Methodologies of Integration

Nora Boyd (Siena College) - Empirical results can sometimes be fruitfully repurposed across epistemic contexts. Sometimes this happens in a single historical context, as when the same research outputs are shared between different contemporaneous groups investigating different phenomena, or when the same research is used to rule against several alternative theories. In addition, empirical results can sometimes be repurposed in new historical contexts—old data can be revived and given new life. Philosophers of science have discussed such cases of zombie data in biology, archaeology, and paleontology. Having the capacity to use empirical results in contexts besides those that generated them is also critically important for studying some astronomical phenomena. Historical astronomical observations can be valuable, sometimes irreplaceable, for certain research questions. For instance, some astronomical events are rare enough that few occurrences have been witnessed since the advent of the telescope (such as nearby supernovae), let alone since the adoption of contemporary conceptual categories or recent data distribution practices. And some phenomena of interest change subtly over very long periods of time. In order to study such phenomena, researchers have implemented clever strategies for coaxing historical astronomical records into epistemic contact with contemporary theory. I argue that, in general, in order for some empirical result to serve as a constraint on theorizing in some epistemic context, it must be “well-adapted” to the context of constraint. I defend a precise characterization of well-adaptedness and articulate one strategy by which an empirical result can be repurposed in a new context—using data records and their provenance metadata as the basis for transforming the empirical results codified in those records into useful empirical constraints in the contexts of interest— and I present a virtuoso example of this strategy in action. I develop the notion of “evidential forensics” to capture the clever chains of inference that researchers employ to render these historical records epistemically useful in the present. In particular I discuss and illustrate three aspects of evidential forensics: assessment of relevance, translation/transformation of information, and circumstantial reasoning. First, in the case of an exemplary Babylonian eclipse record, certain desiderata that researchers have identified as requisite for an historical record to be useful as a constraint in this context were met. For instance, it must be possible to determine the geographical location from which the observation was made, the observation must be of an event in the solar system so that it is possible to calculate the timing of the event in terrestrial time from the applicable dynamical equations, it must be possible to determine the exact date of the observed event, and it must be possible to determine the time of the even in universal time coordinates. Even if all of these desiderata are met, there is still the business of deciphering and translating the content of the records themselves to generate results that are well-adapted to the new context of interest. This involves, for instance, transforming observation records expressed in temporal units likely measured using a water clock referenced to the time to sunrise or sunset, and eclipse magnitudes given in si (fingers), where 12 fingers spans the diameter of the disk of eclipsed body, that is, the sun or moon. Finally, researchers recruited background knowledge about the historical and cultural context in which the observations were originally made in order to make a plausible argument about the timing of a particular eclipse. In the virtuoso example I want to discuss, Stephenson et al. (2016) determine a constraint on the long-term slowing of Earth’s rotation using a Babylonian record from 694 BC that states the Moon set while eclipsed. I explore the parallels between the epistemology of this sort of evidential forensics with strategies in historiography and archaeology arguing that it shares some features characteristic of each, the most important being that the epistemic utility of the artifact depends crucially on the accessibility of details regarding its provenance.

Eden Smith (University of Melbourne) - In neuroimaging experiments, the scientific concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used as tools that are independent of the other, uses that simultaneously reflect and obscure the enduring historical connections between these concepts. Examining one of these connections suggests that these independent uses share interdependent associations about the role of appropriately-regulated sensory-like mental phenomena (SLMP) in thought. In this paper, I will argue that identifying historical connections such as this is a crucial step in understanding how these concepts are each used as goal-directed tools that can contribute to neuroimaging experiments. My analysis of mental imagery and hallucinations draws upon a range of historical and philosophical studies that each examine how scientific concepts are used as tools that can enable scientific practices. I seek to build on scholarship that demonstrates that concepts are used for pursuing historically situated epistemic goals. I highlight how enduring connections between the historical uses of these two concepts might contribute to understanding their current uses as independent experimental tools. First, I outline how the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations can both be understood as tools that enable the investigation of discrete types of SLMP in relation to separate epistemic goals. On the one hand, mental imagery is used as a concept for investigating those ordinary SLMP experiences that resemble perception in ways that can aid in various neurocognitive functions. On the other hand, hallucinations provide the dominant concept for investigating abnormal SLMPs – specifically, those SLMP that are so compellingly like perception that they indicate dysfunctional neurocognition. The goal of using each concept is to find a unique mechanism explaining the discrete type of SLMP being investigated. That the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations can be used independently of each other in this way is usually taken for granted. However, this obscures that each concept stabilized as a tool for individuating discrete types of SLMP through unresolved attempts to characterize the inverse relationship between functional and dysfunctional SLMP. Examining this connection between how mental imagery and hallucinations each came to be characterized draws attention to the shared set of associations about functional and dysfunctional SLMP evident in their respective historical developments. This shared set of associations can be traced back to an old philosophical tradition that positions ordinary SLMP as a required mediator between perception and thought. During the nineteenth century, this mediator-view of SLMP provided the available knowledge within which the concept of mental imagery began to be used to investigate the role of ordinary SLMP in memory and imagination, as well as for the proposed concept of hallucinations as a description of how memories and imaginations could become ‘over-excited’ and lead to failures in reason or judgement. In the following debates, inverse sets of ‘typical’ characteristics of functional and dysfunctional SLMP were proposed to explain how something required for thought (mental imagery) could lead to a failure to correctly reason or judge perception (hallucinations). Despite unresolved questions about their validity, these inverse characterizations became routine, carrying along the interdependent associations connecting ordinary and dysfunctional SLMP even after the mediator-view of SLMP itself was abandoned during the early twentieth century. These interdependent associations can be described as sediment – implicit associations persisting long after the initial available knowledge justifying them has been abandoned – that operates as a base for the dynamic uses of these concepts as goal-directed tool in current neuroimaging practices. In offering examples to illustrate this final point, I aim to demonstrate how examining these enduring historical connections is an important step in understanding how the uses of these two concepts contribute to neuroimaging experiments.

Hakob Barseghhyan (University of Toronto), Greg Rupik (University of Toronto) - From a philosophical perspective, one major rationale for an integrated HPS was the idea that the historical record of transitions in sciences could be used to test general philosophical claims about science. Once established, these general philosophical claims would then provide a theoretical foundation for explaining individual historical transitions in sciences. It is safe to say that this bold project of an integrated HPS has never really come to fruition. There is currently no clear consensus on what an ideal integrated HPS should look like and, specifically, on how this integrated HPS might address the historical reasons that led to the exodus of historians. In this paper, we attempt to identify the key reason of the dis-integration of the original HPS and outline a new approach that can fruitfully re-integrate key components of both history and philosophy of science. We maintain that the dis-integration of the original HPS was mostly due to the conflation of two distinct projects: the search for a descriptive general theory of scientific change and the search for a normative methodology of science. Attempts to test or even merely illustrate normative methodological dicta by means of historical case studies have been rightfully scorned by historians and questioned by some philosophers. These attempts would bluntly ignore the fact that the methods of theory evaluation are not fixed, but change through time; they would ignore that the actual methods employed in theory evaluation could differ drastically between different epistemic communities, different fields of inquiry, and different time periods. Consequently, they would often result in shoehorning ill-documented historical cases into the confines of a chosen normative methodology. Since the search for a normative methodology of science was not separated from the search for a general descriptive theory of scientific change, these unfortunate misconstructions of historical cases eventually convinced mainstream historians that any general claims about science – descriptive or normative – are doomed to distort our historical narratives and inevitably produce a caricature of a history. As a result, the contemporary history of science has taken an explicitly a-theoretical stance and revels in its insistence on the apparent disunity of historical cases. We argue that in order to successfully re-integrate HPS, we need to appreciate that there is a missing link between the descriptive history of science and the normative philosophy of science; this missing link, we content, is the descriptive general theory of scientific change. Thus, instead of continuing the questionable practice of illustrating normative philosophical claims by means of cherry-picked historical case studies, the philosophy of science, we suggest, must rely on the findings of a general descriptive theory of scientific change. Similarly, what any good historical narrative needs as its backbone is not some normative dicta of this or that methodology a la Lakatos or Laudan, but an accepted descriptive theory that uncovers the general patterns of changes both in theories and in methods of their evaluation. As evidence for this proposal, we will consider the work currently being done by a community of scholars that aims at establishing an empirical descriptive science of science named scientonomy (www.scientowiki.com). Our goal is not only to outline how scientonomy can potentially bridge the gap between history and philosophy of science, but to show precisely how this re-integration has already been implemented by the scientonomy community. By considering the theoretical underpinnings of scientonomy, we will demonstrate how it addresses the historians’ concerns that led to the dis-integration of HPS, and how it offers a fruitful way towards a re-integrated HPS.