An Agent-Based Model of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions is interpreted as the specification of an agent-based model. Kuhn described scientists as autonomous agents and an emergent pattern of evolving paradigms. The missing link in his account is then a mechanism by which this pattern self-organizes from the interactions of autonomous scientists without centralized control. This paper exploits advances in agent-based modeling and stigmergy to fill the missing link in Kuhn's account. A complete agent-based model of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions could lead to a better understanding of the contribution of the evolution of the social structure of science to its success

The division of labour in science: the tradeoff between specialisation and diversity

Economics is a typical resource for social epistemology and the division of labour is a common theme for economics. As such it should come as no surprise that the present paper turns to economics to formulate a view on the dynamics of scientific communities, with precursors such as Kitcher (1990), Goldman and Shaked (1991) and Hull (1988). But although the approach is similar to theirs, the view defended is different. Mäki (2005) points out that the lessons philosophers draw from economics can go either way depending on the model chosen. Thus, the aims of this paper are (1) to illustrate this flexibility by proposing an alternative model which assumes increasing returns to adoption in science rather than the decreasing returns present in the aforementioned contributions; and (2) to outline the implications of this view for scientific pluralism and institutional design

A Unified Model of the Division of Cognitive Labor

Current theories of the division of cognitive labor are confined to the “context of justification,” assuming exogenous theories. But new theories are made from the same labor that is used for developing existing theories, and if none of this labor is ever allocated to create new alternatives, then scientific progress is impossible. A unified model is proposed in which theories are no longer given but a function of the division of labor in the model itself. The interactions of individuals balancing the exploitation of existing theories and the exploration of new theories results in a robust cyclical pattern

A pragmatist approach to the plurality of explanations in international relations theory

One of the main problems scientists –physicists and political scientists alike- face, is the problem of the plurality of explanations. Graham Allison’s classic study of the Cuban Missile Crisis is an excellent example of problem-focused research and an intriguing instance of this problem in International Relations Theory. He leaves us with three versions of the events, which raised more questions than Allison could apparently answer: instructions for concerted action or discrimination between his ‘conceptual models’ remain very sketchy. This paper aims to show that replacing Allison’s use of Hempel’s (then fashionable but now rather outdated) covering-law model of explanation with a pragmatist account of explanation offers a way to break the deadlock Allison was faced with. In particular, we will show that a specification of the epistemic interests of the explainer enables us to narrow down the number of available explanations