Abstract
There are numerous routes for scientific discovery, many of which involve the use of information from other scientific theories. In particular, searching for possible reductions is widely recognized as one guiding principle for scientific discovery or innovation. However, reduction is only one kind of intertheoretic relation; scientific theories, claims, and proposals can be related in more, and more complex, ways. This chapter proposes that much scientific discovery proceeds through the use of constraints implied by those intertheoretic relationships. The resulting framework is significantly more general than the common reduction-centric focus. As a result, it can explain more prosaic, everyday cases of scientific discovery, as well as scientists’ opportunistic use of many different kinds of scientific information. I illustrate the framework using three case studies from cognitive science, and conclude by exploring the potential limits of analyses of scientific discovery via constraints.
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Notes
- 1.
Readers who are skeptical about notions of ‘truth’ with regards to scientific theories should instead substitute ‘accurate’ or ‘approximately true’ or whatever notion they prefer.
- 2.
- 3.
As an aside, notice that this alternative-dependence implies that the particular constraints that scientists entertain can depend on contingent historical facts about the science (that influence the set of alternatives considered), even though the existence and nature of those constraints are not history-dependent.
- 4.
Again, readers should freely substitute their preferred term for ‘truth’, such as ‘accuracy’ or ‘approximate truth’.
- 5.
This goal-dependence does not necessarily imply some sort of goal-dependent pragmatism or perspectivism (though I do also endorse that; see, e.g., Danks 2015). Rather, this dependence is just a generalization of the old reductionist observation that two theories could stand in a reduction relation without thereby constraining one another’s explanations in any interesting or informative way (e.g., Putnam 1975).
- 6.
As a matter of historical interest, these were the three main types of theories of causal structure representation being proposed in cognitive science in the early 2000s.
- 7.
One might object that they could be tunable, if we understood “environment” in an appropriately broad and rich way. The problem is that this move makes the mappings essentially unlearnable, as every experience now involves a unique, never-before-seen environment.
- 8.
A framework for characterizing and modeling this dynamics represents another extension of the constraint-inclusion model of Laudan, Nickles, and others.
- 9.
Thanks to Donald Gillies for encouraging me to consider this possibility, even after I had initially dismissed it.
- 10.
That being said, creativity could perhaps be modeled as discovery via constraints in the following way: suppose creativity results, as some have suggested (e.g., Simonton 1999), from profligate, unguided idea generation, followed by thoughtful pruning of the outputs. This pruning process could potentially be based on the use of constraints, and so we have the beginnings of a picture in which all discovery is based on constraints. Of course, this proposal does not explain the “idea generator,” and much more work would need to be done before we have a full story in terms of constraints. Nonetheless, it is suggestive that even the “singular creative act” might be captured by this framework.
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Acknowledgements
The ideas in this paper were initially presented at the “Building Theories: Hypotheses & Heuristics in Science” conference at Sapienza University. Thanks to the audience at the conference for their comments and criticisms, particular Emiliano Ippoliti, Lindley Darden, Donald Gillies, and Margie Morrison. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on an earlier draft.
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Danks, D. (2018). Richer Than Reduction. In: Danks, D., Ippoliti, E. (eds) Building Theories. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72787-5_3
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