• Mapping the Future of Biology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 266 (edited book)
    with M. Morange and T. Pradeau
    Springer. 2009.
  •  1
    Précis de Philosophie de la biologie [Handbook Philosophy of Biology] (edited book)
    with Eric Bapteste, Thierry Hoquet, Francesca Merlin, Frédéric Bouchard, and Vincent Devictor
    Vuibert Press. 2014.
    La philosophie de la biologie est un domaine extrêmement actif de la recherche dans la tradition philosophique anglo-saxonne. Elle réunit philosophes et biologistes autour de la question de la définition des concepts fondamentaux : gène, cellule, organisme, espèce, développement, évolution, adaptation, etc. Ce livre, qui rassemble les contributions d’une trentaine de spécialistes français et étrangers, présente en 24 chapitres l’état de la recherche actuelle dans tous les principaux domaines de …Read more
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    Précis de philosophie des sciences (edited book)
    Vuibert. 2011.
    Le Précis de philosophie des sciences vise à présenter, de manière pédagogique, l'état actuel des grandes questions et des grands domaines de la philosophie des sciences. C'est un ouvrage de niveau "intermédiaire", entre les ouvrages d'initiation et les ouvrages de recherche. Il peut être utilisé comme manuel pour des cours de philosophie des sciences au niveau Master, ainsi que dans le cadre de la préparation aux nouvelles épreuves d'épistémologie des CAPES scientifiques. Il a notamment pour vo…Read more
  •  1
    Biodiversity databanks and scientific exploration
    Lato Sensu: Revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences 8 (2): 32-43. 2021.
    For several decades now, biologists have been developing digital databanks, which are remarkable scientific instruments allowing scientists to accelerate the development of biological knowledge. From the beginnings of the Human Genome Project (HGP) onwards, genetic databanks have been a major component of current biological knowledge, and biodiversity databanks have also been developed in the wake of the HGP. The purpose of this paper is to identify the specific features of biodiversity data and…Read more
  •  1
    Le rôle des hypothèses ininterrogées dans l’étude scientifique de la biodiversité des fonds marins
    with Sophie Bary
    Lato Sensu: Revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences 5 (1): 44-49. 2018.
    À partir d’une analyse épistémologique de l’état actuel de la connaissance de la biodiversité, l’importance d’hypothèses ininterrogées est mise au jour pour ce qui concerne le développement de la connaissance de la biodiversité des fonds marins : hypothèses d’endémisme et hypothèses d’ancienneté des groupes taxinomiques découverts.
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    The philosophy of science. A companion (edited book)
    with Denis Bonnay and Mikaël Cozic
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Philosophy of science studies the methods, theories, and concepts used by scientists. It mainly developed as a field in its own right during the twentieth century and is now a diversified and lively research area. This book surveys the current state of the discipline by focusing on central themes like confirmation of scientific hypotheses, scientific explanation, causality, the relationship between science and metaphysics, scientific change, the relationship between philosophy of science and sci…Read more
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    Livre fondateur de R. Carnap, "Der logische Aufbau der Welt" (1928) est une oeuvre philosophique allemande centrale du XXe siècle.Cet ouvrage veut montrer l'actualité de l'"Aufbau" tout en présentant la logique de pensée de Carnap et ses conséquences philosophiques.
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    Les modèles comme fictions
    with Pascal Ludwig
    We propose a philosophical theory of scientific models. Our main claim is that they should be understood as fictions. We illustrate the relevance of the claim by illustrations drawn from the history of science, and we propose a typology.
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    Empirical agreement in model validation
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 56 168-174. 2016.
    Empirical agreement is often used as an important criterion when assessing the validity of scientific models. However, it is by no means a sufficient criterion as a model can be so adjusted as to fit available data even though it is based on hypotheses whose plausibility is known to be questionable. Our aim in this paper is to investigate into the uses of empirical agreement within the process of model validation.
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    What Is the Use of Diagrams in Theoretical Modeling?
    Science in Context 26 (2): 345-362. 2013.
    ArgumentThe use of diagrams is pervasive in theoretical physics. Together with mathematical formulae and natural language, diagrams play a major role in theoretical modeling. They enrich the expressive power of physicists and help them to explore new theoretical ideas. Diagrams are not only heuristic or pedagogical tools, but they are also tools that enable developing the content of models into novel implications.
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    Model spread and progress in climate modelling
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3): 1-19. 2021.
    Convergence of model projections is often considered by climate scientists to be an important objective in so far as it may indicate the robustness of the models’ core hypotheses. Consequently, the range of climate projections from a multi-model ensemble, called “model spread”, is often expected to reduce as climate research moves forward. However, the successive Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate no reduction in model spread, whereas it is indisputable …Read more
  •  30
    Recent years have seen a notable increase in the production of scientific expertise by large multidisciplinary groups. The issue we address is how reports may be written by such groups in spite of their size and of formidable obstacles: complexity of subject matter, uncertainty, and scientific disagreement. Our focus is on the International Panel on Climate Change, unquestionably the best-known case of such collective scientific expertise. What we show is that the organization of work within the…Read more
  •  6
    Le GIEC, une communauté d’expertise originale
    with Pierre Lauret
    Cahiers Philosophiques 142 (3): 121-131. 2015.
    La conscience, largement répandue dans le monde entier, des problèmes liés au réchauffement climatique n’existerait pas sans les travaux du Giec, le Groupe international d’experts de l’ONU sur l’évolution du climat. Sa création et ses méthodes constituent une innovation décisive en matière d’expertise, puisque jamais auparavant on n’avait réuni un groupe international de savants évaluant la production scientifique mondiale et rendant publics leurs résultats. Même le débat complètement biaisé ani…Read more
  •  52
    Borel on the Heap
    Erkenntnis 79 (S5): 1043-1079. 2014.
    In 1907 Borel published a remarkable essay on the paradox of the Heap (“Un paradoxe économique: le sophisme du tas de blé et les vérités statistiques”), in which Borel proposes what is likely the first statistical account of vagueness ever written, and where he discusses the practical implications of the sorites paradox, including in economics. Borel’s paper was integrated in his book Le Hasard, published 1914, but has gone mostly unnoticed since its publication. One of the originalities of Bore…Read more
  •  21
    Why are some models, like the harmonic oscillator, the Ising model, a few Hamiltonian equations in quantum mechanics, the poisson equation, or the Lokta-Volterra equations, repeatedly used within and across scientific domains, whereas theories allow for many more modeling possibilities? Some historians and philosophers of science have already proposed plausible explanations. For example, Kuhn and Cartwright point to a tendency toward conservatism in science, and Humphreys emphasizes the importan…Read more
  •  10
    The Diversity of Models in Statistical Mechanics: Views about the Structure of Scientific Theories
    In Benedikt Löwe, Thoralf Räsch & Wolfgang Malzkorn (eds.), Foundations of the Formal Sciences Ii, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 1--23. 2003.
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    Person as moralist and scientist, comment on Knobe
    with Marcus Vinicius Baldo
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4). 2006.
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    This volume is the best available tool to compare and appraise the different approaches of today’s biology and their conceptual frameworks, serving as a springboard for new research on a clarified conceptual basis. It is expected to constitute a key reference work for biologists and philosophers of biology, as well as for all scientists interested in understanding what is at stake in the present transformations of biological models and theories. The volume is distinguished by including, for the …Read more
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    Whereas experiments and computer simulations seem very different at first view because the former, but not the latter, involve interactions with material properties, we argue that this difference is not so important with respect to validation, as far as epistemologyEpistemology is concerned. Major differences remain nevertheless from the methodological point of view. We present and defend this distinction between epistemology and methodology. We illustrate this distinction and related claims by …Read more
  • La physique face à la probabilité
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 194 (1): 125-126. 2004.
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    Natural kinds: a new synthesis
    with Françoise Longy, Francesca Merlin, and Stéphanie Ruphy
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 35 (3): 365-387. 2020.
    What is a natural kind? This old yet lasting philosophical question has recently received new competing answers (e.g., Chakravartty, 2007; Magnus, 2014; Khalidi, 2013; Slater, 2015; Ereshefsky & Reydon, 2015). We show that the main ingredients of an encompassing and coherent account of natural kinds are actually on the table, but in need of the right articulation. It is by adopting a non-reductionist, naturalistic and non-conceptualist approach that, in this paper, we elaborate a new synthesis o…Read more
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    Les conditions de possibilité de la mesure
    Cahiers Philosophiques 4 7. 2013.
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    Les simulations numériques de l'évolution du climat : de nouveaux problèmes philosophiques ?
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 133 (3): 299-308. 2008.
    L’étude de l’évolution du climat passe nécessairement par des simulations numériques. Leur utilisation a été remise en cause en raison des incertitudes qui affectent leurs résultats. Cet article présente les différentes composantes des simulations numériques utilisées en climatologie et en propose une analyse épistémologique. La conclusion en est que ces simulations numériques procèdent des exigences scientifiques plus généralement à l’œuvre dans la science contemporaine.In order to study the ev…Read more
  •  41
    New mathematics for old physics: The case of lattice fluids
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44 (3): 231-241. 2013.
    We analyze the effects of the introduction of new mathematical tools on an old branch of physics by focusing on lattice fluids, which are cellular automata -based hydrodynamical models. We examine the nature of these discrete models, the type of novelty they bring about within scientific practice and the role they play in the field of fluid dynamics. We critically analyze Rohrlich's, Fox Keller's and Hughes' claims about CA-based models. We distinguish between different senses of the predicates …Read more
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    Introduction: Reassessing Developmental Systems Theory
    Biological Theory 5 (3): 199-201. 2010.
    The Developmental Systems Theory (DST) presented by its proponents as a challenging approach in biology is aimed at transforming the workings of the life sciences from both a theoretical and experimental point of view (see, in particular, Oyama [1985] 2000; Oyama et al. 2001). Even though some may have the impression that the enthusiasm surrounding DST has faded in very recent years, some of the key concepts, ideas, and visions of DST have in fact pervaded biology and philosophy of biology. It s…Read more
  •  66
    Models as Fictions
    with Pascal Ludwig
    In Mauricio Suárez (ed.), Fictions in Science: Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization, Routledge. pp. 56-73. 2009.
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    Ideal and actual inventories of biodiversity
    with Sophie Bary
    Rivista di Estetica 59 14-31. 2015.
    The detection and identification of the species living on a given area is usually supposed to provide a corpus of basic knowledge enabling biologists to develop further pieces of knowledge. However, it reveals surprisingly difficult to achieve biological inventories satisfying the criteria pertaining to such basic knowledge. Our aim in this paper is to highlight how the current practice of biological inventory is shaped by various constraints and potential biases. This leads us to re-consider th…Read more