John Bickle (Mississippi State Univerity)
Philosophy of science remains deeply theory-centric. Even after the sea change over the past three decades, in which “foundational” questions in specific sciences have come to dominate concerns about science in general, the idea that everything of philosophical consequence in science begins and ends with theory still remains prominent. A focus on the way experiment tools develop in laboratory sciences like neurobiology, especially its cellular and molecular mainstream, is thereby illuminating. While theory progress has certainly been an outcome of the development and ingenious use of these tools, it plays almost no role in their development or justification. Engineering concerns predominate these stages. Theory is thus tertiary in these laboratory sciences. It depends on the development of experiment tools; while the latter depend on engineering ingenuity and persistence.
Previously I have developed these points via metascientific investigations of tools that revolutionized neurobiology, at least in the judgment of practicing neurobiologists. These tools include gene targeting techniques, brought into neurobiology from developmental biology a quarter-century ago, and the more recent examples of optogenetic and chemogenetic technologies. All of these tools greatly increased the precision with which neurobiologists can intervene into intra- and inter-cellular signaling pathways specific neurons in behaving rodents to investigate directly cellular and molecular causal mechanisms of higher, including cognitive, functions. From these cases I have developed a model of tool development experiments in neurobiology, including a tool’s motivating problem, and first- and second-stage “hook” experiments by which a new tool is confirmed, further developed, and brought to more widespread scientific (and sometimes even public) awareness. Most recently I have confirmed this model with another case, the development of the metal microelectrode, which drove the “reductionist” program in mainstream neurobiology from the late-1950s to the early -1980s. In this poster I further confirm this model of tool development experiments, and sharpen this argument against theory-centricism in the philosophy of science, by reporting the results of a metascientifc investigation of the development of patch clamp technology and the initial achievement of the “gigaseal.” More than three decades ago this tool permitted experimentalists for the first time to resolve currents from single ion channels in neuron membranes. Experimental manipulations of this tool soon led to a variety of ways of physically isolating “patches” of neuron membrane, permitting the recording of single channel currents from both sides of the cell membrane. This tool sparked neurobiology’s “molecular wave,” and current theory, concerning the mechanisms of ion channels and active transporters to ionotropic and metabotropic receptors, was quickly achieved. This tool likewise developed through engineering ingenuity, not the application of theory. Its development likewise illustrates the independent “life” of experiment vis-à-vis theory in laboratory sciences, and opposes the theory-centric image of science that continues to pervade both philosophy of science generally and the specific fields of neuroscience—cognitive, computational, systems—that dominate philosophical attention.
