Hanne Andersen

A frequently advanced claim in contemporary science policy is that interdisciplinarity is especially well suited for being ‘transformative’ and for bringing about ‘major breakthroughs’. Thus, it is expected that, in contemporary science, major progress will come primarily from interdisciplinary research (IDR). Often in this dis-course, interdisciplinarity is also expected to integrate the involved disciplines or specialties. This chapter will provide a philosophical qualification of this political discourse by examining how interdisciplinary progress can be characterised. I shall argue that in addition to the categories of incremental and transformative progress that are well known from mono-disciplinary science, IDR can sometimes also offer another category of progress that I shall call quasi-transformative. In examining these three kinds of interdisciplinary progresses I shall argue, first, that interdisciplinary progress does not necessarily require a specific type of integration between the involved disciplines or specialties, second, that social relations between scientists with different areas of expertise may play a crucial role in especially transformative progress, and third, that different disciplinary perspectives on what constitutes progress can draw wedges between scientists from different disciplines.

This chapter revisits Thomas Kuhn’s argument about an essential tension between tradition and innovation as a driver of scientific progress. It shows that Kuhn’s argument builds on a number of assumptions about the practices of science that held for past science conducted by individuals working within isolated disciplines, and argues that it does therefore not necessarily hold for the increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary science we see today. Examining different types of organization into teams, the chapter discusses how changes in the granularity of collaboration affect Kuhn’s essential tension argument.

Thomas S. Kuhn’s monograph The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Structure) in which Kuhn introduced his seminal phase model for the development of science was one of the most influential books in philosophy of science from the twentieth century. The central ideas about paradigms and revolutions that Kuhn presented in this monograph have not only become part of the standard curriculum across a wide range of academic fields; they have also made deep imprints on science policy as well as on our everyday thinking about how frames of mind guide our actions. Kuhn’s Structure not only provided a new perspective on how science develops; it also constituted an important contribution to an emerging naturalization of scholarship in philosophy of science by arguing that philosophical analyses of science had to be based on studies of science as it had been practiced through history. Despite these immense successes, reservations about Kuhn and the position that he presented in Structure have also been aired in many quarters of academia. Many philosophers have been outraged over the notion of incommensurability. Many historians have been skeptical about the appeal to general structures. This being said, Kuhn himself often had reservations about the ways in which his work was interpreted and used for purposes that he had never intended. Wray’s monograph is an examination of this intriguing tension between the immense success of Structure and the reservations that have remained against it, especially among philosophers and historians.

One important problem concerning incommensurability is how to explain that two theories which are incommensurable and therefore mutually untranslatable and incomparable in a strictly logical, point-by-point way are still competing. The two standard approaches have been to argue either that the terms of incommensurable theories may share reference, or that incommensurable theories target roughly the same object domain as far as the world-in-itself is concerned. However, neither of these approaches to the problem pay due respect to the incommensurability thesis' insights. In this paper I shall first show the inconsistency between the basic premises underlying Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis and the two standard responses to the thesis. I shall then argue that if one adopts Kuhn’s position, the response must build on a notion of overlap between phenomenal worlds. Finally, I shall argue that overlap between complex structures of features can provide the basis for such a notion, and that this makes it possible to explain how incommensurable theories may compete.

The “practice turn” in philosophy of science has strengthened the connections between philosophy and scientific practice. Apart from reinvigorating philosophy of science, this also increases the relevance of philosophical research for science, society, and science education. In this paper, we reflect on our extensive experience with teaching mandatory philosophy of science courses to science students from a range of programs at University of Copenhagen. We highlight some of the lessons we have learned in making philosophy of science “fit for teaching” outside of philosophy circles by taking selected cases from the students’ own field as the starting point. We argue for adapting philosophy of science teaching to particular audiences of science students, and discuss the benefits of drawing on research within science education to inform curriculum and course design. This involves reconsidering teaching resources, assumptions about students, intended learning outcomes, and teaching formats. We also argue that to make philosophy of science relevant and engaging to science students, it is important to consider their potential career trajectories. By anticipating future contexts and situations in which methodological, conceptual, and ethical questions could be relevant, philosophy of science can demonstrate its value in the education of science students.

The phenomenon of shared intention has received much attention in the philosophy of mind and action. Margaret Gilbert (1989, 2000c, 2014b) argues that a shared intention to do A consists in a joint commitment to intend to do A. But we need to know more about the nature of joint commitments to know what exactly this implies. While the persistence of joint commitments has received much attention in the literature, their impersistence has received very little attention. In this paper, we shed light on the impersistence of joint commitments by showing how joint commitments can be dissolved by unexpected events.

With the main work The Revolutions of Science, Thomas S. Kuhn became one of the most read and influential science theorists of the 20th century, and today Kuhn's mindset is part of the majority of science theory courses mandatory at any university course. Kuhn's concepts of paradigms, scientific revolutions and incommensurability have not only changed our view of science but have almost become part of the everyday language and are used far outside the world of science. The legacy of Kuhn paints a picture of the importance Kuhn's thoughts have had to our understanding of the sciences. The authors begin with an introduction to Kuhn's life and work and to the many philosophical discussions that his work has spawned. Next follows a series of chapters outlining Kuhn's influence on the history of science and philosophy of science and his importance in sociology, physics, biology, geography, anthropology, psychology, linguistics and aesthetic sciences. The book is aimed at anyone studying or engaged in one of these subjects, or who wants to understand the debate about the sciences and their evolution over the last half-century.

Mathematicians appear to have quite high standards for when they will rely on testimony. Many mathematicians require that a number of experts testify that they have checked the proof of a result p before they will rely on p in their own proofs without checking the proof of p. We examine why this is. We argue that for each expert who testifies that she has checked the proof of p and found no errors, the likelihood that the proof contains no substantial errors increases because different experts will validate the proof in different ways depending on their background knowledge and individual preferences. If this is correct, there is much to be gained for a mathematician from requiring that a number of experts have checked the proof of p before she will rely on p in her own proofs without checking the proof of p. In this way a mathematician can protect her own work and the work of others from errors. Our argument thus provides an explanation for mathematicians’ attitude towards relying on testimony.

It is a commonly raised argument against thefamily resemblance account of concepts that, on thisaccount, there is no limit to a concept's extension.An account of family resemblance which attempts toprovide a solution to this problem by including bothsimilarity among instances and dissimilarity tonon-instances has been developed by the philosopher ofscience Thomas Kuhn. Similar solutions have beenhinted at in the literature on family resemblanceconcepts, but the solution has never received adetailed investigation. I shall provide areconstruction of Kuhn's theory and argue that hissolution necessitates a developmental perspective withbuilds on both the transmission of taxonomies betweengenerations and a progressive development throughhistory.

In his analysis of “the essential tension between tradition and innovation” Thomas S. Kuhn focused on the apparent paradox that, on the one hand, normal research is a highly convergent activity based upon a settled consensus, but, on the other hand, the ultimate effect of this tradition-bound work has invariably been to change the tradition. Kuhn argued that, on the one hand, without the possibility of divergent thought, fundamental innovation would be precluded. On the other hand, without a strong emphasis on convergent thought, science would become a mess created by continuous theory changes and scientific progress would again be precluded. On Kuhn’s view, both convergent and divergent thought are therefore equally necessary for the progress of science. In this paper, I shall argue that a similar fundamental tension exists between the demands we see for novel insights of an interdisciplinary nature and the need for established intellectual doctrines founded in the classical disciplines. First, I shall revisit Kuhn’s analysis of the essential tension between tradition and innovation. Next, I shall argue that the tension inherent in interdisciplinary research between, on the one hand, intellectual independence and critical scrutiny and, on the other hand, epistemic dependence and trust is a complement to Kuhn’s essential tension within mono-disciplinary science between convergent and divergent thought

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published at the beginning of what has come to be known as “the cognitive revolution.” With hindsight one can construct significant parallels between the problems of knowledge, perception, and learning with which Kuhn and cognitive scientists were grappling and between the accounts developed by each. However, by and large Kuhn never utilized the research in cognitive science—especially in cognitive psychology—that we believe would have furthered his own paradigm. This is puzzling since he did not have the traditional philosophical aversion to “psychologizing” and in fact drew on insights from psychology to support the most radical claims in Structure, such as the “Gestalt switch” nature of conceptual change. Indeed, the research program outlined there seems intrinsically historical, philosophical, and psychological and Kuhn's work has had considerable influence on research in cognitive science.

Epidemiological studies of chronic diseases began around the mid-20th century. Contrary to the infectious disease epidemiology which had prevailed at the beginning of the 20th century and which had focused on single agents causing individual diseases, the chronic disease epidemiology which emerged at the end of Word War II was a much more complex enterprise that investigated a multiplicity of risk factors for each disease. Involved in the development of chronic disease epidemi-ology were therefore fundamental discussions on the notion of causality, especially the question when causal inferences could be justified. In this paper, I shall analyze the implicit normativity of these de-bates. First, I shall give a brief overview of the historical background on which chronic disease epi-demiology emerged and describe how the pioneer studies on smoking and lung cancer became icon of the major challenge that the emerging chronic disease epidemiology was facing: the impossibility of proving that statistical associations reflected causal relations. Next, I shall describe how the develop-ment from the monocausal enterprise of infectious disease epidemiology to the multicausal enterprise of chronic disease epidemiology gave rise to intense discussions of the possible criteria by which to establish causal relationships between a given factor and a particular disease. I shall show how the necessary and sufficient conditions expressed in the so-called Henle-Koch criteria that had proved useful for the 19th century investigations of infectious diseases remained an ideal, although clearly an unobtainable one. Thus, I shall show how 20th century chronic disease epidemiologists on the one hand were searching for a new set of general principles which would provide a logical framework for their investigations, but on the other hand admitted that they would have to accept something more "pragmatic". I shall analyze the various positions in this debate, arguing that the implacability of the debate was due to unrecognized normative issues. I shall argue that many insisted on a distinction between science and application that was untenable, but that due to this distinction the values in-volved in deciding whether or not to act on the basis of a hypothesis were rarely explicitly discussed and the decision therefore continued to appear as a matter of taste rather than the result of a cogent normative analysis

Many discussions between realists and non-realists have centered on the issue of reference, especially whether there is referential stability during theory change. In this paper, I shall summarize the debate, sketching the problems that remain within the two opposing positions, and show that both have ended on their own slippery slope, sliding away from their original position toward that of their opponents. In the search for a viable intermediate position, I shall then suggest an account of reference which, to a degree, follows the causal theory in explaining reference as carving the world at its joints. Contrary to the causal theory, however, I submit that this world is a phenomenal world whose variable joints exist only in a historical process in which they are transmitted gradually from one generation to the next. According to this account, the joints of the phenomenal world are constituted by family resemblance, where bundles of features that span bounded areas in perceptual space underlie the joints. Furthermore, the integrity of the cognitive process by which these joints are recognized depends on a transmission process by which new generations are presented with given joints and bundles by the preceding generation. Contrary to a traditional realist account, this heritage from the preceding generation may be transformed into new joints and bundles before transmission to new generations. This permits a continuous process of referential change in which the joints and bundles at different stages in the development of a theory can be connected by chains-of-reasoning.

It is a commonly raised argument against the family resemblance account of concepts that there is no limit to a concept's extension. An account of family resemblance which attempts to provide a solution to this problem by including both similarity among instances and dissimilarity to non-instances has been developed by the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. Similar solutions have been hinted at in the literature on family resemblance concepts, but the solution has never received a detailed investigation. I shall provide a reconstruction of Kuhn's theory and argue that his solution necessitates a developmental perspective wchich builds on both the transmission of taxonomies between generations and a progressive development through history.

Within recent years, scientific misconduct has become an increasingly important topic, not only in the scientific community, but in the general public as well. Spectacular cases have been extensively covered in the news media, such as the cases of the Korean stem cell researcher Hwang, the German nanoscientist Schön, or the Norwegian cancer researcher Sudbø. In Science's latest annual "breakthrough of the year" report from December 2006, the descriptions of the year's hottest breakthroughs were accompanied by a similar description of "the breakdown of the year: scientific fraud". Official guidelines for dealing with scientific misconduct were introduced in the 1990s. At this time, research agencies, universities and other research institutions around the world developed guidelines for good scientific practice and formed committees to handle cases of scientific misconduct. In this process it was widely debated how to define scientific misconduct. Most definitions centered on falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism (the so-called FFP definition), but suggestions were also made for definitions that were broader and more open-ended, such as the 1995 suggestion from the US Commission of Research Integrity to replace FFP with misappropriation, interference and misrepresentation (the so-called MIM definition). The MIM definition was not adopted in the US, but MIM-like definitions have been adopted in several other countries. In this paper, I shall describe these MIM-related definitions of scientific misconduct and analyze the arguments that have been advanced in their favor. I shall discuss some of the difficulties inherent in the MIM-related definitions, such as the distinction between misrepresentation and mistake, and the demarcation of misrepresentation in areas characterized by uncertainty or by diverging research paradigms. I shall illustrate the problems inherent in the MIM-definition through a particular case: the ruling of the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) about Bjørn Lomborg's best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist in which he argued that contrary to what was claimed in the “litany” of the environmentalists, the state of the environment is getting better rather than worse. Lomborg was reported to the DCSD by several environmental scientists, and this controversial case from 2003 ended with a verdict that characterized Lomborg’s conclusions as misrepresentations, but acquitted Lomborg of misconduct due to his ignorance. I shall analyze this verdict and the problems it reveals with respect to the MIM-related definitions of misconduct.