21. 2014.Geologists, Paleontologists and other historical scientists are frequently concerned with narrative explanations targeting single cases. I show that two distinct explanatory strategies are employed in narratives, simple and complex. A simple narrative has minimal causal detail and is embedded in a regularity, whereas a complex narrative is more detailed and not embedded. The distinction is illustrated through two case studies: the ‘snowball earth’ explanation of Neoproterozoic glaciation and rec…Read more
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66Convergence, contingency & morphospace: G. R. McGhee: Convergent evolution: limited forms most beautiful. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011Biology and Philosophy 27 (4): 583-593. 2012.George McGhee’s book “Convergent Evolution: limited forms most beautiful” provides an extensive survey of biological convergence. This paper has two main aims. First, it examines the theoretical claims McGhee makes about convergent evolution—specifically criticizing his use of a total morphospace to understand contingency and his assumption that functional constraints are non-contingent. Second, it sketches a group of important conceptual challenges facing researchers interested in convergence.
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4Chris Manias, The Age of Mammals: Nature, Development, and Paleontology in the Long Nineteenth Century Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023. Pp. 488. ISBN 978-0-8229-4780-6. $65.00 (hardcover) (review)British Journal for the History of Science 1-2. forthcoming.
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19Not by signalling alone: Music's mosaicism undermines the search for a proper functionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.Mehr et al. seek to explain music's evolution in terms of a unitary proper function – signalling cooperative intent – which they cash out in two guises, coalition signalling and parental attention signalling. Although we recognize the role signalling almost certainly played in the evolution of music, we reject “ultimate” causal explanations which focus on a unidirectional, narrow range of causal factors.
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39Not by demography alone: Neanderthal extinction and null hypotheses in paleoanthropological explanationBiology and Philosophy 37 (6): 1-23. 2022.Neanderthal extinction is a matter of intense debate. It has been suggested that demography (as opposed to environment or competition) could alone provide a sufficient explanation for the phenomenon. We argue that demography cannot be a ‘stand-alone’ or ‘alternative’ explanation of token extinctions as demographic features are entangled with competitive and environmental factors, and further because demography should not be conflated with neutrality.
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35Minimal Metaphysics vs. Maximal Semantics: A Response to Paul Roth and Fons DewulfJournal of the Philosophy of History 16 (2): 226-236. 2022.In our article, “Past Facts and The Nature of History”, we unpack a broadly realist view of the nature of history and historical narratives. Paul Roth’s The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation serves as our primary foil. Fons DeWulf and Roth have replied, and this is our response to their response.
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149Why experiments matterInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (9-10): 1066-1090. 2019.ABSTRACTExperimentation is traditionally considered a privileged means of confirmation. However, why and how experiments form a better confirmatory source relative to other strategies is unclear, and recent discussions have identified experiments with various modeling strategies on the one hand, and with ‘natural’ experiments on the other hand. We argue that experiments aiming to test theories are best understood as controlled investigations of specimens. ‘Control’ involves repeated, fine-graine…Read more
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111Frameworks for Historians & PhilosophersHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1): 1-34. 2018.The past can be a stubborn subject: it is complex, heterogeneous and opaque. To understand it, one must decide which aspects of the past to emphasise and which to minimise. Enter frameworks. Frameworks foreground certain aspects of the historical record while backgrounding others. As such, they are both necessary for, and conducive to, good history as well as good philosophy. We examine the role of frameworks in the history and philosophy of science and argue that they are necessary for both for…Read more
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861Model Organisms are Not (Theoretical) ModelsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2): 327-348. 2015.Many biological investigations are organized around a small group of species, often referred to as ‘model organisms’, such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The terms ‘model’ and ‘modelling’ also occur in biology in association with mathematical and mechanistic theorizing, as in the Lotka–Volterra model of predator-prey dynamics. What is the relation between theoretical models and model organisms? Are these models in the same sense? We offer an account on which the two practices are show…Read more
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62Paleobiology and philosophyBiology and Philosophy 34 (2): 31. 2019.I offer four ways of distinguishing paleobiology from neontology, and from this develop a sketch of the philosophy of paleobiology. I then situate and describe the papers in the special issue Paleobiology and Philosophy, and reflect on the value and prospects of paleontology-focused philosophy.
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71Marsupial lions and methodological omnivory: function, success and reconstruction in paleobiologyBiology and Philosophy 30 (2): 187-209. 2015.Historical scientists frequently face incomplete data, and lack direct experimental access to their targets. This has led some philosophers and scientists to be pessimistic about the epistemic potential of the historical sciences. And yet, historical science often produces plausible, sophisticated hypotheses. I explain this capacity to generate knowledge in the face of apparent evidential scarcity by examining recent work on Thylacoleo carnifex, the ‘marsupial lion’. Here, we see two important m…Read more
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Towards a new aesthetics of science: aesthetic cultures and the processes and objects of regardIn Milena Ivanova & Alice Murphy (eds.), The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments, Routledge. 2023.
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37Reports from the high table: Sepkoski and Ruse : The paleobiological revolution: essays on the growth of modern paleontology, University of Chicago Press, 2009Biology and Philosophy 27 (1): 149-158. 2012.David Sepkoski and Michael Ruse’s edited collection The Peolobiological Revolution covers the changes in paleontological science in the last half-century. The collection should be of interest to philosophers of science (particularly those interested in non-reductive unity) as well as historians. I give an overview of the content and major themes of the volume and draw some lessons for the philosophy of science along the way. In particular, I argue that the history of paleontology demands a new a…Read more
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13Oren harman and michael r. dietrich (eds). Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, 336 pp (review)History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (2): 1-3. 2020.
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15Misaligned educationJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 48 (3): 332-343. 2021.Like every Bachelor of Arts program, the University of Exeter provides a set of reasons to undertake a BA in philosophy aimed at prospective students and their parents. Here1 are two such reasons:F...
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27Speculation Made Material: Experimental Archaeology and Maker’s KnowledgePhilosophy of Science 89 (2): 337-359. 2022.Experimental archaeology is often understood both as testing hypotheses about processes shaping the archaeological record and as generating tacit knowledge. Considering lithic technologies, I examine the relationship between these conceptions. Experimental archaeology is usefully understood via “maker’s knowledge”: archaeological experiments generate embodied know-how enabling archaeological hypotheses to be grasped and challenged, and further, well-positioning archaeologists to generate integra…Read more
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44Philosophy of Science and the Curse of the Case StudyIn Christopher Daly (ed.), Palgrave Handbook on Philosophical Methods, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 553-572. 2015.
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64Method Pluralism, Method Mismatch, & Method BiasPhilosophers' Imprint 19. 2019.Pluralism about scientific method is more-or-less accepted, but the consequences have yet to be drawn out. Scientists adopt different methods in response to different epistemic situations: depending on the system they are interested in, the resources at their disposal, and so forth. If it is right that different methods are appropriate in different situations, then mismatches between methods and situations are possible. This is most likely to occur due to method bias: when we prefer a particular…Read more
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11Uniqueness in the life sciences: how did the elephant get its trunk?Biology and Philosophy 36 (4): 1-24. 2021.Researchers in the life sciences often make uniqueness attributions; about branching events generating new species, the developmental processes generating novel traits and the distinctive cultural selection pressures faced by hominins. Yet since uniqueness implies non-recurrence, such attributions come freighted with epistemic consequences. Drawing on the work of Aviezer Tucker, we show that a common reaction to uniqueness attributions is pessimism: both about the strength of candidate explanati…Read more
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38Stepping Forwards by Looking Back: Underdetermination, Epistemic Scarcity and Legacy DataPerspectives on Science 29 (1): 104-132. 2021.Debate about the epistemic prowess of historical science has focused on local underdetermination problems generated by a lack of historical data; the prevalence of information loss over geological time, and the capacities of scientists to mitigate it. Drawing on Leonelli’s recent distinction between ‘phenomena-time’ and ‘data-time’ I argue that factors like data generation, curation and management significantly complexifies and undermines this: underdetermination is a bad way of framing the chal…Read more
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14Not Music, but Musics: A Case for Conceptual Pluralism in AestheticsEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 54 (2): 151. 2020.
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54Melinda Fagan philosophy of stem cell biology: Knowledge in flesh and bloodBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (2): 651-655. 2016.
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50Science & SpeculationErkenntnis 88 (2): 597-619. 2021.Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These ‘evidence-first’ accounts provide little guidance for what makes speculation productive or egregious, nor how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various fu…Read more
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10Of Records and Ruins: Metaphors about the Deep PastJournal of the Philosophy of History 17 (1): 154-175. 2023.Consideration of evidence and data in historical science is dominated by textual metaphor: we reconstruct the past on the basis of various incomplete records. I suggest that although textual metaphors are often apt, they also lead philosophers and scientists to think about historical evidence in particular ways, and that other perspectives might be fruitful. Towards this, I explore the notion of natural historical evidence being thought of as ‘ruins’. This has several potential benefits. First, …Read more
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24Narratives, Events & Monotremes: The Philosophy of History in PracticeJournal of the Philosophy of History 17 (2): 265-287. 2023.Significant work in the philosophy of history has focused on the writing of historiographical narratives, isolated from the rest of what historians do. Taking my cue from the philosophy of science in practice, I suggest that understanding historical narratives as embedded within historical practice more generally is fruitful. I illustrate this by bringing a particular instance of historical practice, Natalie Lawrence’s explanation of the sad fate of Winston the platypus, into dialogue with some …Read more
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56Simplicity, one-shot hypotheses and paleobiological explanationHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (1): 10. 2019.Paleobiologists often provide simple narratives to explain complex, contingent episodes. These narratives are sometimes ‘one-shot hypotheses’ which are treated as being mutually exclusive with other possible explanations of the target episode, and are thus extended to accommodate as much about the episode as possible. I argue that a provisional preference for such hypotheses provides two kinds of productive scaffolding. First, they generate ‘hypothetical difference-makers’: one-shot hypotheses h…Read more