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Scientific progress and interdisciplinarityIn Yafeng Shan (ed.), New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress, Routledge. pp. 374-391. 2022.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 politic…Read more
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10Essential Tensions in Twenty-First-Century ScienceIn K. Brad Wray (ed.), Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions at 60, Cambridge University Press. pp. 197-214. 2024.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…Read more
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14Finding the right paradigm: K. Brad Wray: Kuhn’s intellectual path. Charting the structure of scientific revolutions. (review)Metascience 32. 2023.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…Read more
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108How to recognize intruders in your nicheIn H. B. Andersen, F. V. Christiansen, K. F. Jørgensen & Vincent Hendriccks (eds.), The Way Through Science and Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Stig Andur Pedersen, College Publications. pp. 119-135. 2006.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 approache…Read more
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30Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology (edited book)College Publications. 2022.This volume contains papers based on invited lectures from the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology, descriptions of congress symposia, and other materials relating to the congress and DLMPST.
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25Philosophy of Scientific MalpracticeSATS 22 (2): 135-148. 2021.This paper presents current work in philosophy of science in practice that focusses on practices that are detrimental to the production of scientific knowledge. The paper argues that philosophy of scientific malpractice both provides an epistemological complement to research ethics in understanding scientific misconduct and questionable research practices, and provides a new approach to how training in responsible conduct of research can be implemented.
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32Adapting practice-based philosophy of science to teaching of science studentsEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3): 1-18. 2021.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 l…Read more
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223The 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…Read more
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22Arven efter KuhnSamfundslitteratur. 2006.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 …Read more
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58The role of testimony in mathematicsSynthese 199 (1-2): 859-870. 2020.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 w…Read more
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Experiments and ConceptsIn U. Feest & G. Hon (eds.), Generating Experimental Knowledge, Max Planck Institute For the History of Science. pp. 340--27. 2008.
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73Categorization, anomalies and the discovery of nuclear fissionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27 (4): 463-492. 1996.
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105On incommensurabilityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 27 (1): 131-141. 1996.
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15Centaurus?The Official Journal of the European Society for the History of ScienceCentaurus 49 (1): 1-2. 2007.
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17The Control of a Healthy Society: Institutionalizing Statistics in the 19thCenturyCentaurus 49 (4): 257-257. 2007.
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19Kuhn's Account Of Family Resemblance: A Solution To The Problem Of Wide-Open TextureErkenntnis 52 (3): 313-337. 2000.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 adetai…Read more
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105EDWIN H.-C. HUNG Beyond Kuhn. Scientific Explanation, Theory Structure, Incommensurability and Physical Necessity (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1): 237-239. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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25Book reviews (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21 (3). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
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21On KuhnWadsworth. 2001.This brief text assists students in understanding Kuhn's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON KUHN is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concis…Read more
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8Incommensurability and Dynamic Conceptual StructuresPhilosophia Scientiae 8 153-168. 2004.Un problème important à propos de l’incommensurabilité est d’expliquer comment des théories qui sont incommensurables peuvent néanmoins entrer en compétition. Dans cet article, on examine brièvement le compte rendu kuhnien de la différence entre transitions conceptuelles révolutionnaires et non révolutionnaires. On argue que l’approche taxonomique kuhnienne et le principe de non-recouvrement qui le sous-tend ne suffisent pas à distinguer entre ces deux types de transition. On montre que cette ap…Read more
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766Collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and the epistemology of contemporary scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 56 1-10. 2016.Over the last decades, science has grown increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has come to depart in important ways from the classical analyses of the development of science that were developed by historically inclined philosophers of science half a century ago. In this paper, I shall provide a new account of the structure and development of contemporary science based on analyses of, first, cognitive resources and their relations to domains, and second of the distribution of cogni…Read more
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306Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and cognitive psychologyPhilosophical Psychology 11 (1). 1998.In a previous article we have shown that Kuhn's theory of concepts is independently supported by recent research in cognitive psychology. In this paper we propose a cognitive re-reading of Kuhn's cyclical model of scientific revolutions: all of the important features of the model may now be seen as consequences of a more fundamental account of the nature of concepts and their dynamics. We begin by examining incommensurability, the central theme of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, accordi…Read more
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134The Cognitive Structure of Scientific RevolutionsCambridge University Press. 2006.Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influent…Read more
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36Learning by ostension: Thomas Kuhn on science educationScience & Education 9 (1-2): 91-106. 2000.Significant claims about science education form an integral part of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy. Since the late 1950s, when Kuhn started wrestling with the ideas of ‘normal research’ and ‘convergent thought’, the nature of science education has played an important role in his argument. Hence, the nature of science education is an essential aspect of the phase-model of scientific development developed in his famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, just as his later work on categories and con…Read more
Copenhagen, Denmark
Areas of Specialization
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |