Investigating the Philosophical Commitments of University Scientists across Disciplines

该奖项支持科学哲学与科学社会研究交叉领域的合作研究项目。科学哲学家、社会学和人类学的研究人员将对跨越广泛科学学科的科学家的哲学承诺进行实证研究。人们通常认为，这些承诺在每个科学学科中都是共同的，它们在不同的科学学科之间差异很大，这些差异对从事有效的跨学科研究构成了严重的挑战。这个项目将是第一个对哲学承诺进行的研究，其中包括许多学科的科学家的大量代表性样本。这项研究有两个基本目标：对科学家的哲学承诺如何影响他们的科学实践进行深入的分析理解，以及对科学家先前的跨学科经验在多大程度上塑造了他们的哲学承诺进行更深入的理解。除了提高跨学科研究的效率外，该项目还将通过为修改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，从而提高公众的科学素养。哲学承诺指的是科学家如何将世界及其科学研究概念化，构成了科学家如何理解和开展研究的框架。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），什么类别是基本的（本体论），什么社会价值是重要的（价值论）。该项目将首先采访大约50名科学家，以确定他们的哲学承诺以及他们如何在科学实践中表现出来。这些访谈将促进调查工具的发展，这些工具将在更大的范围内用于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3500名美国科学家的全国样本。然后，对调查数据进行分析，以检验哲学承诺与科学学科一致的假设，以及当科学家先前具有跨学科研究经验时，这种哲学承诺会有所不同的假设。本项目开发的测量仪器具有通用性；随后，其他人可以使用它们来研究STEM领域内外科学实践的哲学维度，为科学教育提供信息，并努力促进跨学科研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.