Forms of Practice, Forms of Knowledge: Method, Notation and the Dynamics of Perspectives in the Life Sciences

科学实践已成为科学研究的中心主题。该项目旨在建立一种结合科学实践的认知、符号学和社会方面的科学研究过程的新模式。该模型将用于分析生命科学领域的各种研究项目，并描述它们之间的共性和差异。通过这种方式，它阐明了关于生物现象的多种观点的概念。此外，它能够解释研究项目之间的动态关系——例如多样化、争议、合作或整合。该模型将明确认识论知识在科学实践中的作用，即关于如何获得经验知识的知识。认识性知识有四种，可以用认知图式来描述：1)关于知识可以采取的形式的知识（知识图式）；2)关于如何生成给定形式的知识（方法论图式）的知识；3)关于如何在物质基础设施、社会规则和制度（组织图式）方面组织这些工作的知识；4)关于可用于表示给定形式知识的符号格式的知识（符号图式）。该模型还将认识论知识映射到知识生成（认识论实践）中涉及的三种活动：1)研究活动（如观察、实验、建模）；（二）建立和管理基础设施和机构的活动；3)对事实进行表述的活动。这样的活动产生了大量的人员、研究材料和各种各样的人工制品。在该模型的框架内，将发展对行动和表征在产生知识中的作用的综合描述，以解释科学事实如何在物质和社会星座中被描绘出来。这种说法不同于其他科学实践的说法，后者强调多样性，关注研究过程的具体方面。它以一种综合的观点补充了科学哲学在实践中的专业化，从而推动了这一领域的发展。我们的目标不是复兴科学的统一性，相反，我们的目标是确定一些共同的维度（在认识论知识和实践方面），在这些维度上，研究项目是不同的。这样就可以比较研究方案并分析它们之间的动态关系。所提议的项目的一部分致力于详细开发模型。第二个研究链包括20世纪发育生物学和系统发育学的详细案例研究。虽然案例研究为开发模型提供了经验输入和试验场，但它们本身也构成了重要的调查领域，将受益于模型提供的分析框架。

Scientific practice has become a central theme in science studies. This project aims at a new model of scientific research processes that combines cognitive, semiotic and social aspects of scientific practice. The model will be used to analyse various research programmes in the life sciences and to describe the commonalities and differences between them. In this way it explicates the notion of a plurality of perspectives on biological phenomena. Furthermore, it enables explanations of dynamic relations - such as diversification, controversy, collaboration or integration - between research programmes.The model will specify the role of epistemic knowledge in scientific practice, that is, knowledge about how to gain empirical knowledge. There are four kinds of epistemic knowledge, which can be addressed in terms of cognitive schemata: 1) knowledge about forms knowledge can take (knowledge schemata); 2) knowledge about how to generate knowledge of a given form (methodological schemata); 3) knowledge about how to organise such work in terms of the material infrastructure, social rules and institutions (organisational schemata); 4) knowledge about notational formats that are available to represent knowledge of a given form (notational schemata). The model also maps the relation of epistemic knowledge to three kinds of activities involved in knowledge generation (epistemic practice): 1) research activities (e.g. observation, experimentation, modelling); 2) activities of establishing and navigating infrastructures and institutions; 3) activities of crafting representations of facts. Such activities result in constellations of people, research materials and a variety of artefacts. In the framework of the model an integrated account of the role of action and representation in generating knowledge will be developed that explains how scientific facts become delineated in material and social constellations.This account differs from other accounts of practice in science that emphasize diversity and focus on specific aspects of research processes. It advances the field by complementing the specialization in philosophy of science in practice entailed by such focus with an integrative view. The goal is not to revive the idea of unity in science, but, to the contrary, to identify a number of shared dimensions (in terms of epistemic knowledge and practice) along which research programmes differ. This enables a comparison of research programmes and the analysis of dynamic relations between them.One strand of the proposed project is dedicated to developing the model in detail. A second research strand consists of detailed case studies from developmental biology and phylogenetics in the long 20th century. While the case studies provide empirical input and a testing ground for developing the model, they also constitute important fields of investigation in their own right that will benefit from the analytic framework provided by the model.