Integrative biophilosophy

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Forms of practice, forms of knowledge: method, notation, and the dynamics of perspectives in the life sciences.

Project Management: Dr. Robert Meunier

Collaborators: Saliha Bayır, M.A. (since 2019); Nina Kranke, M.A. (2015-2016).

Visiting Scientists: Prof. Dr. James Griesemer (UC Davis, USA); Dr. Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Cambridge, UK and University of Lübeck, DE).

Funding: Central Research Funding(ZFF) University of Kassel (2015-2017); DFG (2018-2021)

Project description

The study focuses on research projects in the life sciences. From an epistemological perspective, these are conceived as the smallest relevant units of the research process. The following levels can be distinguished: a) types of activities in the research process, b) the social, material and symbolic structures that are prerequisites for these activities or are produced by them, and c) the knowledge relevant to these activities (in the form of knowledge schemas). Research projects can be analyzed on the basis of this model (see Fig. 1).

Fig 1: A model for analyzing research projects. For explanation, click graphic.

On this basis, the research is developed in two directions:

  1. One focus is the analysis of the interaction of research acts and acts that generate representation through the use of symbol systems. Research actions in the narrow sense are experimental interventions, selective observational actions, measurement activities, and other activities carried out in the context of an experimental system, a material model, a simulation, or a systematic observation regime in a field study. The question here is what are the characteristics of such action patterns that are capable of generating knowledge, compared to those that are not. Moreover, the task is to indicate what distinguishes patterns of action that produce different kinds of knowledge (e.g., knowledge about causal, spatial, temporal, or taxonomic relations between entities).
     
  2. Broadening the perspective, on the other hand, brings into view research projects in the context of dynamic research fields, institutionalized disciplines, and constantly reconfiguring communities. The dynamics of these levels of organization can be described on the basis of the dynamics of research projects that essentially make them up. The emergence of new research directions or their transformations, the transfer of techniques, methods, models, or concepts, controversies and conflicts, interdisciplinary interaction or integration of approaches, and the translation of basic research results into application - all these processes take place significantly at the level of projects. Accordingly, the analysis of projects as well as of the ways in which the acts of research and representation that constitute them generate different knowledge enables a new philosophy of scientific change.

These two perspectives on research projects will be developed by elaborating case studies from the fields of developmental and behavioral genetics(Meunier) and ecology(Bayır).

Events

Selected publications

  • Meunier, R. (2019). Project Knowledge and Its Resituation in the Design of Research Projects: Seymour Benzer's Behavioral Genetics, 1965-1974. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 77 (October): 39-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2018.04.001
  • Gross, F., Kranke, N., & Meunier, R. (2019). Pluralization through Epistemic Competition: Scientific Change in Times of Data-Intensive Biology. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (1): 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0239-5
  • Meunier, R. (2018). Animal Models And The Ecology Of Knowledge: The Example Of The Zebrafish. In Philosophy Of Animal Research: Volume 3: Milieus And Actors, edited by M. Wunsch, M. Böhnert, and K. Köchy. Freiburg and Munich: Alber (see here).
  • For a complete list, see here

Selected lectures

  • S. Bayır and R. Meunier, "Revisiting the Phenotype," poster presentation, Second Meeting of the Philosophy in Biology and Medicine (PhilInBioMed) International Network, October 14-15, 2019, Bordeaux, France.