Can patchwork approaches to scientific concepts be generalized?

科学概念的拼凑方法可以推广吗？

• 批准号: 408804291
• 负责人: Dr. Philipp Haueis
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung Philosophie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Fellowships
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/408804291?language=en
• 关键词: patchwork; approaches; scientific; concepts; generalized

How do scientists use concepts to describe and explain different phenomena? Patchwork accounts in the practice-based philosophy of science answer this question by holding that scientists subdivide their concepts often implicitly into several "Patches" to describe and explain an investigated part of reality efficiently. For example: depending on the procedure of measurement, the concept "hardness" picks out different properties, such that the meaning of "hardness" is 'framed' in different ways. These local applications and the procedures delineating them form different patches of the concept "hardness". During the last decade philosophers of science showed that central concepts in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences exhibit such patchwork structures. However, a systematic generalization of these discipline-specific approaches is missing so far. To fill this gap, my project investigates whether patchwork approaches of concepts can be described and defended in a discipline-independent way.The first part of my project compares patchwork approaches with regard to the functional roles that concepts can fulfill in various disciplines. Concepts allow researchers to identify different phenomena (description) and provide a mechanism to correlate their descriptions with one or several features of the world (reference). Concepts are building blocks for the systematic categorization of observed cases (classification) and for generalizations which describe unobserved cases (generalizability). They help scientists to determine why observed phenomena occur (explanation), when they occur and how to control them (prediction and control). The comparison of patchwork approaches in physics, chemistry and neuroscience suggests that the analysis of functional roles (e.g. the role of instruments for reference, or the role of scale in description and classification), is suited to describe general feature of any patchwork approach to scientific concepts.The second part of my research project investigates whether a generalized patchwork approach captures the systematic relations between the functional roles of concepts better than essentialist or holistic accounts of concepts. Essentialists, for instance, claim that a universal reference relation explains the meaning of concepts that can be generalized. They therefore overlook how shifts in reference constrain the generalizability of a concept in practice. In contrast, holists claim that the meaning of a concept is determined by its position in a larger scientific theory. They therefore posit that explanation and prediction require the classification system of such a theory, although this is often not the case in practice. If these arguments can be confirmed, then a generalized patchwork approach would explain the role of concepts in scientific practice better than holism or essentialism, without losing touch with the reality of empirical research practice.

科学家如何使用概念来描述和解释不同的现象？基于实践的科学哲学中的拼凑解释回答了这个问题，认为科学家将他们的概念细分为几个“补丁”，以有效地描述和解释现实的一部分。举例来说：视乎测量的程序，“硬度”的概念会显示不同的性质，因此，“硬度”的意义会以不同的方式“界定”。这些局部应用和描述它们的程序形成了“硬度”概念的不同补丁。在过去的十年里，科学哲学家们表明，数学、物理、化学、生物学和神经科学中的核心概念都表现出这种拼凑的结构。然而，到目前为止，这些学科的具体方法缺乏系统的概括。为了填补这一空白，我的项目调查是否拼凑的方法的概念可以描述和辩护的学科无关的方式。我的项目的第一部分比较拼凑的方法方面的功能角色，概念可以履行在不同的学科。概念允许研究人员识别不同的现象（描述），并提供一种机制，将其描述与世界的一个或多个特征相关联（参考）。概念是对观察到的案例进行系统分类（分类）和描述未观察到的案例的概括（概括性）的基石。它们帮助科学家确定观察到的现象为什么发生（解释），何时发生以及如何控制它们（预测和控制）。物理学、化学和神经科学中的拼凑方法的比较表明，功能角色的分析（例如，参考工具的作用，或比例尺在描述和分类中的作用），本文的第二部分研究了广义的拼凑方法是否能捕捉到科学概念之间的系统关系，概念的作用优于概念的本质主义或整体性解释。例如，泛指关系主义者声称，泛指关系解释了可以被概括的概念的意义。因此，他们忽视了指称的变化如何限制了一个概念在实践中的普遍性。与此相反，整体主义者声称，概念的意义是由它在更大的科学理论中的位置决定的。因此，他们认为，解释和预测需要这样一种理论的分类系统，尽管在实践中往往不是这样。如果这些论点能够得到证实，那么一种广义的拼凑方法将比整体主义或本质主义更好地解释概念在科学实践中的作用，而不会失去与实证研究实践的现实的联系。