52,885 research outputs found
Practice-oriented controversies and borrowed epistemic credibility in current evolutionary biology: phylogeography as a case study
Although there is increasing recognition that theory and practice in science are intimately intertwined, philosophy of science perspectives on scientific controversies have been historically focused on theory rather than practice. As a step in the construction of frameworks for understanding controversies linked to scientific practices, here we introduce the notion of borrowed epistemic credibility (BEC), to describe the situation in which scientists, in order to garner support for their own stances, exploit similarities between tenets in their own field and accepted statements or positions properly developed within other areas of expertise. We illustrate the scope of application of our proposal with the analysis of a heavily methods-grounded, recent controversy in phylogeography, a biological subdiscipline concerned with the study of the historical causes of biogeographical variation through population genetics- and phylogenetics-based computer analyses of diversity in DNA sequences, both within species and between closely related taxa. Toward this end, we briefly summarize the arguments proposed by selected authors representing each side of the controversy: the ânested clade analysisâ school versus the âstatistical phylogeographyâ orientation. We claim that whereas both phylogeographic âresearch stylesâ borrow epistemic credibility from sources such as formal logic, the familiarity of results from other scientific areas, the authority of prominent scientists, or the presumed superiority of quantitative vs. verbal reasoning, âtheoryâ plays essentially no role as a foundation of the controversy. Besides underscoring the importance of strictly methodological and other non-theoretical aspects of controversies in current evolutionary biology, our analysis suggests a perspective with potential usefulness for the re-examination of more general philosophy of biology issues, such as the nature of historical inference, rationality, justification, and objectivity
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Between Scylla and Charybdis: Environmental governance and illegibility in the American West
In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew must navigate the Strait of Messina between two great hazards: the six-headed monster Scylla on one side, and the whirlpool Charybdis on the other. This conceit here guides a critical engagement with scientific knowledge and state power, grounded in the positionality and practices of government agents charged with the management of controversial species and processes in the American West. Based in ethnographic and archival research on wolf-livestock conflict and public lands grazing in Central Idaho, I relate how agents with the U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Department of Fish and Game navigate conditions not of their own choosing. Sailing the âchoppy seasâ of complex systems and multiple-use mandates, with the âwhirlpoolâ of cuts to capacity on one side and the âmonsterâ of political controversy and litigation on the other, agents appear to collect less or more ambiguous information on their charges, resulting in a partial âblindnessâ or illegibility. Although a rational adaptation to unrealistic expectations, this ignorance is not bliss but rather symptom and source of dysfunction, limiting agentsâ ability to carry out monitoring, collaboration, and effectively conduct on-the-ground management. Understanding patterns of illegibility requires that we attend both to broader contextual pressures and situated motivations. In so doing, we might account for the seeming disconnect between agenciesâ stated aims and practices, complicate traditional assumptions of evidence-based scientific management and analyses of bureaucratic rationality and state power, and make sense of the apparent dysfunction around environmental governance in the American West today
The Time Invariance Principle, Ecological (Non)Chaos, and A Fundamental Pitfall of Discrete Modeling
This paper is to show that most discrete models used for population dynamics
in ecology are inherently pathological that their predications cannot be
independently verified by experiments because they violate a fundamental
principle of physics. The result is used to tackle an on-going controversy
regarding ecological chaos. Another implication of the result is that all
continuous dynamical systems must be modeled by differential equations. As a
result it suggests that researches based on discrete modeling must be closely
scrutinized and the teaching of calculus and differential equations must be
emphasized for students of biology
Non-LTE Model Atmospheres for Late-Type Stars II. Restricted NLTE Calculations for a Solar-Like Atmosphere
We test our knowledge of the atomic opacity in the solar UV spectrum. Using
the atomic data compiled in Paper I from modern, publicly available, databases,
we perform calculations that are confronted with space-based observations of
the Sun. At wavelengths longer than about 260 nm, LTE modeling can reproduce
quite closely the observed fluxes; uncertainties in the atomic line data
account fully for the differences between calculated and observed fluxes. At
shorter wavelengths, departures from LTE appear to be important, as our LTE and
restricted NLTE calculations differ. Analysis of visible-near infrared Na I and
O I lines, two species that produce a negligible absorption in the UV, shows
that observed departures from LTE for theses species can be reproduced very
accurately with restricted (fixed atmospheric structure) NLTE calculations.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, to appear in Ap
Reopening the TNOs Color Controversy: Centaurs Bimodality and TNOs Unimodality
We revisit the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) color controversy allegedly
solved by Tegler and Romanishin 2003. We debate the statistical approach of the
quoted work and discuss why it can not draw the claimed conclusions, and
reanalyze their data sample with a more adequate statistical test. We find
evidence for the existence of two color groups among the Centaurs. Therefore,
mixing both centaurs and TNOs populations lead to the erroneous conclusion of a
global bimodality, while there is no evidence for two color groups in the TNOs
population alone. We use quasi-simultaneous visible color measurements
published for 20 centaurs (corresponding to about half of the identified
objects of this class), and conclude on the existence of two groups. With the
surface evolution model of Delsanti et al. (2003) we discuss how the existence
of two groups of Centaurs may be compatible with a continuous TNOs color
distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysics Letter
Big Data and Changing Concepts of the Human
Big Data has the potential to enable unprecedentedly rigorous quantitative modeling of complex human social relationships and social structures. When such models are extended to nonhuman domains, they can undermine anthropocentric assumptions about the extent to which these relationships and structures are specifically human. Discoveries of relevant commonalities with nonhumans may not make us less human, but they promise to challenge fundamental views of what it is to be human
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