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Lindley Darden (born 1945) is a contemporary philosopher of science, [1] with a research focus on the philosophy of biology.
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Lindley Darden (born 1945) is a contemporary philosopher of science, [1] with a research focus on the philosophy of biology.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1974 and B.A. in 1968 from Rhodes College, and is currently Distinguished Scholar Teacher at the University of Maryland. Between 2001 and 2003, she was the president of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.
Darden's research has led to the publication of several books. In her 1991 book, Theory Change in Science, Darden argues, contra Kuhn, that science is a self-correcting enterprise which progresses through a thoroughly piecemeal process of "reiterative refinement," consisting of three stages: (1) theory construction, (2) theory assessment, and (3) theory modification. Although there are similarities between stages (1) and (2) and the traditionally recognized contexts of scientific discovery and justification, Darden argues that her stages are not easily mapped onto this dichotomy.
Furthermore, Darden attempts to illumine the "mysterious" process of constructing scientific theories by positing various "strategies" that she claims are sufficient for solving actual historical cases of theory change. For example, Darden examines the Mendelian "Theory of the Gene," which underwent significant theoretical modifications from around 1900 (when Mendel was "rediscovered") to 1926 (when Thomas Hunt Morgan published his famous textbook defining Mendelian theory in its roughly modern form). Looking at these cases, Darden describes procedures for devising the hypotheses that early twentieth-century Mendelian theorists actually proposed, although she does not claim that these theorists actually employed such procedures, or strategies. Ultimately, by constructing a list of such strategies for discovery, Darden hopes that scientists can use them to solve present theoretical problems that contemporary science encounters. As such, she advises scientists to use them, calling her model "advisory" (rather than "descriptive" or "normative").
Darden has also worked on mechanisms, notably in her collaborative paper entitled "Thinking about Mechanisms" (2000), co-authored with Peter Machamer and Carl Craver. In 2006, Darden completed her second book, entitled Reasoning in Biological Discoveries: Essays on Mechanisms, Interfield Relations, and Anomaly Resolution. In it, Darden propounds a number of strategies for discovering mechanisms in biology, including "Schema Instantiation," "Modular Subassembly," and "Forward/Backward Chaining."
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; the testability of hypotheses, experimental and the measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises.
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of science. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science.
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations" in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the "research programme" in his methodology of scientific research programmes.
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark," "energy," or "élan vital," which some equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory, or, since the mid-20th century, as a pseudoscience.
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment. In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.
Scientific evidence is evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis, although scientists also use evidence in other ways, such as when applying theories to practical problems. Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods. Standards for scientific evidence vary according to the field of inquiry, but the strength of scientific evidence is generally based on the results of statistical analysis and the strength of scientific controls.
In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bringing about a certain goal. In the context of research, this goal is usually to discover new knowledge or to verify pre-existing knowledge claims. This normally involves various steps, like choosing a sample, collecting data from this sample, and interpreting this data. The study of methods involves a detailed description and analysis of these processes. It includes evaluative aspects by comparing different methods to assess their advantages and disadvantages relative to different research goals and situations. This way, a methodology can help make the research process efficient and reliable by guiding researchers on which method to employ at each step. These descriptions and evaluations of methods often depend on philosophical background assumptions. The assumptions are about issues like how the studied phenomena are to be conceptualized, what constitutes evidence for or against them, and what the general goal of research is. When understood in the widest sense, methodology also includes the discussion of these more abstract issues.
The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology, philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s, associated with the research of David Hull. Philosophers of science then began paying increasing attention to biology, from the rise of Neodarwinism in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering. Other key ideas include the reduction of all life processes to biochemical reactions, and the incorporation of psychology into a broader neuroscience.
The sociology of the history of science—related to sociology and philosophy of science, as well as the entire field of science studies—has in the 20th century been occupied with the question of large-scale patterns and trends in the development of science, and asking questions about how science "works" both in a philosophical and practical sense.
Mutationism is one of several alternatives to evolution by natural selection that have existed both before and after the publication of Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. In the theory, mutation was the source of novelty, creating new forms and new species, potentially instantaneously, in sudden jumps. This was envisaged as driving evolution, which was thought to be limited by the supply of mutations.
Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Other ways of knowing, such as theology, metaphysics, intuition, or introspection, are rejected or considered meaningless.
Evelyn Fox Keller is an American physicist, author and feminist. She is Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersection of physics and biology. Her subsequent research has focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.
Many scientists and philosophers of science have described evolution as fact and theory, a phrase which was used as the title of an article by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 1981. He describes fact in science as meaning data, not known with absolute certainty but "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent". A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of such facts. The facts of evolution come from observational evidence of current processes, from imperfections in organisms recording historical common descent, and from transitions in the fossil record. Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for these facts.
The following outline is provided as a topical overview of science; the discipline of science is defined as both the systematic effort of acquiring knowledge through observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the body of knowledge thus acquired, the word "science" derives from the Latin word scientia meaning knowledge. A practitioner of science is called a "scientist". Modern science respects objective logical reasoning, and follows a set of core procedures or rules to determine the nature and underlying natural laws of all things, with a scope encompassing the entire universe. These procedures, or rules, are known as the scientific method.
In the science of biology, a mechanism is a system of causally interacting parts and processes that produce one or more effects. Scientists explain phenomena by describing mechanisms that could produce the phenomena. For example, natural selection is a mechanism of biological evolution; other mechanisms of evolution include genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow. In ecology, mechanisms such as predation and host-parasite interactions produce change in ecological systems. In practice, no description of a mechanism is ever complete because not all details of the parts and processes of a mechanism are fully known. For example, natural selection is a mechanism of evolution that includes countless, inter-individual interactions with other individuals, components, and processes of the environment in which natural selection operates.
Alexey Andreevich Anselm was a Russian theoretical physicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, professor, director (1992–1994) of the B.P. Konstantinov Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI), member of: the Russian and American Physical Society, the executive committee of the Nuclear Physics Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the editorial board of the Russian journal “Yadernaya Fizika”.
An index list of articles about the philosophy of science.
Roberta L. Millstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, with affiliations in the Science and Technology Studies Program and the John Muir Institute for the Environment. She is the Senior Co-chair of the Philosophy of Science Association’s Women's Caucus and an Editor of the peer-reviewed online open-access journal Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology. She also serves as a member of the executive committee and Council for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division (AAAS-PD) as well as the council for the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB).
Feminist biology is an approach to biology that is concerned with the influence of gender values, the removal of gender bias, and the understanding of the overall role of social values in biological research and practices. Feminist biology was founded by, among others, Dr. Ruth Bleier of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It aims to enhance biology by incorporating feminist critique in matters varying from the mechanisms of cell biology and sex selection to the assessment of the meaning of words such as "gender" and "sex". Overall, the field is broadly defined and pertains itself to philosophies behind both biological and feminist practice. These considerations make feminist biology debatable and conflictive with itself, particularly when concerning matters of biological determinism, whereby descriptive sex terms of male and female are intrinsically confining, or extreme postmodernism, whereby the body is viewed more as a social construct. Despite opinions ranging from determinist to postmodernist, however, biologists, feminists, and feminist biologists of varying labels alike have made claims to the utility of applying feminist ideology to biological practice and procedure.
