Understanding Scientific Practices: The Role of Robustness Notions

This article explores the role of `robustness-notions¿ in an account of the engineering sciences. The engineering sciences aim at technological production of, and intervention with phenomena relevant to the (dis-)functioning of materials and technological devices, by means of scientific understanding thereof. It is proposed that different kinds of robustness-notions enable and guide scientific research: (1) Robustness is as a metaphysical belief that we have about the physical world ¿ i.e., we believe that the world is robust in the sense that the same physical conditions will always produce the same effects. (2) `Same conditions ¿ same effects¿ functions as a regulative principle that enables and guides scientific research because it points to, and justifies methodological notions. (3) Repetition, variance and multiple-determination function as methodological criteria for scientific methods that justify the acceptance of epistemological and ontological results. (4) Reproducibility and stability function as ontological criteria for the acceptance of phenomena described by A¿B. (5) Reliability functions as an epistemological criterion for the acceptance of epistemological results, in particular law¿like knowledge of a conditional form: ¿A¿B, provided Cdevice, and unless other known and/or unknown causally relevant conditions.¿ The crucial question is how different kinds of robustness¿notions are related and how they play their part in the production and acceptance of scientific results. Focus is on production and acceptance of physical phenomena and the rule-like knowledge thereof. Based on an analysis of how philosoophy of science tradtionally justified scientific knowledge, I propose a general schema that specifies how inferences to the claim that a scientific result has a certain epistem ological property (such as truth) are justified by scientific methods that meet specific methodological criteria. It is proposed that `same conditions ¿ same effects¿ as a regulative criterion justifies `repetition, variation and ultiple¿determination¿ as methodological criteria for the production and acceptance of (ontological and epistemological) scientific result

Genetic determinism: how not to interpret behavioral genetics

Recently, investigators in behavioral genetics have found loci on the genome (so-called ‘quantitative trait loci’ or QTLs) that are associated with complex mental traits, such as anxiety or novelty seeking. The interpretation of these findings raises interesting theoretical questions. At first sight, the discovery of ‘genes-for-personality’ seems to support genetic determinism and reductionism. Genetic determinism is the view that the phenotype is precoded in or determined by the genotype. However, evidence from developmental biology and neural modeling indicates that development is a result of interactive processes at many levels, not only the genome, so that geneticism must be rejected. Identifying QTLs and perhaps also the causal paths in the tangle of top-down and bottom-up influences between genome, organism and environment is best seen as a simplification. It amounts to considerably less than reduction in the classical sense of replacement via bridge laws or elimination. It is argued that higher (psychological and physiological) levels are functionally characterized and are irreducible to molecular-genetic levels. Therefore, it is to be expected that ideas about inter-level relations may be useful in clarifying the relation between loci on the genome (QTLs), gene products, the nervous system, behavior and personality, and to help identify the contribution of genetic factors in behavioral genetics. © 2000, Sage Publications. All rights reserved

Variety of Methodological Approach in Economics

It has been argued by some that the distinction between orthodox economics and heterodox economics does not fit the growing variety in economic theory, unified by a common methodological approach. On the other hand, it remains a central characteristic of heterodox economics that it does not share this methodological approach, but rather represents a range of alternative methodological approaches. The paper explores the evidence, and arguments, for variety in economics at different levels, and a range of issues which arise. This requires in turn a discussion of the meaning of variety in economics at the different levels of reality, methodology, method and theory. It is concluded that there is scope for more, rather than less, variety in economic methodologies, as well as within methodologies. Further, if variety is not to take the form of “anything goes”, then critical discussion by economists of different approaches to economics, and of variety itself, is required