Collaborative Research: Investigating the Philosophical Commitments of University Scientists across Disciplines

合作研究：调查跨学科大学科学家的哲学承诺

• 批准号: 2218341
• 负责人: Aaron McCright
• 金额: $ 41.36万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2218341&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Investigating; Philosophical; Commitments

This award supports a collaborative research project at the interface of philosophy of science and social studies of science. Researchers in philosopher of science, sociology, and anthropology will conduct an empirical study of the philosophical commitments of scientists across a broad range of scientific disciplines. It is often thought that these commitments are shared within each scientific discipline, that they differ considerably between scientific disciplines, and that these differences pose a serious challenge to engaging in effective cross-disciplinary research. This project will be the first study of philosophical commitments to be conducted with a large representative sample of scientists across many disciplines. The study has two fundamental goals: to achieve an analytical depth of understanding of how the philosophical commitments of scientists influence their scientific practices, and to achieve a deeper understanding of the extent to which prior cross-disciplinary experiences of scientists shape their philosophical commitments. Beyond enhancing the efficacy of cross-disciplinary research, this project will serve to enhance public literacy of science by providing insights for revising the tools that experts in public understanding of science use to investigate how the views of non-scientists about science or scientific thinking relate to their views on social issues. Philosophical commitments refer to how scientists conceptualize the world and its scientific study, framing how scientists understand and conduct their research. These philosophical commitments have three dimensions: what methods are effective in acquiring knowledge (epistemology), what categories are fundamental (ontology), and what social values are important (axiology). The project will begin by interviewing approximately 50 scientists to determine their philosophical commitments and how they manifest in their scientific practice. The interviews will facilitate the development of survey instruments that are to be used on a much larger scale to measure the philosophical commitments of scientists. These instruments will then be used to survey a national sample of approximately 3,500 US scientists from a wide range of scientific disciplines. The survey data will then be analyzed to test the hypotheses that philosophical commitments align with scientific disciplines and that such philosophical commitments vary when scientists have had prior cross disciplinary research experience. The measurement instruments to be developed in this project will be generalizable; they can subsequently be used by others to investigate philosophical dimensions of scientific practice both within and outside of STEM fields, to inform science education, and efforts to facilitate cross-disciplinary research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项支持科学哲学和科学社会研究接口的合作研究项目。科学哲学家，社会学和人类学的研究人员将对科学家在广泛的科学学科中的哲学承诺进行实证研究。人们通常认为，这些承诺是在每个科学学科内共享的，它们在科学学科之间有很大差异，这些差异对从事有效的跨学科研究构成了严重挑战。该项目将是第一个对哲学承诺进行的研究，涉及许多学科的大量有代表性的科学家样本。该研究有两个基本目标：实现分析的理解科学家的哲学承诺如何影响他们的科学实践的深度，并实现在何种程度上更深入地了解科学家以前的跨学科经验塑造他们的哲学承诺。除了提高跨学科研究的效率外，该项目还将有助于提高公众的科学素养，方法是为修订公众理解科学的专家用来调查非科学家对科学或科学思维的看法如何与他们对社会问题的看法相关联的工具提供见解。哲学承诺是指科学家如何概念化世界及其科学研究，构建科学家如何理解和进行研究。这些哲学承诺有三个维度：什么方法在获取知识方面是有效的（认识论），什么范畴是基本的（本体论），什么社会价值是重要的（价值论）。该项目将开始采访约50名科学家，以确定他们的哲学承诺，以及他们如何体现在他们的科学实践。这些访谈将有助于开发调查工具，用于更大规模地衡量科学家的哲学承诺。然后，这些仪器将用于调查来自广泛科学学科的约3，500名美国科学家的全国样本。调查数据，然后将进行分析，以测试的假设，哲学的承诺与科学学科一致，这种哲学的承诺时，科学家有以前的跨学科研究经验的变化。本项目拟开发的计量工具将具有普遍性;随后，他们可以被其他人用来研究STEM领域内外科学实践的哲学维度，为科学教育提供信息，努力促进跨该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估支持影响审查标准。