RESEARCH PROJECTS

The following projects are at different stages of development and represent a variety of ongoing research (although not all of it). Some of them arise out of my doctoral dissertation (see description below), whereas others are new endeavors.

(i) Reductive Explanation and Temporality

Time is an important factor in biological explanations and one that has not received sufficient attention in the context of reductionism. This project focuses on epistemological aspects of time and their relevance to reductive explanations, especially as seen in cell and developmental biology. These analyses are part of a larger investigation on representation and explanation in contemporary developmental biology.

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(ii) The Problem of Innovation and Novelty and Integrative Explanation in Biology (with Ingo Brigandt)

This project attempts to extend my earlier published research and dissertation analysis of the concepts of evolutionary innovation and novelty, especially the sense in which research on evolutionary innovation and novelty require interdisciplinary collaboration and how this research constitutes a distinct domain of investigation separate from adaptation in evolutionary biology. It also links up with a collaborative endeavor with Ingo Brigandt entitled "Integrating different biological approaches: a philosophical contribution", which is currently being funded by a Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant.

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(iii) Asa Gray's Evolving Perspective on Teleology, Variation, and Natural Theology

Asa Gray was a close confidant of Charles Darwin but had differing views on religion and natural theology. Although scholars have recognized that Darwin's ideas change over time, Gray's own thinking has not been viewed through the lens of conceptual change. His views on variation, teleology, and natural theology are quite different later in life than often portrayed. This is part of a larger research project in collaboration with John Beatty and Jim Lennox that dissects the 19th century conversations on chance, purpose, design, and mechanism by Darwin, Gray, and others, and explores its significance for contemporary analyses of related concepts in evolutionary biology.

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(iv) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Proponents of Evo-devo and other biologists have been involved in lively discussions about whether we need an 'expanded evolutionary synthesis'. Much of the discussion about the adequacy of contemporary evolutionary theory has focused on its content, such as whether it integrates developmental considerations.  A different approach is to explore the form or structure of evolutionary theory, which is in part a philosophical question about the nature of scientific theories.  This project adopts the latter route in order to introduce some epistemic materials that may be relevant for an expanded evolutionary synthesis.

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(v) Marine Invertebrates, Model Organisms, and the Modern Synthesis

The Modern Synthesis has been thoroughly analyzed from the perspective of disciplinary inclusion, exclusion, and integration: population genetics, paleontology, morphology, ecology, taxonomy (inter alia). But a different perspective is achieved if we ask what kinds of model organisms were included or excluded in its formulation. The relative absence of marine invertebrates is an overlooked feature of how the synthetic theory of evolution emerged and helps explain why certain kinds of disciplinary perspectives may have been muted. A philosophical conclusion of this analysis is that model organisms affect not only the answers offered but also the questions asked of biological phenomena. Thus, evolutionary theorizing takes on different shapes depending on the phenomenology of the organisms under scrutiny in investigative practice.

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(vi) Noise and Information in Biological Science: A Study of Conceptual Behavior (with Kyle Menary)

One of the most widespread and yet controversial concepts in contemporary biology is information. Recent studies of conceptual behavior by philosophers and psychologists have indicated a previously unrecognized complexity in the use of concepts. This projects attempts to get at this complexity by looking at a concept that necessarily coordinates with information: noise. Cell and developmental biologists routinely use 'noise' in investigation and explanation, which reinforces the view that conceptual behavior science requires analyzing concepts in conjunction with one another rather than in isolation.

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(vii) Conceptual Change

How do scientific categories and their corresponding terminologies mutate and evolve over time? Following the work of Kuhn, much of the discussion about conceptual change has focused on ‘incommensurability’, understood as the existence of different meanings for the same terms used in competing paradigms that cannot be adjudicated by rational discussion. Various attempted solutions to this situation based on causal theories of reference have left conceptual change relatively opaque and ignored its diversity: the introduction and elimination of concepts, a reclassification of things considered to fall under a concept, the development of more abstract concepts, the refinement or expansion of ‘defining’ features of a concept, and the reorganizing of relations among concepts. This research project attempts to offer a new perspective on conceptual change in terms of concepts being jointly deployed in scientific explanations and draws attention to a neglected perspective on incommensurability: the lack of a common measure between problems, data, methods, or criteria of explanatory adequacy that arises when articulating ‘integrated’ explanations. The philosophical account also directly addresses key epistemological issues in philosophy of biology, such as determining when explanations are competing or complementary.

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(viii) Actualism, Historical Science, and Paleobiology (with Lance Lugar)

Explaining the Cambrian Radiation has been a key issue for evolutionary biologists all the way back to Darwin.  Recent literature reveals key differences in the way biologists use the philosophical principle of actualism.  Actualism underlies Lyellian uniformitarianism but by itself makes no commitment to the uniformity of causal intensity in the history of life. It only prescribes the use of causes now in operation to explain historical events in the past.  In this paper we dissect the arguments over how to explain the Cambrian Radiation and diagnose part of the explanatory conflict in terms of assumptions concerning the principle of actualism.  In short, researchers from a particular specialty are willing to relax the principle for their domain of expertise, but not others.  This shows how subtle differences in philosophical assumptions can lead to major difficulties in assessing the value of competing scientific explanations, which connects with recent literature in philosophy of biology about explanatory pluralism.  Our discussion of actualism also allows us to comment critically on recent articles that explore the differences between experimental and historical science.

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(ix) Thought Experiments in Philosophy and Philosophy of Science (with Megan Delehanty)

Conceptual analysis in contemporary philosophy relies on the use of possible cases to evoke intuitions that can be used as ‘evidence’ for or against philosophical theories in particular domains.  This type of analysis has come under increasing attack with respect to the problems that attend exotic fictionalized scenarios and the static notion of concepts that is often assumed.  In this project we offer a general framework for being skeptical of this approach and identify its problematic deployment in philosophy of science where it is somewhat masked amidst a welter of interesting scientific detail.

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(x) The Phylogenetic Approach to Philosophy of Science (with James Lennox)

Twenty-five years ago there was a vigorous discussion about the relations between history of science and philosophy of science.  This topic warrants revisiting now that philosophy of science has experienced a fruitful trend of specialization by attending to the specifics of different particular branches of science.  The status and use of history is still a major issue that divides contemporary philosophers of science.  We address the nature of the epistemic currency focused on by philosophers of science (concepts, explanations, models, theories, etc.) and articulate a rationale for a philosophy of science that focuses upon foundational problems in particular sciences that simultaneously requires attention to the historical origin of the problems in order to diagnose the philosophical difficulty, and potentially prescribe a solution.  The approach is demonstrated through our own case studies and those of other researchers exhibiting this mode of inquiry.  Our goal is to reinvigorate this discussion among philosophers of science by providing new arguments in favor of a critical role for history in philosophy of science.

 

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Dissertation

Explaining Evolutionary Innovation and Novelty: A Historical and Philosophical Study of Biological Concepts (PDF version)

Committee

James Lennox [Director] (History and Philosophy of Science/Center for Philosophy of Science - University of Pittsburgh); Sandra Mitchell (History and Philosophy of Science - University of Pittsburgh); Robert Olby (History and Philosophy of Science - University of Pittsburgh); Rudolf Raff (Biology - Indiana University, Bloomington); Günter Wagner (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology - Yale University)

Abstract

Explaining evolutionary novelties (such as feathers or neural crest cells) is a central item on the research agenda of evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo).  Proponents of Evo-devo have claimed that the origin of innovation and novelty constitute a distinct research problem, ignored by evolutionary theory during the latter half of the 20th century, and that Evo-devo as a synthesis of biological disciplines is in a unique position to address this problem.  In order to answer historical and philosophical questions attending these claims, two philosophical tools were developed.  The first, conceptual clusters, captures the joint deployment of concepts in the offering of scientific explanations and allows for a novel definition of conceptual change. The second, problem agendas, captures the multifaceted nature of explanatory domains in biological science and their diachronic stability.  The value of problem agendas as an analytical unit is illustrated through the examples of avian feather and flight origination.  Historical research shows that explanations of innovation and novelty were not ignored.  They were situated in disciplines such as comparative embryology, morphology, and paleontology (exemplified in the research of N.J. Berrill, D.D. Davis, and W.K. Gregory), which were overlooked because of a historiography emphasizing the relations between genetics and experimental embryology.  This identified the origin of Evo-devo tools (developmental genetics) but missed the source of its problem agenda.  The structure of developmental genetic explanations of innovations and novelties is compared and contrasted with those of other disciplinary approaches, past and present.  Applying the tool of conceptual clusters to these explanations reveals a unique form of conceptual change over the past five decades: a change in the causal and evidential concepts appealed to in explanations.  Specification of the criteria of explanatory adequacy for the problem agenda of innovation and novelty indicates that Evo-devo qua disciplinary synthesis requires more attention to the construction of integrated explanations from its constituent disciplines besides developmental genetics.  A model for explanations integrating multiple disciplinary contributions is provided.  The phylogenetic approach to philosophy of science utilized in this study is relevant to philosophical studies of other sciences and meets numerous criteria of adequacy for analyses of conceptual change.