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LTT: Philipp Haueis
February 11, 2020 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EST
A Generalized Patchwork Approach to Scientific Concepts
Philipp Haueis
Bielefeld University, Dept. of Philosophy
Abstract: Patchwork approaches hold that scientists implicitly subdivide their concepts into several, partially overlapping segments or “patches” to describe, classify and explain the investigated part of reality appropriately. For example: based on the measurement technique, different patches of the concept “hardness” pick out different properties, such that the meaning of “hardness” is rendered differently for different kinds of materials (Wilson 2006). Patchwork approaches have been defended via detailed case studies of central concepts in mathematics and physics (Wilson 2006), chemistry (Bursten 2016), evolutionary biology (Love 2013, Novick 2018) and neuroscience (Haueis 2018). What is missing in these case-based approaches, however, is a general account which specifies discipline-independent reasons why many central scientific concepts exhibit a patchwork structure. In this talk, I develop such a generalized approach which provides (1) a general format to model patches of concepts and (2) sufficient conditions for when using the same term in a novel context changes the patch of the concept. Using several existing case studies from different disciplines as illustration, I show how patchwork concepts help scientists to achieve the epistemic goals of description, classification and explanation. Achieving these (and other) epistemic goals provides discipline-independent reasons why patchwork structures are not merely a historically contingent feature of conceptual development, but a normatively desirable feature of good scientific practice.
Details
- Date:
- February 11, 2020
- Time:
-
11:00 am - 12:30 pm EST
- Event Category:
- Lunchtime Talks
Venue
- 1117 Cathedral of Learning
-
4200 Fifth Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 United States