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378Causes That Make a DifferenceJournal of Philosophy 104 (11): 551-579. 2007.Biologists studying complex causal systems typically identify some factors as causes and treat other factors as background conditions. For example, when geneticists explain biological phenomena, they often foreground genes and relegate the cellular milieu to the background. But factors in the milieu are as causally necessary as genes for the production of phenotypic traits, even traits at the molecular level such as amino acid sequences. Gene-centered biology has been criticized on the grounds t…Read more
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174The Nature and Context of Exploratory Experimentation: An Introduction to Three Case Studies of Exploratory ResearchHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 29 (3). 2007.My aim in this article is to introduce readers to the topic of exploratory experimentation and briefly explain how the three articles that follow, by Richard Burian, Kevin Elliott, and Maureen O'Malley, advance our understanding of the nature and significance of exploratory research. I suggest that the distinction between exploratory and theory-driven experimentation is multidimensional and that some of the dimensions are continuums. I point out that exploratory experiments are typically theory-…Read more
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155How practical know‐how contextualizes theoretical knowledge: Exporting causal knowledge from laboratory to naturePhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 707-719. 2008.Leading philosophical accounts presume that Thomas H. Morgan’s transmission theory can be understood independently of experimental practices. Experimentation is taken to be relevant to confirming, rather than interpreting, the transmission theory. But the construction of Morgan’s theory went hand in hand with the reconstruction of the chief experimental object, the model organism Drosophila melanogaster . This raises an important question: when a theory is constructed to account for phenomena in…Read more
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150What was classical genetics?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (4): 783-809. 2004.I present an account of classical genetics to challenge theory-biased approaches in the philosophy of science. Philosophers typically assume that scientific knowledge is ultimately structured by explanatory reasoning and that research programs in well-established sciences are organized around efforts to fill out a central theory and extend its explanatory range. In the case of classical genetics, philosophers assume that the knowledge was structured by T. H. Morgan’s theory of transmission and t…Read more
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121Why Genic and Multilevel Selection Theories Are Here to StayPhilosophy of Science 72 (2): 311-333. 2005.I clarify the difference between pluralist and monist interpretations of levels of selection disputes. Lloyd has challenged my claim that a plurality of models correctly accounts for situations such as maintenance of the sickle-cell trait, and I revisit this example to show that competing theories don’t disagree about the existence of ‘high-level’ or ‘lowlevel’ causes; rather, they parse these causes differently. Applying Woodward’s theory of causation, I analyze Sober’s distinction between ‘sel…Read more
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118Causal regularities in the biological world of contingent distributionsBiology and Philosophy 13 (1): 5-36. 1998.Former discussions of biological generalizations have focused on the question of whether there are universal laws of biology. These discussions typically analyzed generalizations out of their investigative and explanatory contexts and concluded that whatever biological generalizations are, they are not universal laws. The aim of this paper is to explain what biological generalizations are by shifting attention towards the contexts in which they are drawn. I argue that within the context of any p…Read more
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94Scientific Pluralism (edited book)Univ of Minnesota Press. 1956.Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science?
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49Scientific Pluralism (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. 2006.Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science? Scientific Pluralism demonstrates the viability of the view that some phenomena require multiple accounts. Pluralists observe that scientists present various—sometimes even incompatible—models of the world and argue that this is due to the complexity of the world and representational limitations. In…Read more
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48Ask Not "What is an Individual?"In O. Bueno, R. Chen & M. B. Fagan (eds.), Individuation across Experimental and Theoretical Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2018.Philosophers of biology typically pose questions about individuation by asking “what is an individual?” For example, we ask, “what is an individual species”, “what is an individual organism”, and “what is an individual gene?” In the first part of this chapter, I present my account of the gene concept and how it is used in investigative practices in order to motivate a more pragmatic approach. Instead of asking “what is a gene?”, I ask: “how do biologists individuate genes?”, “for what purposes?”…Read more
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46An Epistemology of Scientific PracticePhilosophy of Science 86 (4): 585-611. 2019.Philosophers’ traditional emphasis on theories, theoretical modeling, and explanation misguides research in philosophy of science. Articulating and applying core theories is part of scientific practice, but it is not the essence of scientific practice. Insofar as science has an essence, it is to systematically investigate and learn about what is not yet understood. This lecture analyzes genetics to articulate a broad-practice-centered approach to philosophy of science. It concludes by arguing th…Read more
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45Okasha’s Unintended Argument for Toolbox TheorizingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (1): 232-240. 2011.Okasha claims at the outset of his book "Evolution and the Levels of Selection" that the Price equation lays bare the fundamentals underlying all selection phenomena. However, the thoroughness of his subsequent analysis of multi-level selection theories leads him to abandon his fundamentalist commitments. At critical points he invokes cost benefit analyses that sometimes favors the Price approach and sometimes the contextual approach, sometimes favors MLS1 and sometimes MLS2. And although he doe…Read more
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121. From the New Editor From the New Editor (p. iii)Philosophy of Science 72 (2): 334-341. 2005.Since the fundamental challenge that I laid at the doorstep of the pluralists was to defend, with nonderivative models, a strong notion of genic cause, it is fatal that Waters has failed to meet that challenge. Waters agrees with me that there is only a single cause operating in these models, but he argues for a notion of causal ‘parsing’ to sustain the viability of some form of pluralism. Waters and his colleagues have some very interesting and important ideas about the sciences, involving plur…Read more
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2Philosophical Perspectives on Causal Reasoning in Biology (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. forthcoming.
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1Theoretical Pluralism and the Scientific Study of Behavior (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. 2006.
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1Philosophical Perspectives on Causal Reasoning in Biology. Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science. Vol. XXI. (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. forthcoming.
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Scientific Pluralism, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Vol 19) (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. 2006.
West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
20th Century Philosophy |