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1869A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to un…Read more
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566Peeking Inside the Black Box: A New Kind of Scientific VisualizationMinds and Machines 29 (1): 87-107. 2018.Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research groups and for their bioscience collaborators who rely on these models. In this paper we introduce a new kind of visualization that was developed to add…Read more
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467Kuhn, conceptual change, and cognitive scienceIn Tom Nickles (ed.), Thomas Kuhn, Cambridge University Press. pp. 179-211. 2003.
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195Thought Experimenting as Mental ModelingCroatian Journal of Philosophy 7 (2): 125-161. 2007.The paper argues that the practice of thought experintenting enables scientists to follow through the implications of a way of representing nature by simulating an exemplary or representative situation that is feasible within that representation. What distinguishes thought experimenting from logical argument and other forms of propositional reasoning is that reasoning by means of a thought experiment involves constructing and simulating a mental model of a representative situation. Although thou…Read more
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162How do Scientists Think? Capturing the Dynamics of Conceptual Change in ScienceIn R. Giere & H. Feigl (eds.), Cognitive Models of Science, University of Minnesota Press. pp. 3--45. 1992.
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155Nomic concepts, frames, and conceptual changePhilosophy of Science 67 (3): 241. 2000.Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published at the beginning of what has come to be known as “the cognitive revolution.” With hindsight one can construct significant parallels between the problems of knowledge, perception, and learning with which Kuhn and cognitive scientists were grappling and between the accounts developed by each. However, by and large Kuhn never utilized the research in cognitive science—especially in cognitive psychology—that we believe would have fu…Read more
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136Conceptual change in science and in science educationSynthese 80 (1). 1989.There is substantial evidence that traditional instructional methods have not been successful in helping students to restructure their commonsense conceptions and learn the conceptual structures of scientific theories. This paper argues that the nature of the changes and the kinds of reasoning required in a major conceptual restructuring of a representation of a domain are fundamentally the same in the discovery and in the learning processes. Understanding conceptual change as it occurs in scien…Read more
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123How Do Engineering Scientists Think? Model‐Based Simulation in Biomedical Engineering Research LaboratoriesTopics in Cognitive Science 1 (4): 730-757. 2009.Designing, building, and experimenting with physical simulation models are central problem‐solving practices in the engineering sciences. Model‐based simulation is an epistemic activity that includes exploration, generation and testing of hypotheses, explanation, and inference. This paper argues that to interpret and understand how these simulation models function in creating knowledge and technologies requires construing problem solving as accomplished by a researcher–artifact system. It draws …Read more
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105Model‐Based Reasoning in Distributed Cognitive SystemsPhilosophy of Science 73 (5): 699-709. 2006.This paper examines the nature of model-based reasoning in the interplay between theory and experiment in the context of biomedical engineering research laboratories, where problem solving involves using physical models. These "model systems" are sites of experimentation where in vitro models are used to screen, control, and simulate specific aspects of in vivo phenomena. As with all models, simulation devices are idealized representations, but they are also systems themselves, possessing engine…Read more
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100Visual models in analogical problem solvingFoundations of Science 10 (1): 133-152. 2005.Visual analogy is believed to be important in human problem solving. Yet, there are few computational models of visual analogy. In this paper, we present a preliminary computational model of visual analogy in problem solving. The model is instantiated in a computer program, called Galatea, which uses a language for representing and transferring visual information called Privlan. We describe how the computational model can account for a small slice of a cognitive-historical analysis of Maxwell’s …Read more
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97Creating Scientific ConceptsMIT Press. 2008.How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resource…Read more
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96Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery (edited book)Kluwer/Plenum. 1999.The book Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, aims to explain how specific modeling practices employed by scientists are productive methods of ...
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95In the Theoretician's Laboratory: Thought Experimenting as Mental ModelingPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.Thought experiments have played a prominent role in numerous cases of conceptual change in science. I propose that research in cognitive psychology into the role of mental modeling in narrative comprehension can illuminate how and why thought experiments work. In thought experimenting a scientist constructs and manipulates a mental simulation of the experimental situation. During this process, she makes use of inferencing mechanisms, existing representations, and general world knowledge to make …Read more
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94Building Simulations from the Ground Up: Modeling and Theory in Systems BiologyPhilosophy of Science 80 (4): 533-556. 2013.In this article, we provide a case study examining how integrative systems biologists build simulation models in the absence of a theoretical base. Lacking theoretical starting points, integrative systems biology researchers rely cognitively on the model-building process to disentangle and understand complex biochemical systems. They build simulations from the ground up in a nest-like fashion, by pulling together information and techniques from a variety of possible sources and experimenting wit…Read more
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78The cognitive basis of model-based reasoning in scienceIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich & Michael Siegal (eds.), The Cognitive Basis of Science, Cambridge University Press. pp. 133--153. 2002.
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75Why/How to Study Scientific ThinkingQualitative Psychology. forthcoming.Scientific research is a highly complex and creative domain of human activity. In addition to its intrinsic value, understanding scientific thinking provides insight into the creative potential of human psychological capacities, as they are imbedded in rich social, material, and cultural environments. I discuss findings from my own investigations using two forms of qualitative research suited to studying scientific thinking as situated in context: cognitive-historical and cognitive-ethnographic.
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73From Maxwell to Microphysics: Aspects of Electromagnetic Theory in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Jed Z. BuchwaldPhilosophy of Science 54 (3): 489-490. 1987.
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73Faraday to Einstein: constructing meaning in scientific theoriesKluwer Academic Publishers. 1984.PARTI The Philosophical Situation: A Critical Appraisal We must begin with the mistake and find out the truth in it. That is, we must uncover the source of ...
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72The roots of epistemological 'anarchy'Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 22 (1-4). 1979.The claims of the epistemological 'anarchists' have their roots in the orthodox tradition as well as in the Popperian. In particular they follow from the work of Quine. Meaning variance and incommensurability follow directly from the holistic conception of meaning in his 'network' view. Quine's efforts to evade this conclusion fail. His attempt to develop a theory-neutral notion of observation sentence is shown (1) to be inconsistent with his previous claims since it involves the tacit acceptanc…Read more
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67Erratum to: Philosophy of and as interdisciplinarity (review)Synthese 190 (11): 1975-1975. 2013.
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66Why is 'incommensurability' a problem?Acta Biotheoretica 31 (4): 205-218. 1982.The origins of the ‘ incommensurability problem’ and its central aspect, the ‘ meaning variance thesis’ are traced to the successive collapse of several distinctions maintained by the standard empiricist account of meaning in scientific theories. The crucial distinction is that between a conceptual structure and a theory. The ‘thesis’ and the ‘problem’ follow from critiques of this distinction by Duhem, Quine and Feyerabend. It is maintained that, rather than revealing the ‘problem’, the argumen…Read more
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66Diversity as AssetTopics in Cognitive Science 7 (4): 677-688. 2015.We begin our commentary by summarizing the commonalities and differences in cognitive phenomena across cultures, as found by the seven papers of this topic. We then assess the commonalities and differences in how our various authors have approached the study of cognitive diversity, and speculate on the need for, and potential of, cross-disciplinary collaboration
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65Conceptual change and incommensurability: A cognitive-historical viewDanish Yearbook of Philosophy 32 (1): 111-152. 1997.
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62Coupling simulation and experiment: The bimodal strategy in integrative systems biologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4a): 572-584. 2013.The importation of computational methods into biology is generating novel methodological strategies for managing complexity which philosophers are only just starting to explore and elaborate. This paper aims to enrich our understanding of methodology in integrative systems biology, which is developing novel epistemic and cognitive strategies for managing complex problem-solving tasks. We illustrate this through developing a case study of a bimodal researcher from our ethnographic investigation o…Read more
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59Reasoning from Imagery and Analogy in Scientific Concept FormationPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988. 1988.Concept formation in science is a reasoned process, commensurate with ordinary problem-solving processes. An account of how analogical reasoning and reasoning from imagistic representations generate new scientific concepts is presented. The account derives from case studies of concept formation in science and from computational theories of analogical problem solving in cognitive science. Concept formation by analogy is seen to be a process of increasing abstraction from existing conceptual struc…Read more
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