Problems and Prospects of Interdisciplinarity: The Case of Philosophy of Science

In this paper, we discuss some problems and prospects of interdisciplinary encounters by focusing on philosophy of science as a case study. After introducing the case, we give an overview about the various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary in Section 2. In Section 3, we name some general problems concerning the possible points of interaction between philosophy of science and the sciences studied. In Section 4 we compare the advantages and risks of interdisciplinarity for individual researchers and institutions. In Section 5, we discuss interdisciplinary PhD programs, in particular concerning two main problems: increased workload and the quality of supervision. In the final Section 6, we look at interdisciplinary careers beyond the PhD

Vowel reduction in conversational speech in French: the role of lexical factors

International audienceIn this study we investigate vowel reduction and the role of some lexical factors in the production of vowels extracted from a corpus of French conversations. Vowel durations and spectral quality are examined with respect to 1. their interaction in the corpus, 2. the position of vowels in words, and 3. word frequency and word category. The analyses are conducted on vowels produced by 16 speakers. Our study provides strong evidence that vowel reduction (decrease in durations and more centralized spectral values) affects most of the vowels in conversational speech. The results show that vowels in final syllables of words were less often reduced while the preceding ones show reduced durations and centralized formant values. Moreover vowels are more reduced in monosyllabic function words than in monosyllabic content words. Nevertheless, we did not find a clear effect of word frequency on vowel durations. Finally, our study shows that vowel reduction depends on several factors related to lexical properties (word category) and to prosodic properties (stress and final lengthening)

Metagenomics approaches in microbial ecology and research for sustainable agriculture

Technologies such as next generation sequencing (NGS) are transforming research fields at the methodological, conceptual, and organizational level. They open up new possibilities and bring with them new commitments and inherent limitations. We show from a philosophy of science perspective how NGS-based metagenomics has transformed microbial ecology and, with it, parts of agricultural soil science, which integrate ecological approaches with the aim to inform agricultural practices. We reconstruct agricultural science as design science (sensu Niiniluoto) and describe how the possibilities, commitments, and limitations of metagenomics approaches in microbial ecology shape values, situation assessments, and recommendations for interventions of soil microbiology in the context of sustainable agriculture.Technologien wie Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) transformieren Forschungsfelder auf der methodischen, konzeptionellen und organisatorischen Ebene. Sie eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten, bringen aber auch neue Festlegungen und inhärente Beschränkungen mit sich. Wir zeigen aus wissenschaftsphilosophischer Perspektive wie NGS-basierte Metagenomik die mikrobielle Ökologie und damit auch Teile der agrarwissenschaftlichen Bodenforschung transformiert hat, die ökologische Ansätze integrieren, um landwirtschaftliche Praktiken zu verändern. Wir rekonstruieren die Agrarwissenschaft als Designwissenschaft (sensu Niiniluoto) und beschreiben, wie die Möglichkeiten, Festlegungen und Beschränkungen der metagenomischen Ansätze in der mikrobiellen Ökologie die Werte, Situationsbewertungen und Empfehlungen für Eingriffe der Bodenmikrobiologie im Kontext nachhaltiger Landwirtschaft beeinflussen

In search of intonational cues to content word beginnings in conversational speech

International audienceWe used an annotated conversational French speech corpus to 1. investigate whether the intonational rises that occur at the beginning of French content words in read speech (APRs) are also present in spontaneous speech and therefore available as cues to word segmentation and lexical access, and 2. test two measures of characterizing intonation patterns using automatically extracted F0 and time values. The two measures tested both proved problematic: they were sensitive to the segmental composition of the critical region. We found no evidence that APRs are reliably present in the corpus as a whole, although we suggest that they may be present in particular types of conversational speech

Fluvial Erosion Impacts on Infrastructure Along Indiana Rivers and Streams

Rivers provide for storm water drainage, municipal water usage, and recreation, and they add to the natural aesthetics of a community. As we encroach on river corridors, flooding and damage due to streambank erosion endangers our built environment. In this session we use the recently completed White Lick Creek System Assessment in Hendricks County as a case study to discuss the importance of understanding system-wide stream evolution and movement processes in evaluating and addressing impacts on infrastructures along Indiana streams

Phonetic variability as a static/dynamic process in speech communication: a cross linguistic study

This study is a cross-linguistic investigation of qualitative and quantitative variations due to 1/ the structure of vocalic system, 2/ the amount of context within speech message. We hypothesize that phonetic distinctivity of vowels in a language is relative to 1/ the properties of the phonological system, 2/ the amount of informational context. Three languages (Spanish, French and English) were analyzed in three different types of speech (isolated vowels, within words and within texts). Results show 1/ centralization in the three vocalic systems relative to the amount of context, 2/ an increase of vowel dispersion also due to an increase of context information

Aspects phonologique et dynamique de la distinctivité au sein des systèmes vocaliques: une étude inter-langue

Dans ce travail nous explorons différentes causes de la variation phonétique. L'analyse d'un corpus multilingue de plusieurs types de parole nous permet d'observer une distinctivité variable des voyelles de chaque système en fonction du contexte de production. Cette variabilité peut être attribuée 1/ à la spécificité des systèmes vocalique, 2/ à la quantité d'information véhiculée dans le message linguistique

What is an approach in science?

In this paper, I first introduce the question of actors’ vs analysts’ categories. I then provide an explication of the concept of an approach that captures the use of the term by scientists and will be useful for philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science to analyze research in the empirical sciences. For this purpose, I lay out some preliminaries for a successful explication, provide a definition as the core of the explication, and assess the adequacy of the suggested explication. Finally, I point out some historical, sociological, and philosophical dimensions of approaches that can be addressed by means of the analytic category introduced by means of the explication

Project knowledge and its resituation in the design of research projects: Seymour Benzer's behavioral genetics, 1965-1974

The article introduces a framework for analyzing the knowledge that researchers draw upon when designing a research project by distinguishing four types of “project knowledge”: goal knowledge, which concerns possible outcomes, and three forms of implementation knowledge that concern the realization of the project: 1) methodological knowledge that specifies possible experimental and non-experimental strategies to achieve the chosen goal; 2) representational knowledge that suggests ways to represent data, hypotheses, or outcomes; and 3) organizational knowledge that helps to build or navigate the material and social structures that enable a project. In the design of research projects such knowledge will be transferred from other successful projects and these processes will be analyzed in terms of modes of resituating knowledge. The account is developed by analyzing a case from the history of biology. In a reciprocal manner, it enables a better understanding of the historical episode in question: around 1970, several researchers who had made successful careers in the emerging field of molecular biology, working with bacterial model systems, attempted to create a molecular biology of the physiological processes in multicellular organisms. One of them was Seymour Benzer, who designed a research project addressing the physiological processes underlying behavior in Drosophila