Research in the Context of Practice: Strategies for Making Application-Oriented Science Epistemically Sound and Practically Beneficial

该项目旨在确定可能使科学实际受益的研究战略。同时，以这种方式产生的知识的性质是由科学中采用的认识标准来评估的。因此，问题是科学中的哪一种研究方法保证促进实际效用并尊重科学的认识愿望。各种启发式策略从现有的知识出发，或者相反，从社会需求出发。我们想探讨这种知识驱动或需求驱动的物流是否以及如何成功地实现其目标。在追求实际目标的过程中产生的知识，将根据其认识性质进行评估。这些问题应该通过分析一系列实际相关的研究项目并比较它们的目标和成就来解决。我们打算专注于由社会需求驱动的项目，但旨在获得科学相关的知识。这种“应用创新项目”，由基督教多普勒社会提供，应该与更早的欧盟项目提供的知识驱动的研究项目进行比较。实践利益，认识的成就和两者之间的关系进行了研究，通过调用认识和非认识的标准或价值（使用库恩术语）。价值观的概念，被理解为可废止的基准，能够连接项目的启发式和评估翼。认知和非认知价值有助于澄清科学知识是什么样的，以及如何选择研究的途径。拟议的项目力求在个别个案研究和大规模统计调查之间找到一条中间道路，个案研究涉及在理解和干预之间建立关系的特定事件，大规模统计调查涉及出版物和专利的相互关系。前一种研究缺乏普遍性的证据，而后者则忽视了通过实践驱动的项目产生的理论见解，并忽视了使科学技术关系首先富有成效的机制。这些空白可以通过一系列扩大的、但仍然易于管理的杰出的个案研究来填补，在这些个案研究中，可以预期会出现上述那种生产关系，并且仍然可以对这种生产关系进行哲学分析。这使我们能够分析各种机制，使研究实际上有益的和认识上的尊重。此外，还对应用型研究中的模型结构进行了研究。关键的问题涉及到模型的法理核心和它们所包含的辅助原则之间的关系。挑战是要澄清模型的这些概念特征与其启发性和证明性潜力之间的关系。

The project seeks to identify research strategies that are likely to make science practically beneficial. At the same time, the nature of the knowledge produced in this way is assessed by epistemic standards employed in science. Thus, the question is which research heuristics in science promise to promote practical utility and to respect the epistemic aspirations of science. Various heuristic strategies proceed from the available knowledge or, conversely, from social demand. We want to explore whether and how such knowledge-driven or demand-driven heuristics succeed in achieving their goals. The knowledge produced in pursuing practical goals will then be assessed regarding its epistemic nature. These questions are supposed to be addressed by analyzing a pool of practically relevant research projects and comparing their goals and accomplishments. We intend to focus on projects that are driven by societal demand but aim to gain scientifically relevant knowledge in addition. Such „application-innovative projects,“ as made accessible by the Christian-Doppler Society, are supposed to be compared with more knowledge-driven research projects that are available from an earlier EU-project. Practical benefit, epistemic achievement and the relationship between the two is studied by invoking epistemic and non-epistemic standards or values (to use Kuhnian terminology). The notion of values, understood as defeasible benchmarks, is able to interconnect the heuristic and the evaluative wing of the project. Epistemic and non-epistemic values contribute to clarifying what scientific knowledge is like and how pathways of research are selected. The proposed project seeks to steer a middle course between individual case-studies addressing particular episodes in establishing relations between understanding and intervening and large-scale statistical surveys on the interrelatedness of publications and patents. The former kind of studies lacks a proof of generalizability, while the latter ignores the production of theoretical insights through practice-driven projects and disregards the mechanisms that make the science-technology relation productive in the first place. These lacunae can be filled by attending to an extended, but still manageable set of distinguished case-studies in which a productive relation of the kind mentioned can be expected to show up and which can still be subjected to philosophical analysis. This allows us to analyze various mechanisms for making research practically beneficial and epistemically respectable. In addition, the structure of models in application-oriented research is intended to be studied. The key question concerns the relationship between the nomological core of the models and the auxiliary principles they contain. The challenge is to clarify the relations between such conceptual features of models and their heuristic and justificatory potential.