I am knowledge. Get me out of here! On localism and the universality of science

It has become increasingly common in historiography of science to understand science and its products as inherently local. However, this orientation is faced with three problems. First, how can one explain the seeming universality of contemporary science? Second, if science is so reflective of its local conditions of production, how can it travel so effortlessly to other localities and even globally? And third, how can scientific knowledge attain validity outside its context of origin? I will argue that the notion of standardization and theories of delocalization manage to explain the ‘globality’ of science, but that localism denies ‘universality’ if it is understood non-spatially. Further, localism limits the validity of scientific knowledge unacceptably inside the laboratory walls or other boundaries of knowledge creation. This is not consistent with scientific practice. I will consider on what grounds extra-local knowledge inferences that transcend the boundaries of locality could be seen as justified.     

The Garching nuclear egg: Teaching contemporary history beyond the linguistic turn

In my paper I argue for mobilising recent material heritage at universities in teaching history of contemporary science. Getting your hands dirty in the messy worlds of the laboratory and the storage room, and getting entangled with the commemorative practices of scientists and technicians does not belong to the common experiences of students in history and philosophy of science. Despite the recent material turn in cultural studies, students’ engagement with the material world often remains a linguistic exercise, extending at most to an excursion to the sanitised and academically encultured world of the museum exhibit.I contrast this approach by drawing on experiences of taking students to the Atomei, Germany’s oldest research reactor at the Garching campus of the Munich University of Technology. Decommissioned since 2000, the installation and its history are still controlled by scientists. Studying contemporary laboratories and their materiality has so far been the domain of sociologists and ethnographers. I argue for opening these spaces to historians of science and engaging with the ‘unfinished’ material world of contemporary science. Taking the material seriously beyond the linguistic turn and asking students to explore laboratories and other sites of knowledge production challenges existing histories and historiographies. By exploring local university departments and their recent histories through their material heritage, we can observe everyday science and confront scientists and technicians’ cultures with those of historians’. By engaging with recent material heritage as historians and archivists, students can make an important contribution to enhancing the awareness about this heritage, its implications for history writing, as well as its documentation and preservation.     

Philosophy,history and sociology of science: Interdisciplinary relations and complex social identities

Sociology and philosophy of science have an uneasy relationship, while the marriage of history and philosophy of science has—on the surface at least—been more successful. I will take a sociological look at the history of the relationships between philosophy and history as well as philosophy and sociology of science. Interdisciplinary relations between these disciplines will be analysed through social identity complexity theory in order to draw out some conclusions on how the disciplines interact and how they might develop. I will use the relationships between the disciplines as a pointer for a more general social theory of interdisciplinarity which will then be used to sound a caution on how interdisciplinary relations between the three disciplines might be managed.     

Evaluating community science

Community science—scientific investigation conducted partly or entirely by non-professional scientists—has many advantages. For example, community science mobilizes large numbers of volunteers who can, at low cost, collect more data than traditional teams of professional scientists. Participation in research can also increase volunteers’ knowledge about and appreciation of science. At the same time, there are worries about the quality of data that community science projects produce. Can the work of non-professionals really deliver trustworthy results? Attempts to answer this question generally compare data collected by volunteers to data collected by professional scientists. When volunteer data is more variable or less accurate than professionally collected data, then the community science project is judged to be inferior to traditional science. I argue that this is not the right standard to use when evaluating community science, because it relies on a false assumption about the aims of science. I show that if we adopt the view that science has diverse aims which are often in tension with one another, then we cannot justify holding community science data to an expert accuracy standard. Instead, we should evaluate the quality of community science data based on its adequacy-for-purpose.     

Philosophy in the trenches: from naturalized to experimental philosophy (of science)

Recent years have seen the development of an approach both to general philosophy and philosophy of science often referred to as ‘experimental philosophy’ or just ‘X-Phi’. Philosophers often make or presuppose empirical claims about how people would react to hypothetical cases, but their evidence for claims about what ‘we’ would say is usually very limited indeed. Philosophers of science have largely relied on their more or less intimate knowledge of their field of study to draw hypothetical conclusions about the state of scientific concepts and the nature of conceptual change in science. What they are lacking is some more objective quantitative data supporting their hypotheses. A growing number of philosophers (of science), along with a few psychologists and anthropologists, have tried to remedy this situation by designing experiments aimed at systematically exploring people’s reactions to philosophically important thought experiments or scientists’ use of their scientific concepts. Many of the results have been surprising and some of the conclusions drawn from them have been more than a bit provocative. This symposium attempts to provide a window into this new field of philosophical inquiry and to show how experimental philosophy provides crucial tools for the philosopher and encourages two-way interactions between scientists and philosophers.     

Knowledge transfer in agent-based computational social science

This article addresses knowledge transfer dynamics in agent-based computational social science. The goal of the text is twofold. First, it describes the tensions arising from the convergence of different disciplinary traditions in the emergence of this new area of study and, second, it shows how these tensions are dealt with through the articulation of distinctive practices of knowledge production and transmission. To achieve this goal, three major instances of knowledge transfer dynamics in agent-based computational social science are analysed. The first instance is the emergence of the research field. Relations of knowledge transfer and cross-fertilisation between agent-based computational social science and wider and more established disciplinary areas: complexity science, computational science and social science, are discussed. The second instance is the approach to scientific modelling in the field. It is shown how the practice of agent-based modelling is affected by the conflicting coexistence of shared methodological commitments transferred from both empirical and formal disciplines. Lastly, the third instance pertains internal practices of knowledge production and transmission. Through the discussion of these practices, the tensions arising from converging dissimilar disciplinary traditions in agent-based computational social science are highlighted.     

Incredulity towards Lyotard: a critique of a postmodernist account of science and knowledge

Philosophers of science have paid little attention, positive or negative, to Lyotard’s book The postmodern condition, even though it has been popular in other fields. We set out some of the reasons for this neglect. Lyotard thought that sciences could be justified by non-scientific narratives (a position he later abandoned). We show why this is unacceptable, and why many of Lyotard’s characterisations of science are either implausible or are narrowly positivist. One of Lyotard’s themes is that the nature of knowledge has changed and thereby so has society itself. However much of what Lyotard says muddles epistemological matters about the definition of ‘knowledge’ with sociological claims about how information circulates in modern society. We distinguish two kinds of legitimation of science: epistemic and socio-political. In proclaiming ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ Lyotard has nothing to say about how epistemic and methodological principles are to be justified (legitimated). He also gives a bad argument as to why there can be no epistemic legitimation, which is based on an act/content confusion, and a confusion between making an agreement and the content of what is agreed to. As for socio-political legitimation, Lyotard’s discussion remains at the abstract level of science as a whole rather than at the level of the particular applications of sciences. Moreover his positive points can be accepted without taking on board any of his postmodernist account of science. Finally we argue that Lyotard’s account of paralogy, which is meant to provide a ‘postmodern’ style of justification, is a failure.     

Between chemistry,medicine and leisure: Antonio Casares and the study of mineral waters and Spanish spas in the nineteenth century

This article considers how chemical analyses were employed not only to study and describe mineral waters, but also to promote new spas, and to reinforce the scientific authority of experts. Scientists, jointly with bath owners, visitors and local authorities, created a significant spa market by transforming rural spaces into social and economic sites. The paper analyses the role developed by the chemist Antonio Casares in the commodification of mineral water in mid-19^th century Spain. His scientific publications and water analyses put a new economic value on some Spanish mineral waters and rural springs. First the paper explores the relationship between geographic factors, regulation, and spa development in 19^th century Spain, and considers how scientific work improved the economy of some rural areas. Then the transformation of numerous country springs into spas, and the commodification of baths as places between science and leisure is examined. Finally the location of spas across the borders of medicine and chemistry is shown, together with the complex field operations required to study mineral waters. This paper reveals an intense circulation of knowledge between the field, laboratories and scientific publications, as well as the essential role developed by experts like Casares, who not only contributed to the study of rural springs but also to their economic transformation.     

Pure science and the problem of progress

How should we understand scientific progress? Kuhn famously discussed science as its own internally driven venture, structured by paradigms. He also famously had a problem describing progress in science, as problem-solving ability failed to provide a clear rubric across paradigm change—paradigm changes tossed out problems as well as solving them. I argue here that much of Kuhn’s inability to articulate a clear view of scientific progress stems from his focus on pure science and a neglect of applied science. I trace the history of the distinction between pure and applied science, showing how the distinction came about, the rhetorical uses to which the distinction has been put, and how pure science came to be both more valued by scientists and philosophers. I argue that the distinction between pure and applied science does not stand up to philosophical scrutiny, and that once we relinquish it, we can provide Kuhn with a clear sense of scientific progress. It is not one, though, that will ultimately prove acceptable. For that, societal evaluations of scientific work are needed.     

Can patents prohibit research? On the social epistemology of patenting and licensing in science

A topic of growing importance within philosophy of science is the epistemic implications of the organization of research. This paper identifies a promising approach to social epistemology—nonideal systems design—and uses it to examine one important aspect of the organization of research, namely the system of patenting and licensing and its role in structuring the production and dissemination of knowledge. The primary justification of patenting in science and technology is consequentialist in nature. Patenting should incentivize research and thereby promote the development of knowledge, which in turn facilitates social progress. Some have disputed this argument, maintaining that patenting actually inhibits knowledge production. In this paper, I make a stronger argument; in some areas of research in the US—in particular, research on GM seeds—patents and patent licenses can be, and are in fact being, used to prohibit some research. I discuss three potential solutions to this problem: voluntary agreements, eliminating patents, and a research exemption. I argue against eliminating patents, and I show that while voluntary agreements and a research exemption could be helpful, they do not sufficiently address the problems of access that are discussed here. More extensive changes in the organization of research are necessary.     

Modelling and knowledge transfer in complexity science

I analyse the construction and transfer of models in complexity science. Thereby, I introduce a distinction between (i) vertical model construction, which is based on knowledge about a specific target system, (ii) horizontal model construction, which is based on the alteration of an existing model and therefore does not require any references to a specific target system; and (iii) the transfer of models, which consists of the assignment of an existing model to a new target system. I argue that, in complexity science, all three of those modelling activities take place. Furthermore, I show that these activities can be divided into two general categories: (i) the creation of a repository of models without specific target systems, which have been created by large-scale horizontal construction; and (ii) the transfer of these models to particular target systems in the natural sciences, which can also be followed by an extension of the transferred model through vertical construction of adaptions and additions to its dynamics. I then argue that this interplay of different modelling activities in complexity science provides a mechanism for the transfer of knowledge between different scientific fields. It is also crucial to the interdisciplinary nature of complexity science.     

State of the field: Latin American decolonial philosophies of science

Today, new histories of science are producing skeptical questions about the supposedly international philosophies of science that prevail in the North. The conceptual resources of such philosophies seem inadequate to enable them to interact effectively with how sciences and their philosophies do, could, and should function in today's economic, political, social and cultural, local and global contexts. How international, or universal, are these philosophies of science in reality? Here the focus will be on just one strain of these challenges. This one has emerged from Latin Americans who are creating anti-colonial histories and philosophies of knowledge production. They have named it modernity/coloniality/decolonial theory (MCD). They intend to develop a philosophy of science adequate for its own, Latin American needs. In the process, they transform typical Northern assumptions about modernity, its origins and its effects on Northern philosophies of science, as these are understood in both Latin America and around the globe.Five aspects of the MCD accounts will be discussed here. The first is historical differences between the worlds of the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas in the sixteenth century and of the worlds of the mostly British colonization of India and Africa in the ‘long nineteenth century’. Second is feminist and anti-racist issues in these Latin American histories. Third is the neglect of these histories in the North. Fourth is the continuing effects of the rise and fall of a positivist philosophy of science in Latin America. The fifth is two progressive post-positivist tensions for Northern philosophy of science produced in this work.     

Things and the archives of recent sciences

With the interest in studying science as practice came an interest in the material artefacts and things that form part of scientific activities in the laboratory, the field, the classroom, or the political arena. This shift in interest in connection with new modes of knowledge production raises new questions regarding the “archive” of science: what should be preserved and where to make it possible to reconstruct scientific practices in the desired detail? While digital media may be able to bridge some of the traditional divisions between the collection of scientific artefacts in museums and the written archival depositories, the move to performing science in silico produces new challenges in respect to establishing the material archives of current science. The paper will discuss these and related questions with special reference to the archives of the contemporary life sciences.     

Transparency and secrecy in citizen science: Lessons from herping

In this paper I will outline a worry that citizen science can promote a kind of transparency that is harmful. I argue for the value of secrecy in citizen science. My argument will consist of analysis of a particular community (herpers), a particular citizen science platform (iNaturalist, drawing contrasts with other platforms), and my own travels in citizen science. I aim to avoid a simple distinction between science versus non-science, and instead analyze herping as a rich practice [MacIntyre, 2007]. Herping exemplifies citizen science as functioning simultaneously within and outside the sphere of science. I show that herpers have developed communal systems of transmitting and protecting knowledge. Ethical concerns about secrecy are inherently linked to these systems of knowledge. My over-arching aim is to urge caution in the drive to transparency, as the concepts of transparency and secrecy merit close scrutiny. The concerns I raise are complementary to those suggested by previous philosophical work, and (I argue) resist straightforward solutions.     

Immanent philosophy of X

In this paper I examine the relationship between historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, and indeed scientists themselves. I argue that (i) they co-habit a shared intellectual territory (science and its past); and (ii) they should be able to do so peacefully, and with mutual respect, even if they disagree radically about how to describe the methods and results of science. I then go on to explore some of the challenges to mutually respectful cohabitation between history, philosophy and sociology of science. I conclude by identifying a familiar kind of project in the philosophy of science which seeks to explore the worldview of a particular scientific discipline, and argue that it too has a right to explore the shared territory even though some historians and sociologists may find it methodologically suspect.     

Genera and species vs. laws of nature two epistemic frameworks and their respective ideal worlds

This paper seeks to exhibit and explain, by way of comparison, two ideal kinds of knowledge: knowledge based on classifications according to genera and species, as in Aristotelianism and common sense, and scientific knowledge based on the application of laws of nature. I will proceed by attempting (1) to determine the role that presuppositions play in knowledge in general by means of the distinction between content and form; (2) to describe and explain the main features of both ideal forms of knowledge; and, finally, (3) to analyze the relation between these two forms of knowledge as it is presented in Eddington's celebrated discussion of the “two tables”. I will be critical of the widespread view that modern science is the correct form of knowledge, and that common sense is merely an illusion.     

Nuclear science and technology in the Malaysian context: Three phases of technoscientific knowledge transfer (ETTLG)

This essay considers the development of the nuclear science programme in Malaysia from a transnational perspective by examining the interactions between state agents and other external nuclear-knowledge/technology related actors and agents. Going beyond the model of knowledge diffusion that brings together concerns articulated in Harris’s (2011) geographies of long distance knowledge and Reinhardt's (2011) role of the expert in knowledge transfer, the proposed three-phase model of knowledge transfer theorises the pathways undertaken by a late-blooming participant of modern science and technology as the latter moves from epistemic dependency to increasing independence despite the hurdles encountered, and the underdevelopment of many areas of its technoscientific economy. The model considers tensions stemming from the pressures of expediency for meeting national developmental goals on the one side, and the call to support the objectives of basic science on the other. The three phases of the model are epistemic transition, epistemic transplantation and localisation, and epistemic generation (ETTLG). As additional support for the proposed model, three arguments are proffered as deeper explanations of the epistemic goal by using Malaysia as a case study: knowledge transfer for political legitimization, knowledge transfer for countering agnotology, and knowledge transfer for social engineering and science diplomacy.     

Helmholtz's early empiricism and the Erhaltung der Kraft

Hermann Helmholtz has often been understood to have started research under the influence of Kant, and then to have made a transition to a later mature empiricist phase. Without claiming that in 1847 Helmholtz held the same positions that he later espoused, I suggest that already in his 1847 ‘Über die Erhaltung der Kraft’ one may find important aspects of his later empiricism. I highlight the ways in which, from early on, Helmholtz turned Kant to use in developing an empirical program of inquiry into possible basic natural causes. To that end, I indicate how, throughout his arguments, Helmholtz employed, sometimes explicitly, but often tacitly, an empiricist logic, one that ran contrary to any form of transcendental deduction, and even to all a priori knowledge. Instead of deriving aspects about the ultimate constituents of nature, Helmholtz aimed to define the proper project for physical natural science. The first part of the paper describes the context of discussion in which Helmholtz entered. The bulk of the paper then analyzes Helmholtz's arguments in order to make space between (1) Kantian, and other, deductions of characteristics that must be true of nature and (2) Helmholtz's delineation of empirically determinable characteristics of presumed ultimate elements of nature, ones that he meant to be specified and delimited through future experimental research. The paper highlights that throughout his discussion Helmholtz meant to define the proper project for physical natural science, a project rife with empiricist aspects.     

Growing knowledge: Epistemic objects in agricultural extension work

We introduce a novel form of experimental knowledge that is the result of institutionally structured communication practices between farmers and university- and local community-based agronomists (agricultural extension specialists). This form of knowledge is exemplified in these communities’ uses of the concept of grower standard. Grower standard is a widely used but seldom discussed benchmark concept underpinning protocols used within agricultural experiments. It is not a one-size-fits-all standard but the product of local and active interactions between farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Grower standard is in some ways similar to more familiar epistemic objects discussed in philosophy of experiment, such as controls or background conditions. However, we argue that grower standard is epistemically novel, due to how knowledge arising from it is coproduced by farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Further, in the United States, this knowledge coproduction is institutionally structured by federal legislature dating back to the 19th century. We use our analysis of grower standard to focus a discussion of the positionality of the coproducers as well as the epistemic products of this form of knowledge coproduction, and we explore the role extension work plays in shaping agricultural science more broadly.     

Philosophy of science for globalized privatization: Uncovering some limitations of critical contextual empiricism

The purpose of this paper is to uncover some of the limitations that critical contextual empiricism, and in particular Longino's contextualism, faces when trying to provide a normative account of scientific knowledge that is relevant to current scientific research. After presenting the four norms of effective criticism, I show how the norms have limited scope when dealing with cases of current scientific practices. I then present some historical evidence for the claim that the organization of science has changed in recent decades, and I argue that the uncovered limitations emerge from this larger phenomenon. Finally, I conclude by suggesting two ways to overcome the previously uncovered limitations.