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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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16Science: Process and historyIn Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on process metaphysics, Ontos Verlag. pp. 1--197. 2004.(1) Rescher's processual account of science depicts scientific inquiry as an epitome of the processual nature of knowledge. On this view, science is not seen as a body of theories, but as a process, as an ongoing venture in inquiry whose products are ever changing. (2) Traditionally within philosophy of science, discussions of the development of science are closely connected to discussions of scientific realism. Realists assume that there exists some fixed realm of theory-independent entities, a…Read more
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64New Challenges to Philosophy of Science (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2013.This fourth volume of the Programme “The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective” deals with new challenges in this field. In this regard, it seeks to broaden the scope of the philosophy of science in two directions. On the one hand, ...
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80Incommensurability and Dynamic Conceptual StructuresPhilosophia Scientiae 8 (1): 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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136Stabilizing and changing phenomenal worlds: Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn on scientific literatureJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 32 (1): 109-129. 2001.In the work of both Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn the scientific literature plays important roles for stability and change of scientific phenomenal worlds. In this article we shall introduce the analyses of scientific literature provided by Fleck and Kuhn, respectively. From this background we shall discuss the problem of how divergent thinking can emerge in a dogmatic atmosphere. We shall argue that in their accounts of the factors inducing changes of scientific phenomenal worlds Fleck and Kuhn …Read more
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789 Scientific Concepts and Conceptual ChangeIn Vasō Kintē & Theodore Arabatzis (eds.), Kuhn's The structure of scientific revolutions revisited, Routledge. pp. 179. 2012.
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272Kuhn's mature philosophy of science and cognitive psychologyPhilosophical Psychology 9 (3). 1996.Drawing on the results of modem psychology and cognitive science we suggest that the traditional theory of concepts is no longer tenable, and that the alternative account proposed by Kuhn may now be seen to have independent empirical support quite apart from its success as part of an account of scientific change. We suggest that these mechanisms can also be understood as special cases of general cognitive structures revealed by cognitive science. Against this background, incommensurability is no…Read more
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151Epistemic dependence in interdisciplinary groupsSynthese 190 (11): 1881-1898. 2013.In interdisciplinary research scientists have to share and integrate knowledge between people and across disciplinary boundaries. An important issue for philosophy of science is to understand how scientists who work in these kinds of environments exchange knowledge and develop new concepts and theories across diverging fields. There is a substantial literature within social epistemology that discusses the social aspects of scientific knowledge, but so far few attempts have been made to apply the…Read more
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25Book reviews (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21 (3). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
Copenhagen, Denmark
Areas of Specialization
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |