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Pluralisms, Perspectives, and Potential Problems

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The Structure of Interdisciplinary Science

Part of the book series: New Directions in the Philosophy of Science ((NDPS))

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Abstract

This chapter discusses some central aspects of representation especially relevant for the evaluation of interdisciplinary activities. Giere’s and other philosophers’ discussions of perspectives and pluralism provide all the reasons one could possibly want for wholeheartedly endorsing interdisciplinarity. At the same time, though, these discussions imply that, in many cases, the integration of different perspectives is everything but straightforward. These issues are elucidated through a focus on perspectivism, idealisation, and distortion. A number of examples are provided that illustrate the considerable difficulties these considerations draw out.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    … such as “quarks” (Pickering 1984), “gender” (Lorber and Farrell 1991), “scientific knowledge” (MacKenzie 1981), and, of course, “reality” (Berger and Luckmann 1966). In most cases, though, the positions seem to be that certain concepts or conceptual frameworks are socially constructed, rather than the entities in question themselves. The most level-headed discussions of these issues are (Hacking 1999) and (Collin 1997), I believe.

  2. 2.

    On separate occasions, at seminars I have attended, I have heard as well Bruno Latour as Harry Collins assuring that (of course) they are (ontological) realists, and that anything else would be foolish.

  3. 3.

    Gilbert and Mulkay focus on developments and disagreements within research on oxidative phosphorylation of all things.

  4. 4.

    For instance, monochromatic light with a wavelength of 590 nm is experienced as orange. So is a combination of the wavelengths 670 nm (red) and 546 nm (green). At certain red/green-ratios, people with normal trichromatic vision have trouble discriminating between these. This is the phenomena known as metamerism (Giere 2006b, p. 21 f.). A study of anomalous human vision showed that at least one person discriminates very fast and reliably between orange light with different spectral characteristics. This at least indicates that human (behavioural) tetrachromacy does exist (Jordan et al. 2010).

  5. 5.

    If this is not obvious, I recommend Giere’s very careful discussion hereof in (Giere 2006b) as well as, perhaps, The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks (1997).

  6. 6.

    http://thetruesize.com/ is a fun web-resource for experimenting with the distortions of map projections.

  7. 7.

    I realise that it might be somewhat tiring that I keep returning to this equation. However, Giere (and others as well) has spent a few decades analysing this example for which reason I cannot simply ignore it here.

  8. 8.

    In which some properties or elements are omitted from representation leaving only the “essential” ones. This type of idealisation is sometimes referred to as ‘abstraction’ (Cartwright 1989; Jones 2005). I, however, prefer to use ‘idealisation’ for several reasons. (1) I agree with Weisberg’s views about the utility of a pluralistic account of idealisation (Weisberg 2007), (2) I think ‘abstraction’ is a potentially confusing term, given the many senses with which it is related, and (3) I believe it makes best sense to use ‘idealisation’ to describe all the different ways that lead to the construction of “ideal systems” (which are also the results of abstraction or omission, as I see it).

  9. 9.

    A good source for these kinds of considerations is (Jones 2005).

  10. 10.

    Diathesis-stress-models come in many more or less specified versions and goes back at least to Pierre Briquet’s systematic studies of hysteria in 1859 (Ellenberger 1970, p. 142). More recently Paul Meehl’s discussion of Schizophrenia is a well-known example (Meehl 1962). Presently, I make use of a strongly idealised version of the diathesis-stress-model (allegedly capturing general aspects of the relationship between vulnerability and breakdown) since it provides the best basis for comparison with the equally strongly idealised model of the simple pendulum.

  11. 11.

    The figures in this example are borrowed from (Malinas and Bigelow 2012).

  12. 12.

    Fisher is an interesting example since he himself drew heavily on statistical thermodynamics in developing his contributions to genetics (Depew and Weber 1995; Griffiths and Stoltz 2013, p. 2)

  13. 13.

    Additivity means that the variance of the phenotype can be calculated simply by adding up the variance of environment and the variance of the genotype. (Griffiths and Stoltz 2013, p. 183)

  14. 14.

    Since what is truly interesting is the contribution of genes and environment respectively, there is a tendency to forget that the deviation of some value from the mean is not the same as the contribution of the value. The hereditary coefficient would increase in a more uniform environment due to more of the phenotypic variance being ascribed to the genetic variance. If people, on the other hand, were more genetically similar, the hereditary coefficient would decrease due to less genetic difference to correlate with phenotypic differences. This, however, tells us little about the actual genetic contribution. For instance, increasing equality in terms of access to education increases the heritability of IQ (Griffiths and Stoltz 2013, p. 185).

  15. 15.

    The nasty habit will, of course, slowly but surely interact with the gene carrier’s environment, which will turn increasingly hostile towards him.

  16. 16.

    In studies of human behaviour, ethical considerations prevent otherwise respectable methods such as experimental control of mating patterns as well as radical manipulation of nurture.

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  1. Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Rolf Hvidtfeldt

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Hvidtfeldt, R. (2018). Pluralisms, Perspectives, and Potential Problems. In: The Structure of Interdisciplinary Science. New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90872-4_6

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