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278Imagination and Creativity in the Scientific RealmIn Amy Kind & Julia Langkau (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity, Oxford University Press. 2024.Historically left to the margins, the topics of imagination and creativity have gained prominence in philosophy of science, challenging the once dominant distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’. The aim of this chapter is to explore imagination and creativity starting from issues within contemporary philosophy of science, making connections to these topics in other domains along the way. It discusses the recent literature on the role of imagination in models and…Read more
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Profound experimentsIn Milena Ivanova & Alice Murphy (eds.), The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments, Routledge. 2023.
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IntroductionIn Milena Ivanova & Alice Murphy (eds.), The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments, Routledge. 2023.
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17The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments (edited book)Routledge. 2023.The collection provides an analysis of the concept of beauty in the evaluation of experiments. What properties do practicing experimenters value? How have the aesthetic properties of scientific experiments changed over the years? Secondly, the volume looks at the role that aesthetic factors, including negative values such as ugliness, as well as experiences of the sublime and the profound, play in the construction of an experiment and its reception. Thirdly, the chapters provide in-depth histori…Read more
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322Form and Content: A Defence of Aesthetic Value in SciencePhilosophy of Science 1-26. 2023.Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content of a thought expe…Read more
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215Imagination in sciencePhilosophy Compass 17 (6). 2022.While discussions of the imagination have been limited in philosophy of science, this is beginning to change. In recent years, a vast literature on imagination in science has emerged. This paper surveys the current field, including the changing attitudes towards the scientific imagination, the fiction view of models, how the imagination can lead to knowledge and understanding, and the value of different types of imagination. It ends with a discussion of the gaps in the current literature, indica…Read more
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63Thought Experiments and the Scientific ImaginationDissertation, University of Leeds. 2020.Thought experiments (TEs) are important tools in science, used to both undermine and support theories, and communicate and explain complex phenomena. Their interest within philosophy of science has been dominated by a narrow question: How do TEs increase knowledge? My aim is to push beyond this to consider their broader value in scientific practice. I do this through an investigation into the scientific imagination. Part one explores questions regarding TEs as “experiments in the imagination” vi…Read more
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179The Value of Surprise in ScienceErkenntnis 88 (4): 1447-1466. 2023.Scientific results are often presented as ‘surprising’ as if that is a good thing. Is it? And if so, why? What is the value of surprise in science? Discussions of surprise in science have been limited, but surprise has been used as a way of defending the epistemic privilege of experiments over simulations. The argument is that while experiments can ‘confound’, simulations can merely surprise (Morgan, 2005). Our aim in this paper is to show that the discussion of surprise can be usefully extended…Read more
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467The Aesthetic and Literary Qualities of Scientific Thought ExperimentsIn Milena Ivanova & Steven French (eds.), The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding, Routledge. 2020.Is there a role for aesthetic judgements in science? One aspect of scientific practice, the use of thought experiments, has a clear aesthetic dimension. Thought experiments are creatively produced artefacts that are designed to engage the imagination. Comparisons have been made between scientific (and philosophical) thought experiments and other aesthetically appreciated objects. In particular, thought experiments are said to share qualities with literary fiction as they invite us to imagine a f…Read more
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46CHIRIMUUTA, MAZVIITA. Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy. The MIT Press, 2015, xii + 245 pp., 5 color + 10 b&w illus., $40.00 cloth (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (4): 428-430. 2016.
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126Toward a Pluralist Account of the Imagination in SciencePhilosophy of Science 87 (5): 957-967. 2020.Typically, the imagination in thought experiments has been taken to consist in mental images; we visualize the state of affairs described. A recent alternative from Fiora Salis and Roman Frigg main...
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Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenMunich Centre for Mathematical PhilosophyPost-doctoral Fellow
Munich, Bavaria, Germany