•  1
    The Evolving Notion and Role of Kuhn’s Incommensurability Thesis
    In William J. Devlin & Alisa Bokulich (eds.), Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 50 Years On, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Vol. 311. Springer. 2015.
  •  5
    The computer will see you now
    Metascience 33 (1): 103-105. 2024.
  •  23
    Kuhn, Thomas S
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015.
    Thomas S. Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn, although trained as a physicist at Harvard University, became an historian and philosopher of science through the support of Harvard’s president, James Conant. In 1962, Kuhn’s renowned The Structure of Scientific Revolutions helped to inaugurate a revolution—the 1960s historiographic revolution—by providing a new image of science. For … Continue reading Kuhn, Thomas S. →.
  •  2
    Thomas Kuhn's revolutions: a historical and an evolutionary philosophy of science?
    Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2015.
    An historical survey of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, charting the development of this influential work throughout Kuhn's career and exploring the continuing impact of Kuhn on the philosophy of science.
  •  18
    The role of prudent love in the practice of clinical medicine
    Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 17 (5): 877-882. 2011.
  •  68
    In the seventeenth century, Newton published his famous experimentum crucis, in which he claimed that light is heterogeneous and is composed of rays with different refrangibilities. Experiments, especially the crucial experiment, were important for justifying Newton’s theory of light, and eventually his theory of color. A century later, Goethe conducted a series of experiments on the nature of color, especially in contradistinction to Newton, and he defended his research with a methodological pr…Read more
  •  14
    The discovery of heparin revisited: the peptone connection
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39 (4): 610-625. 1995.
  •  18
    During the twentieth century, a controversy raged over the role of electrical forces and chemical substances in synaptic transmission. Although the story of the ‘main’ participants is well documented, the story of ‘lesser’ known participants is seldom told. For example, Alexander Forbes, who was a prominent member of the axonologists, played an active role in the controversy and yet is seldom mentioned in standard accounts of the controversy. During the 1930s, Forbes incorporated chemical substa…Read more
  •  48
    Metaphysical presuppositions and scientific practices: Reductionism and organicism in cancer research
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (1). 2005.
    Metaphysical presuppositions are important for guiding scientific practices and research. The success of twentieth-century biology, for instance, is largely attributable to presupposing that complex biological processes are reducible to elementary components. However, some biologists have challenged the sufficiency of reductionism for investigating complex biological phenomena and have proposed alternative presuppositions like organicism. In this article, contemporary cancer research is used as …Read more
  •  38
    Proponents of the dual-process theory claim that two distinct types of mental faculties or minds are responsible for human cognition. The first is evolutionarily old and not unique to humans but shared with other organisms. Type-1’s key feature is autonomy from cognitive capacities; hence, it does not require working memory. Type-2 is evolutionarily recent and thought to be uniquely human. Its key feature is reflective cognitive-decoupling of Type-1 processes, if warranted; and it requires worki…Read more
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    Hemostatic regulation and Whitehead's philosophy of organism
    with Geert M. N. Verschuuren
    Acta Biotheoretica 35 (1-2): 123-133. 1986.
    Biology as a scientific discipline has relied heavily upon advances in chemistry and physics. An inherent danger in this relationship is the reduction of living phenomena to physico-chemical terms. Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism is utilized to examine current methodologies within biology and to evaluate their appropriateness for future research. Hemostatic regulation is employed to illustrate the applications of organistic concepts to biological research. It is concluded that understanding o…Read more
  •  167
    Human Origins and Human Nature
    Faith and Philosophy 26 (5): 566-570. 2009.
    Both religion and science provide powerful images of human origins and human nature. Often these images are seen as incompatible or irreconcilable, with the religious image generally marginalized vis-à-vis the scientific image. Recent genetic studies into human origins, especially in terms of common cellular features like the mitochondrion from females and the Y-chromosome from males, provide evidence for common ancestors called mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The aim of this paper is …Read more
  •  24
    Constructing a scientific paper: Howell's prothrombin laboratory notebook and paper
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15 (3). 2001.
    Scientists generally record their laboratory activities and experimental results in notebooks, from which they construct scientific papers. The Johns Hopkins physiologist William Henry Howell kept a laboratory notebook from 1913 to 1914, in which he recorded experiments on the blood clotting factor prothrombin. In 1914 he published a paper using this notebook, to justify his theory of prothrombin activation. Howell's paper is reconstructed, in terms of its narrative and argument elements, from t…Read more
  •  38
    Care and competence in medical practice: Francis Peabody confronts Jason Posner (review)
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 14 (2): 143-153. 2011.
    In this paper, I discuss the role of care and competence, as well as their relationship to one another, in contemporary medical practice. I distinguish between two types of care. The first type, care1, represents a natural concern that motivates physicians to help or to act on the behalf of patients, i.e. to care about them. However, this care cannot guarantee the correct technical or right ethical action of physicians to meet the bodily and existential needs of patients, i.e. to take care of th…Read more
  •  28
    Book review (review)
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 27 (3): 265-269. 2006.
  •  55
    Reviews (review)
    with Bryce Huebner, Janette Dinishak, and Jelle De Schrijver
    Philosophical Psychology 21 (6). 2008.
    Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences JON ELSTER Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007484 pages, ISBN: 0521777445 (pbk); $27.99 Explaining Social Be...
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    The epistemically virtuous clinician
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 30 (3): 249-265. 2009.
    Today, modern Western medicine is facing a quality-of-care crisis that is undermining the patient–physician relationship. In this paper, a notion of the epistemically virtuous clinician is proposed in terms of both the reliabilist and responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology, in order to help address this crisis. To that end, a clinical case study from the literature is first reconstructed. The reliabilist intellectual virtues, including the perceptual and conceptual virtues, are then disc…Read more
  •  24
    The End of Modern Medicine: Biomedical Science Under a Microscope (review)
    with Carolyn M. Soke
    Journal of Medical Humanities 26 (2-3): 191-193. 2005.
  •  3
    Metaphysical Foundations and Complementarity of Science and Theology
    Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 17 (1-2): 45-64. 2005.
    This essay examines the metaphysical foundations of the natural sciences and Christian theology in order to complement the epistemic claims from both disciplines. These foundations include Robin Collingwood's notion of presuppositions and Ernan McMullin's epistemic and non-epistemic values. Specifically, the essay investigates the presuppositions and values of science and theology used for guiding and constraining the formation and evaluation of scientific theories and theological doctrines. Pra…Read more
  •  22
    Medical Cure and Progress: The Case of Type-1 Diabetes
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 54 (2): 176-188. 2011.
    What is medical progress? The answer to this question is often associated with advances in diagnostic technology, with greater understanding of disease or pathological mechanisms particularly at the molecular level, or with the discovery of drugs and the developmental of surgical procedures to treat diseases. However, this facile answer can be problematic. In a New York Times Magazine article, for example, Lisa Sanders (2003) recounts a lecture delivered to her first-year class, at a "white-coat…Read more