The Social Epistemology of Science
Another of my major research areas is the social epistemology of science. I take a systems-oriented, social dynamics approach to studying creativity in scientific research practice, as well as to studying the role of broader socio-cultural factors in a socially-embedded scientific enterprise.
Creativity, uncreativity, and the politics of research strongholds
[Work in progress]
I consider how an account of uncreativity I’ve recently developed intersects with general concerns about the endogenous social dynamics of research communities. To avoid uncreativity, I argue for the importance of sub-disciplinary ‘research strongholds’: tightly clustered sub-communities, which are each associated with interestingly distinct conceptions of common, overarching community aims. This would seem to present a special case of peer disagreement, which invites norms of discourse and conduct within the community that are similar to ordinary political norms adopted in pluralistic societies. The analogy is especially apt in the context of large-scale collaborations, where success demands the community to fragment without fracture.
Strangely enough, no one takes seriously the possible non-orientability of time
[Work in progress]
For better or worse, uncreativity matters in scientific research practice. To substantiate this claim, I identify a paradigmatic case of uncreativity: wherein a genuine scientific possibility fails to be an epistemic possibility, because it happens to be inconceivable in the course of ongoing research in the surrounding discipline. While epistemologically strange, I suggest that this uncreative situation is not as fanciful in science as the particulars of the case might indicate. On the other hand, I also emphasize the prominent role of mathematics in the case; the question of how to find analogous cases in less mathematized scientific research disciplines is left open.
Homophily in science: where's the epistemic harm?
[Work in progress; an earlier circulated draft on similar subjects was titled “The non-epistemic origins of research strongholds”]
I introduce a notion of ‘epistemic harms' that is suitable for a systems-oriented social epistemology of science in conversation with evidence-based science policy. I then argue that sociological homophily, the statistically realized preference in a community to associate with people with whom one co-identifies, plausibly amounts to an epistemic harm in socially diverse science. Consequently, real-time indicators of the emergence of sociological homophily in scientific communities motivate policy efforts dedicated to shaking up those communities' social network structures.
Priority and privilege in scientific discovery
[SHPS, with co-author Hannah Rubin; preprint available here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18840/]
The priority rule in science has been interpreted as a behavior regulator for the scientific community, which benefits society by adequately structuring the distribution of intellectual labor across pre-existing research programs. Further, it has been lauded as part of society's "grand reward scheme" because it fairly rewards people for the benefits they produce. But considerations about how news of scientific developments spreads throughout a scientific community at large suggest that the priority rule is something else entirely, which can disadvantage historically underrepresented or otherwise marginalized social groups.
Creativity in the social epistemology of science
[Philosophy of Science; preprint available here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18481/]
Currie [2019] has introduced a novel account of creativity within the social epistemology of science. The account is intended to capture how conservatism can be detrimental to the health of inquiry within certain scientific communities, given the aims of research there. I argue that recent remarks by Rovelli [2018] put pressure on the applicability of the account. Altogether, it seems we do not yet well understand the relationship between creativity, conservatism, and the health of inquiry in science.
Promoting diverse collaborations
[Forthcoming in The Dynamics of Science: Computational Frontiers in History and Philosophy of Science, with co-authors Hannah Rubin and Cailin O’Connor; preprint available here: http://www.hannahrubin.net/s/Promoting_Diverse_Collaborations.pdf]
Philosophers of science and social scientists have argued that diverse perspectives, methods, and background assumptions are critical to the progress of science. One way to achieve such diversity is to ensure that a scientific community is made up of individuals from diverse personal backgrounds. In many scientific disciplines, though, minority groups are underrepresented. In some cases minority members further segregate into sub-fields, thus decreasing the effective diversity of research collaborations. In this paper, we employ agent-based, game theoretic models to investigate various types of initiatives aimed at improving the diversity of collaborative groups. This formal framework provides a platform to discuss the potential efficacy of these various proposals. As we point out, though, such proposals may have unintended negative consequences.