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17Sustainability science as a management science : beyond the natural-social divideIn Inkeri Koskinen, David Ludwig, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli & Luis Reyes-Galindo (eds.), Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge. 2021.In this chapter, we argue that in order to understand the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialectics in sustainability science, it is useful to see sustainability science as a kind of management science, and then to highlight the hard-soft distinction in systems thinking. First, we argue that the commonly made natural-social science dichotomy is relatively unimportant and unhelpful. We then outline the differences between soft and hard systems thinking as a more relevant and helpful dist…Read more
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19Why nature matters: A systematic review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational valuesBioScience 74 (1). 2024.In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we dete…Read more
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11The interdisciplinary decision problem : Popperian optimism and Kuhnian pessimism in forestryEcology and Society 23 (3). 2018.Interdisciplinary research in the fields of forestry and sustainability studies often encounters seemingly incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The perceived incompatibilities might emerge from the epistemological and ontological claims of the theories or models directly employed in the interdisciplinary collaboration, or they might be created by other epistemological and ontological assumptions that these interdisciplinary researchers find no reason to…Read more
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18Against general resilienceIn Michael A. Burayidi, Adriana Allen, John Twigg & Christine Wamsler (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Urban Resilience, . 2019.
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11Problem-Feeding as a Model for Interdisciplinary ResearchInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (1): 39-59. 2022.Philosophers of science have in recent years become increasingly interested in the notion of interdisciplinarity. One important form interdisciplinarity can take is that of a dynamic exchange of problems and solutions between disciplines—what has recently been called problem-feeding. On this model problems arising within specific disciplines are sometimes solved more effectively by, or in collaboration with, other disciplines. In this paper we explore this model as a framework for thinking about…Read more
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15An interdisciplinary sustainability science?In Peter Kreig & Reeta Toivonen (eds.), Situating sustainability : A handbook of contexts and concepts, . forthcoming.
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23Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciencesEcology and Society 23 (4). 2018.Interdisciplinary research within the field of sustainability studies often faces incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The importance of this fact is often underrated and sometimes leads to the wrong strategies. We distinguish between two broad approaches in interdisciplinarity: unificationism and pluralism. Unificationism seeks unification and perceives disciplinary boundaries as conventional, representing no long-term obstacle to progress, whereas plu…Read more
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784Philosophy of Science for Sustainability ScienceSustainability Science 1 (N/A): 1-11. 2020.Sustainability science seeks to extend scientific investigation into domains characterized by a distinct problem-solving agenda, physical and social complexity, and complex moral and ethical landscapes. In this endeavor it arguably pushes scientific investigation beyond its usual comfort zones, raising fundamental issues about how best to structure such investigation. Philosophers of science have long scrutinized the structure of science and scientific practices, and the conditions under which t…Read more
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7Ecosystem services between integration and economics imperialismEcology and Society 23 (4). 2018.Here, we explore the interdisciplinary merits of the ecosystem services concept by recruiting the notion of economics imperialism. We identify four different ways in which interdisciplinary concepts can fail as interdisciplinary concepts, three of which are associated with imperialism. First, interdisciplinary concepts can fail to be integrative, typically by being overtly flexible or vague. The remaining three ways, which typically mark imperialist infringements, are: failure to achieve ontolog…Read more
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15Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciencesEcology and Society 23 (4). 2018.Interdisciplinary research within the field of sustainability studies often faces incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The importance of this fact is often underrated and sometimes leads to the wrong strategies. We distinguish between two broad approaches in interdisciplinarity: unificationism and pluralism. Unificationism seeks unification and perceives disciplinary boundaries as conventional, representing no long-term obstacle to progress, whereas plu…Read more
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25The Hammer and the Nail : Interdisciplinarity and Problem Solving in Sustainability ScienceDissertation, Lund University. 2015.This is a thesis about interdisciplinarity, scientific integration, and problem solving in sustainability science. Sustainability science is an emerging and highly interdisciplinary field that seeks to integrate vastly differentiated bodies of knowledge in addressing the challenge of transitioning contemporary societies towards sustainability. Interdisciplinarity is paramount. Interdisciplinarity in general, and in the context of sustainability science in particular, has often been associated wi…Read more
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12An intuitive and appealing way to characterize problem solving is as the application of constraints which reduce the problem-solution space. Any advantage offered by interdisciplinary problem solving would then plausi- bly derive from the integration of constraints from the fields involved. We propose an account of interdisciplinary problem solving which treats the integration of constraints as an iterative process. Appealing to a general- ization of entity-activity dualism from mechanical expla…Read more
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1489Is resilience a normative concept?Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses 2 (6): 112-128. 2018.In this paper, we engage with the question of the normative content of the resilience concept. The issues are approached in two consecutive steps. First, we proceed from a narrow construal of the resilience concept – as the ability of a system to absorb a disturbance – and show that under an analysis of normative concepts as evaluative concepts resilience comes out as descriptive. In the second part of the paper, we argue that (1) for systems of interest (primarily social systems or system with …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |