Misconceptions, conceptual pluralism, and conceptual toolkits: bringing the philosophy of science to the teaching of evolution

This paper explores how work in the philosophy of science can be used when teaching scientific content to science students and when training future science teachers. I examine the debate on the concept of fitness in biology and in the philosophy of biology to show how conceptual pluralism constitutes a problem for the conceptual change model, and how philosophical work on conceptual clarification can be used to address that problem. The case of fitness exemplifies how the philosophy of science offers tools to resolve teaching difficulties and make the teaching of scientific concepts more adequate to the actual state of affairs in science. © 2021, The Author(s)

The proper role of history in evolutionary explanations

Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their explanatory work is still lacking. This paper develops such an account. I argue that available accounts of explanations in evolutionary science miss important parts of the role of history in evolutionary explanations. I argue that the historical part of evolutionary science should be taken as having genuine explanatory force, and that it provides how-possibly explanations sensu Dray. I propose an account of evolutionary explanations as comparative-composite explanations consisting of two distinct kinds of explanations, one processual and one historical, that are connected via the explanandum's evolvability to show how the explanandum is the product of its evolutionary past. The account is both a reconstruction of how evolutionary explanations in biology work and a guideline specifying what kind of explanations evolutionary research programs should develop

How can science be well-ordered in times of crisis? Learning from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic constituted a crisis situation in which science was very far from Kitcher’s ideal of well-ordered science. I suggest that this could and should have been different. Kitcher’s ideal should play a role in assessing the allocation of research resources in future crisis situations, as it provides a way to balance highly divergent interests and incorporate the common good into decision-making processes on research. © 2020, The Author(s)

The Grounded Functionality Account of Natural Kinds

Most philosophical theories of natural kinds fail to reflect successful classificatory practice in science. Some are developed from a priori considerations and are too detached from actual classificatory practice. Other theories of natural kinds are more naturalistic, but they posit overarching criteria for natural kinds that fail to capture the diversity of reasons scientists have for positing natural kinds. This paper highlights these problems and offers an account of natural kinds that better reflects actual classificatory practice in science. The account offered has two normative components. First, natural kind classifications should achieve the functions they are posited to attain, whether those functions are epistemic or non-epistemic. Second, how natural kind classifications achieve those functions should be grounded in the world and not merely in our thoughts about the world. The resultant account of natural kinds, the Grounded Functionality Account, is properly attuned to scientific practice and at the same time has a significant normative component

How to Incorporate Non-Epistemic Values into a Theory of Classification

Non-epistemic values play important roles in classificatory practice, such that philosophical accounts of kinds and classification should be able to accommodate them. Available accounts fail to do so, however. Our aim is to fill this lacuna by showing how non-epistemic values feature in scientific classification, and how they can be incorporated into a philosophical theory of classification and kinds. To achieve this, we present a novel account of kinds and classification (the Grounded Functionality Account), discuss examples from biological classification where non-epistemic values play decisive roles, and show how this account accommodates the role of non-epistemic values. © 2022, The Author(s)

Aspekte evolutionären Denkens in der interdisziplinären Forschung : Eine Analyse aus der Wissenschaftsphilosophie

Der britische Naturforscher und Naturwissenschaftler Charles Darwin (1809 bis 1882) veröffentlichte 1859 seine Evolutionstheorie, die bis heute kontrovers diskutiert wird. Prof. Dr. Thomas Reydon vom Institut für Philosophie sowie vom Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS) an der Philosophischen Fakultät erläutert, warum sich die Wissenschaftsphilosophie auch heute noch mit der Evolutionstheorie beschäftigt

Die Wissenschaftsethik von übermorgen: zwischen Werten und Verantwortung

1. Die Kluft zwischen Theorie und Praxis Der Wissenschaftsethik kommt im Rahmen der Professionalisierung von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern eine zentrale Rolle zu. In allen Bereichen der Wissenschaft, von den Naturwissenschaften über die Ingenieurwissenschaften hin zu den Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Geisteswissenschaften spielen ethische Fragen eine wichtige Rolle. Dabei geht es z.B. um Fragen zum richtigen Umgang mit Forschungsdaten, zu den üblichen Gepflogenheiten in der Zitationsp..

Ethnobiological kinds and material grounding: comments on Ludwig

In a recent article, David Ludwig proposed to reorient the debate on natural kinds away from inquiring into the naturalness of kinds and toward elucidating the materiality of kinds. This article responds to Ludwig’s critique of a recently proposed account of kinds and classification, the Grounded Functionality Account, against which Ludwig offsets his own account, and criticizes Ludwig’s proposal to shift focus from naturalness to materiality in the philosophy of kinds and classification