Invention through bricolage: epistemic engineering in scientific communities

Authors

  • Alexander James Gillett Macquarie University. Philosophy Department

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9113

Keywords:

Social Structure of Scientific Communities, Virtual collaboration, Interdisciplinarity, Cognitive diversity

Abstract

It is widely recognised that knowledge accumulation is an important aspect of scientific communities. In this essay, drawing on a range of material from theoretical biology and behavioural science, I discuss a particular aspect of the intergenerational nature of human communities – “virtual collaboration” (Tomasello 1999) – and how it can lead to epistemic progress without any explicit intentional creativity (Henrich 2016). My aim in this paper is to make this work relevant to theorists working on the social structures of science so that these processes can be utilised and optimised in scientific communities.

References

Alač, M. & Hutchins, E. (2004) I See What You Are Saying: Action as Cognition in fMRI Brain Mapping Practice. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 4(3), 629-661.

Andersen, H. (2016) Collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and the epistemology of contemporary science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 56, 1-10.

Aporta, C. & Higgs, E. (2005) Satellite Culture: Global Positioning Systems, Inuit Wayfinding, and the Need for a New Account of Technology. Current Anthropology 46 (5), 729-753.

Azoulay, P., Fons-Rosen, C. & Graff Zivin, J. (2015) Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? NBER Working Paper No. w21788.

Bailetti, S., Mäs, M. & Helbing, D. (2015) On Disciplinary Fragmentation and Scientific Progress. PLoS ONE 10 (3), e0118747.

Barnier, A. J., Sutton, J., Harris, C. B. & Wilson, R. A. (2008) A conceptual and empirical framework for the social distribution of cognition: The case of memory. Cognitive Systems Research 9, 33–51.

Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J. & Henrich, J. (2011) The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. PNAS 108, 10918–10925.

Braun, T. & Schubert, A. (2003) A quantitative view on the coming of age of interdisciplinarity in the sciences 1980-1999. Scientometrics 58 (1), 183-189.

Bray, H. (2014) You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves. New York: Basic Books.

Collins, B. E. & Guetzkow, H. (1964) A Social Psychology of Group Processes for Decision-Making. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

D’Agostino, F. (2008) Naturalizing the essential tension. Synthese 162, 275-308.

Dean, L. G., Kendal, R. L., Schapiro, S. J., Thierry, B., & Laland, K. N. (2012) Identification of the Social and Cognitive Processes Underlying Human Cumulative Culture. Science, 335, 1114-1118

Derex, M., Beguin, M-P., Godelle, B. & Raymond, M. (2013) Experimental evidence for the influence of group size on cultural complexity. Nature 503, 389–391.

Dupré, J. (1993) The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fahrbach, L. (2011) How the growth of science ends theory change. Synthese 180, 139-155.

Feyerabend, P. (1975/2010) Against Method – Fourth Edition. London: Verso.

Fleck, L. (1935/1979) Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Tr. Bradley, F. & Trenn, T. J. Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache: Einführung in die Lehre von Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Flynn, E. G., Laland, K. N., Kendal, R. L. & Kendal, J. R. (2013) Developmental niche construction. Developmental Science 16 (2), 296-313.

Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Galison, P. (1998) Image and logic: a material culture of microphysics. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Henrich, J. (2016) The Secrets of Our Success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Humphreys, P. (2004) Extending Ourselves: Computational Science, Empiricism, and the Scientific Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hutchins, E. (1995) Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Kitcher, P. (1990) The Division of Cognitive Labour. The Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1), 5-22.

Kitcher, P. (1993) The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kitcher, P. (1998) A Plea for Science Studies. (pp. 32-56) in Koertge (Ed.) A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kuhn, T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Kuhn, T. (1977) The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Ladyman, J. & Ross, D. with Spurrett, D. & Collier, J. (2007) Every Thing Must Go – Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levinson, S. C. (2003) Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mercier, H. & Sperber, D. (2011) Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34, 57-111.

Miller, G. (2016) Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Our World. New York: Norton.

Muthukrishna, M., Shulman, B. W., Vasilescu, V. & Henrich, J. (2014) Sociality influences cultural complexity. Proceedings of the Royal Society: B 281 (1774), 2511.

Nersessian, N. J. (2005) Interpreting Scientific and Engineering Practices: Integrating the Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Dimensions. (pp. 17-56) in M. E. Gorman, R. D. Tweney, D. C. Gooding & A. P. Kincannon (Eds.) Scientific and Technological Thinking. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate.

Shea, N. (2009) Imitation as an Inheritance System. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364, 2429-2443.

Snyder, J. P. (1987) Map Projections – A Working Manual. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1395. Washington, D.C: United States Government Printing Office.

Stanford, K. P. (2016) Naturalism without Scientism. (pp. 91-108) in K. J.. Clark (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, First Edition. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Sterelny, K. (2003) Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Sterelny, K. (2012) The Evolved Apprentice: How evolution made humans unique. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sunstein, C. R. (2005) Group Judgments: Statistical Means, Deliberation, and Information Markets. New York University Law Review, 80, 962-1049.

Thagard, P. (1993) Societies of Minds: Science as Distributed Computing. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24 (1), 49-61.

Tomasello, M. (1999) The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. London: Harvard University Press.

Vale, G. L., Davis, S. J., Lambeth, S. P., Schapiro, S. J. & Whiten, A. (2017) Acquisition of a socially learned tool use sequence in chimpanzees: Implications for cumulative culture. Evolution and Human Behavior [online].

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Weisberg, S. (2010) New Approaches to the Division of Cognitive Labor. (pp. 250-269) in P. D. Magnus & Busch, J. (eds.) New Waves in Philosophy of Science. Hampshire: Palgrave and Macmillan.

Zollman, K. J. S. (2010) The epistemic benefit of transient diversity. Erkenntnis 72 (1), 17-35.

Downloads

Published

2018-03-01