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370Stem Cell Lineages: Between Cell and OrganismPhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (6). 2017.Ontologies of living things are increasingly grounded on the concepts and practices of current life science. Biological development is a process, undergone by living things, which begins with a single cell and (in an important class of cases) ends with formation of a multicellular organism. The process of development is thus prima facie central for ideas about biological individuality and organismality. However, recent accounts of these concepts do not engage developmental biology. This paper ai…Read more
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123Is there collective scientific knowledge? Arguments from explanationPhilosophical Quarterly 61 (243): 247-269. 2011.If there is collective scientific knowledge, then at least some scientific groups have beliefs over and above the personal beliefs of their members. Gilbert's plural-subjects theory makes precise the notion of ‘over and above’ here. Some philosophers have used plural-subjects theory to argue that philosophical, historical and sociological studies of science should take account of collective beliefs of scientific groups. Their claims rest on the premise that our best explanations of scientific ch…Read more
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110In this paper, I propose a new way to integrate historical accounts of social interaction in scientific practice with philosophical examination of scientific knowledge. The relation between descriptive accounts of scientific practice, on the one hand, and normative accounts of scientific knowledge, on the other, is a vexed one. This vexatiousness is one instance of the gap between normative and descriptive domains. The general problem of the normative/descriptive divide takes striking and proble…Read more
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106Crucial Stem Cell Experiments? Stem Cells, Uncertainty, and Single-Cell ExperimentsTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (2): 183-205. 2015.I have previously argued that stem cell experiments cannot demonstrate that a single cell is a stem cell (Fagan 2013a, b). Laplane and others dispute this claim, citing experiments that identify stem cells at the singlecell level. This paper rebuts the counterexample, arguing that the alleged ‘crucial stem cell experiments’ do not measure self-renewal for a single cell, do not establish a single cell’s differentiation potential, and, if interpreted as providing results about single cells, fall i…Read more
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106Social construction revisited: Epistemology and scientific practicePhilosophy of Science 77 (1): 92-116. 2010.Philosophy of scientific practice aims to critically evaluate as well as describe scientific inquiry. Epistemic norms are required for such evaluation. Social constructivism is widely thought to oppose this critical project. I argue, however, that one variety of social constructivism, focused on epistemic justification, can be a basis for critical epistemology of scientific practice, while normative accounts that reject this variety of social constructivism cannot., idealized epistemic norms can…Read more
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93Collective Scientific KnowledgePhilosophy Compass 7 (12): 821-831. 2012.Philosophical debates about collective scientific knowledge concern two distinct theses: groups are necessary to produce scientific knowledge, and groups have scientific knowledge in their own right. Thesis has strong support. Groups are required, in many cases of scientific inquiry, to satisfy methodological norms, to develop theoretical concepts, or to validate the results of inquiry as scientific knowledge. So scientific knowledge‐production is collective in at least three respects. However, …Read more
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92Philosophical understanding of experimental scientific practice is impeded by disciplinary differences, notably that between philosophy and sociology of science. Severing the two limits the stock of philosophical case studies to narrowly circumscribed experimental episodes, centered on individual scientists or technologies. The complex relations between scientists and society that permeate experimental research are left unexamined. In consequence, experimental fields rich in social interactions …Read more
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89Waddington redux: models and explanation in stem cell and systems biologyBiology and Philosophy 27 (2): 179-213. 2012.Stem cell biology and systems biology are two prominent new approaches to studying cell development. In stem cell biology, the predominant method is experimental manipulation of concrete cells and tissues. Systems biology, in contrast, emphasizes mathematical modeling of cellular systems. For scientists and philosophers interested in development, an important question arises: how should the two approaches relate? This essay proposes an answer, using the model of Waddington’s landscape to triangu…Read more
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88Fleck and the social constitution of scientific objectivityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (4): 272-285. 2009.Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought-styles has been hailed as a pioneer of constructivist science studies and sociology of scientific knowledge. But this consensus ignores an important feature of Fleck’s epistemology. At the core of his account is the ideal of ‘objective truth, clarity, and accuracy’. I begin with Fleck’s account of modern natural science, locating the ideal of scientific objectivity within his general social epistemology. I then draw on Fleck’s view of scientific objectivity to im…Read more
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87Explanatory Integration Challenges in Evolutionary Systems BiologyBiological Theory 10 (1): 18-35. 2015.Evolutionary systems biology (ESB) aims to integrate methods from systems biology and evolutionary biology to go beyond the current limitations in both fields. This article clarifies some conceptual difficulties of this integration project, and shows how they can be overcome. The main challenge we consider involves the integration of evolutionary biology with developmental dynamics, illustrated with two examples. First, we examine historical tensions between efforts to define general evolutionar…Read more
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84Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology – an IntroductionPhilosophy Compass 8 (12): 1147-1158. 2013.This review surveys three central issues in philosophy of stem cell biology: the nature of stem cells, stem cell experiments, and explanations of stem cell capacities. First, I argue that the fundamental question ‘what is a stem cell?’ has no single substantive answer. Instead, the core idea is explicated via an abstract model, which accounts for many features of stem cell experiments. The second part of this essay examines several of these features: uncertainty, model organisms, and manipulabil…Read more
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80The Joint Account of Mechanistic ExplanationPhilosophy of Science 79 (4): 448-472. 2012.Many explanations in molecular biology, neuroscience, and other fields of experimental biology describe mechanisms underlying phenomena of interest. These mechanistic explanations account for higher-level phenomena in terms of causally active parts and their spatiotemporal organization. What makes such a mechanistic description explanatory? The best-developed answer, Craver's causal-mechanical account, has several weaknesses. It does not fully explicate the target of explanation, interlevel rela…Read more
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70The Stem Cell Uncertainty PrinciplePhilosophy of Science 80 (5): 945-957. 2013.Stem cells are defined as having capacities for both self-renewal and differentiation. Many different entities satisfy this working definition. I show that this general stem cell concept is relative to a cell lineage, temporal duration, and characters of interest. Experiments specify values for these variables. So claims about stem cells must be understood in terms of experimental methods used to identify them. Furthermore, the stem cell concept imposes evidential constraints on interpretation o…Read more
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69Social experiments in stem cell biologyPerspectives on Science 19 (3): 235-262. 2011.Stem cell biology is driven by experiment. Its major achievements are striking experimental productions: "immortal" human cell lines from spare embryos (Thomson et al. 1998); embryo-like cells from "reprogrammed" adult skin cells (Takahashi and Yamanaka 2006); muscle, blood and nerve tissue generated from stem cells in culture (Lanza et al. 2009, and references therein). Well-confirmed theories are not so prominent, though stem cell biologists do propose and test hypotheses at a profligate rate.…Read more
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64This paper aims to bring the epistemic dimensions of stem cell experiments out of the background, and show that they can be critically evaluated. After introducing some basic concepts of stem cell biology, I set out the current “gold standard” for experimental success in that field (§2). I then trace the origin of this standard to a 1988 controversy over blood stem cells (§3). Understanding the outcome of this controversy requires attention to the details of experimental techniques, the organiza…Read more
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61Darwinism in philosophy, social science and public policyBiology and Philosophy 16 (5): 747-749. 2001.
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57Collaborative explanation and biological mechanismsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 52 67-78. 2015.
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57Meeting report: First ISHPSSB off-year workshop (review)Biology and Philosophy 20 (4): 927-929. 2005.
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55Stems and Standards: Social Interaction in the Search for Blood Stem CellsJournal of the History of Biology 43 (1). 2010.This essay examines the role of social interactions in the search for blood stem cells, in a recent episode of biomedical research. Linked to mid-20th century cell biology, genetics and radiation research, the search for blood stem cells coalesced in the 1960s and took a developmental turn in the late 1980s, with significant ramifications for immunology, stem cell and cancer biology. Like much contemporary biomedical research, this line of inquiry exhibits a complex social structure and includes…Read more
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52Wallace, Darwin, and the Practice of Natural HistoryJournal of the History of Biology 40 (4). 2007.There is a pervasive contrast in the early natural history writings of the co-discoverers of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin. In his writings from South America and the Malay Archipelago (1848-1852, 1854-1862). Wallace consistently emphasized species and genera, and separated these descriptions from his rarer and briefer discussions of individual organisms. In contrast, Darwin's writings during the Beagle voyage (1831-1836) emphasized individual organisms, and mingled…Read more
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50Stem cells and systems models: clashing views of explanationSynthese 193 (3): 873-907. 2016.This paper examines a case of failed interdisciplinary collaboration, between experimental stem cell research and theoretical systems biology. Recently, two groups of theoretical biologists have proposed dynamical systems models as a basis for understanding stem cells and their distinctive capacities. Experimental stem cell biologists, whose work focuses on manipulation of concrete cells, tissues and organisms, have largely ignored these proposals. I argue that ‘failure to communicate’ in this c…Read more
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50The search for the hematopoietic stem cell: social interaction and epistemic success in immunologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 217-237. 2007.Epistemology of science is currently polarized. Descriptive accounts of the social aspects of science coexist uneasily with normative accounts of scientific knowledge. This tension leads students of science to privilege one of these important aspects over the other. I use an episode of recent immunology research to develop an integrative account of scientific inquiry that resolves the tension between sociality and epistemic success. The search for the hematopoietic stem cell by members of Irving…Read more
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46Review of Heather E. Douglas, Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (12). 2009.
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38Explanation, Multiple Perspectives, and UnderstandingBalkan Journal of Philosophy 9 (1): 19-34. 2017.Science is increasingly interdisciplinary, as evidenced by empirical measures, funding initiatives, and the rise of integrative fields such as systems biology and cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, I motivate and outline an account of explanation for interdisciplinary contexts, building on recent debates about scientific perspectivism. Insights from these debates yield an inclusive list of relations between models constructed from different perspectives, which I then refine and generalize in…Read more
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34Crucial stem cell experiments? Stem cells, uncertainty, and single-cell experimentsTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (2): 183. 2015.I have previously argued that stem cell experiments cannot demonstrate that a single cell is a stem cell. Laplane and others dispute this claim, citing experiments that identify stem cells at the single-cell level. This paper rebuts the counterexample, arguing that the alleged ‘crucial stem cell experiments’ do not measure self-renewal for a single cell, do not establish a single cell’s differentiation potential, and, if interpreted as providing results about single cells, fall into epistemic ci…Read more
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31Generative models: Human embryonic stem cells and multiple modeling relationsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 56 122-134. 2016.
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30Epigenetic lacunae: Response to Meloni’s Political BiologyHistory of the Human Sciences 31 (1): 109-115. 2018.
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23Stem cell lacunae: Sarah Franklin: Biological relatives: IVF, stem cells, and the future of kinship. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013, 376pp, $26.95, £17.99 PB Charis Thompson: Good science: The ethical choreography of stem cell research. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013, 360pp, $36.00, £24.95 HBMetascience 24 (1): 147-153. 2014.Sarah Franklin’s Biological relatives: IVF, stem cells, and the future of kinship and Charis Thompson’s Good science: the ethical choreography of stem cell research, examine recently normalized biotechnologies. Franklin’s monograph extends her previous work on in vitro fertilization , deconstructing the success of a technology that, she argues, has grown “curiouser and curiouser” while taking hold in scientific and social life. IVF in its diverse aspects becomes a lens for scrutinizing our ambiv…Read more
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19Interventionist Omissions: A Critical Case Study of Mechanistic Explanation in BiologyPhilosophy of Science 83 (5): 1082-1097. 2016.It is widely assumed that mechanistic explanations are causal explanations. Many prominent new mechanists endorse interventionism as the correct analysis of explanatory causal models in biology and other fields. This article argues that interventionism is not entirely satisfactory in this regard. A case study of Jacob and Monod’s operon model shows that at least some important mechanistic explanations in biology present significant contrasts with the interventionist account. This result motivate…Read more
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |