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James Robert Brown: Thought experiments and platonism. Part twoCroatian Journal of Philosophy 7 (20): 125-268. 2007.
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49In Vitro Analogies: Simulation Modeling in Bioengineering SciencesIn Tarja Knuuttila, Natalia Carrillo & Rami Koskinen (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Scientific Modeling, Routledge. forthcoming.This chapter focuses on a novel class of models used in frontier research in the bioengineering sciences – in vitro simulation models – that provide the basis for biological experimentation. These bioengineered models are hybrid constructions, composed of living tissues or cells and engineered materials. Specifically, it discusses the processes through which in vitro models were built, experimented with, and justified in a tissue engineering lab. It examines processes of design, construction, ex…Read more
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84Why/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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1897A 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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9Theories, models and interpretationsIn L. Magnani, Nancy Nersessian & Paul Thagard (eds.), Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, Kluwer/plenum. 1999.
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Barriers and Models: Comments on Margolis and GierePSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (2): 441-444. 1990.
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6Reasoning From Imagery and Analogy in Scientific Concept FormationPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988 (1): 41-47. 1988.How do vague notions about how one might understand certain physical phenomena get transformed into scientific concepts such as “field”, “quark”, and “gene”? Philosophers of as disparate views as Reichenbach and Feyerabend have held that the process through which scientific concepts emerge is not a reasoned process. In a manner completely mysterious and unanalyzable, scientific concepts emerge fully grown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. However, when one examines actual cases of concept form…Read more
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12Conceptual ChangeIn George Graham & William Bechtel (eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science, Blackwell. 1998.Much of the attention of philosophy of science, history of science, and psychology in the twentieth century has focused on the nature of conceptual change. Conceptual change in science has occupied pride of place in these disciplines, as either the subject of inquiry or the source of ideas about the nature of conceptual change in other domains. There have been numerous conceptual changes in the history of science, some more radical than others. One of the most radical was the chemical revolution…Read more
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17Modeling Practices in Conceptual InnovationIn Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.), Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice, De Gruyter. pp. 245-270. 2012.
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5“Groping for Trouts in a Peculiar River:” Challenges in Exploration and Application for Ethnographic Study of Interdisciplinary ScienceIn Kieran C. O'Doherty, Lisa M. Osbeck, Ernst Schraube & Jeffery Yen (eds.), Psychological Studies of Science and Technology, Springer Verlag. pp. 103-126. 2019.We describe our efforts to address theoretical opportunities and methodological challenges that arose in the context of our ethnographic investigation of research labs in four different fields of bioengineering science. The multiyear study compared the common and specific features of four sites of interdisciplinary practice and aimed to analyze personal and collective goals, problem formulations, methods, technologies, and social organization within each lab. In the second phase of the study we …Read more
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22Nomic 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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Hybrid devices : embodiments of culture in biomedical engineeringIn Karine Chemla & Evelyn Fox Keller (eds.), Cultures without culturalism: the making of scientific knowledge, Duke University Press. 2017.
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31Rethinking Ethnography for Philosophy of SciencePhilosophy of Science 89 (4): 721-741. 2022.We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative int…Read more
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1Understanding the Creative Mind: a review of Margaret Boden's creative mind (review)Artificial Intelligence 79 (1): 111-128. 1995.
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8From 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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32Empirical Philosophy of Science: Introducing Qualitative Methods into Philosophy of Science (edited book)Springer International Publishing. 2015.The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different from those gained through the kind of introspective conceptual analysis more typical of philosophy. This…Read more
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16Relocating the History of Science: Essays in Honor of Kostas Gavroglu (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2015.In 1877 Louis Paul Cailletet in France and Raoul Pictet in Switzerland liquefied oxygen in the form of a mist. The liquefaction of the first of the so-called permanent gases heralded the birth of low-temperature research and is often described in the literature as having started a ‘race’ for attaining progressively lower temperatures. In fact, between 1877 and 1908, when helium, the last of the permanent gases, was liquefied, there were many priority disputes—something quite characteristic of th…Read more
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Prolegomena to an Empirical Philosophy of ScienceIn Hanne Andersen, Nancy J. Nersessian & Susann Wagenknecht (eds.), Empirical Philosophy of Science: Introducing Qualitative Methods into Philosophy of Science, Springer International Publishing. 2015.
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8Conceptual change and incommensurability: A cognitive-historical viewDanish Yearbook of Philosophy 32 (1): 111-152. 1997.
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2Joseph C. Pitt & Marcello Pera . Rational Changes in Science: Essays on Scientific Reasoning. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987. Pp. xiii + 224. ISBN 9-02772-417-2. £49.50; $64.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 22 (1): 101-101. 1989.
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9Mesoscopic modeling as a cognitive strategy for handling complex biological systemsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 78 101201. 2019.
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16Interdisciplinarities in Action: Cognitive Ethnography of Bioengineering Sciences Research LaboratoriesPerspectives on Science 27 (4): 553-581. 2019.The paper frames interdisciplinary research as creating complex, distributed cognitive-cultural systems. It introduces and elaborates on the method of cognitive ethnography as a primary means for investigating interdisciplinary cognitive and learning practices in situ. The analysis draws from findings of nearly 20 years of investigating such practices in research laboratories in pioneering bioengineering sciences. It examines goals and challenges of two quite different kinds of integrative probl…Read more
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132Peeking 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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11"Why wasn't Lorentz Einstein?" An Examination of the Scientific Method of H. A. LorentzCentaurus 29 (3): 205-242. 1986.
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2What Has History to Do with Cognition? Interactive Methods for Studying Research LaboratoriesJournal of Cognition and Culture 4 (3-4): 663-700. 2004.We have been studying cognition and learning in research laboratories in the field of biomedical engineering. Through our combining of ethnography and cognitive-historical analysis in studying these settings we have been led to understand these labs as comprising evolving distributed cognitive systems and as furnishing agentive learning environments. For this paper we develop the theme of 'models-in-action,' a variant of what Knorr Cetina has called 'knowledge-in-action.' Among the epistemically…Read more
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13Modeling complexity: cognitive constraints and computational model-building in integrative systems biologyHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (1): 17. 2018.Modern integrative systems biology defines itself by the complexity of the problems it takes on through computational modeling and simulation. However in integrative systems biology computers do not solve problems alone. Problem solving depends as ever on human cognitive resources. Current philosophical accounts hint at their importance, but it remains to be understood what roles human cognition plays in computational modeling. In this paper we focus on practices through which modelers in system…Read more
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4Rethinking correspondence: how the process of constructing models leads to discoveries and transfer in the bioengineering sciencesSynthese 198 (Suppl 21): 1-30. 2017.Building computational models of engineered exemplars, or prototypes, is a common practice in the bioengineering sciences. Computational models in this domain are often built in a patchwork fashion, drawing on data and bits of theory from many different domains, and in tandem with actual physical models, as the key objective is to engineer these prototypes of natural phenomena. Interestingly, such patchy model building, often combined with visualizations, whose format is open to a wide range of …Read more
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12Epistemic Identities in Interdisciplinary SciencePerspectives on Science 25 (2): 226-260. 2017.Confronting any science studies or learning sciences researcher in the 21st century is the reality of interdisciplinary science. New hybrid fields1 collaboratively build new concepts, combine models from two or more disciplines and forge inter-reliant relationships among specialists with different skill sets to solve new problems. This paper emerges from our recognition that inescapable psychological factors, including identity dynamics, must be described and analyzed in order to better understa…Read more
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Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
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Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
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