In this post, Rani Lill Anjum and Elena Rocca introduce their new book, Philosophy of Science (Palgrave 2024).
What do practitioners, researchers, and students have in common? They are all expected to accept a number of philosophical assumptions that are rarely discussed, although they profoundly shape a discipline. Most of these will be introduced via their education and are likely to remain unnoticed as long as one stays comfortably within the disciplinary boundaries of like-minded experts.
Awareness of underlying tensions will typically emerge when expert from different disciplines try to arrive at a common ground. They might then have to choose what is the most reliable evidence among a range of contradicting observations. Should one trust population data, when they contradict an established theory? Should the success of an intervention be measured at population level or at the level of individuals? How should results obtained with lab models be used to make decisions about real-life contexts? Answering these questions, we argue, involves favouring certain philosophical assumptions over others.
Our new book, Philosophy of Science (Palgrave 2024, Philosophy Today Series), is an attempt to bridge the gap between philosophy and science. We wanted to show some of the many philosophical influences on scientific theory, method, and practice, and how disciplinary differences are often motivated by conflicting philosophical assumptions. A practical consequence of this can be seen in a number of scientific controversies where the disagreement can be traced back to philosophy, rather than empirical facts.
Philosophy of Science
Awareness of underlying tensions will typically emerge when expert from different disciplines try to arrive at a common ground. They might then have to choose what is the most reliable evidence among a range of contradicting observations. Should one trust population data, when they contradict an established theory? Should the success of an intervention be measured at population level or at the level of individuals? How should results obtained with lab models be used to make decisions about real-life contexts? Answering these questions, we argue, involves favouring certain philosophical assumptions over others.
Our new book, Philosophy of Science (Palgrave 2024, Philosophy Today Series), is an attempt to bridge the gap between philosophy and science. We wanted to show some of the many philosophical influences on scientific theory, method, and practice, and how disciplinary differences are often motivated by conflicting philosophical assumptions. A practical consequence of this can be seen in a number of scientific controversies where the disagreement can be traced back to philosophy, rather than empirical facts.
Rani Lill Anjum and Elena Rocca
The book project was inspired by our joint CauseHealth project, where we worked together with clinicians and other health care practitioners to identify and critically examine some of the philosophical foundation motivating, shaping and restricting their own practice. When looking closer at how central scientific concepts such as causality, probability, complexity, and evidence are understood in the health sciences, we found some deeper philosophical tensions between evidence-based and person-centred practice.
The interest in the CauseHealth project from medical researchers and health practitioners was surprisingly positive. The general feedback was that philosophical awareness and reflections were often lacking in the education. Of course, this is not unique for the health sciences. All scientific disciplines come with a number of basic implicit assumptions of a philosophical nature, what we have called ‘philosophical bias’ (Andersen et al. 2019).
In chapter 5 of the book, Elena shares her own experience from her science education, which is from pharmacy and molecular biology. It was not until her post-doctoral work that she became familiar with some unsolved controversies regarding the field of agricultural technologies, including their effects and safety. She was surprised to see that the production of new evidence had kept failing to settle the disagreement. For the first time, Elena realised that many aspects of science couldn’t be settled by more data or more facts: What counts as good scientific practice? What are the best scientific methods? What does it mean that an intervention is ‘safe’?
After seeing the interest from the CauseHealth project in learning about and critically discussing such biases, we designed a pilot course at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2020: ‘Interdisciplinarity and Expert Disagreement on Sustainability’. Our idea was to train the next generation of experts, rather than trying to change the mindset of already established experts. The course was open for students from any program at any level, and 76 students signed up.
The feedback from the students was encouraging, and they even wrote a letter to the leadership: ‘A call for promoting critical thinking for interdisciplinarity at NMBU’. In 2022 the university made the course mandatory for all master programs at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management and open for students from the other programs.
In the course, students are encouraged to reflect about their own disciplinary biases, before discussing them in interdisciplinary groups. Various cases of scientific controversies are analysed for underlying philosophical bias, and then the students present their own cases and philosophical analyses in a final conference.
The Philosophy of Science book mirror the course design in Parts II and III, so, with this book, anyone can learn what we teach in our courses. Each chapter includes repetition and reflection questions that we use in class, plus sample essay questions and further readings. We hope that the book will be used not only by philosophy students and teachers, but also by students from natural and social science. Before buying the book, however, make sure to check if the university network provides access to free download of the ebook or a reduced price soft copy.
The interest in the CauseHealth project from medical researchers and health practitioners was surprisingly positive. The general feedback was that philosophical awareness and reflections were often lacking in the education. Of course, this is not unique for the health sciences. All scientific disciplines come with a number of basic implicit assumptions of a philosophical nature, what we have called ‘philosophical bias’ (Andersen et al. 2019).
In chapter 5 of the book, Elena shares her own experience from her science education, which is from pharmacy and molecular biology. It was not until her post-doctoral work that she became familiar with some unsolved controversies regarding the field of agricultural technologies, including their effects and safety. She was surprised to see that the production of new evidence had kept failing to settle the disagreement. For the first time, Elena realised that many aspects of science couldn’t be settled by more data or more facts: What counts as good scientific practice? What are the best scientific methods? What does it mean that an intervention is ‘safe’?
After seeing the interest from the CauseHealth project in learning about and critically discussing such biases, we designed a pilot course at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2020: ‘Interdisciplinarity and Expert Disagreement on Sustainability’. Our idea was to train the next generation of experts, rather than trying to change the mindset of already established experts. The course was open for students from any program at any level, and 76 students signed up.
The feedback from the students was encouraging, and they even wrote a letter to the leadership: ‘A call for promoting critical thinking for interdisciplinarity at NMBU’. In 2022 the university made the course mandatory for all master programs at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management and open for students from the other programs.
In the course, students are encouraged to reflect about their own disciplinary biases, before discussing them in interdisciplinary groups. Various cases of scientific controversies are analysed for underlying philosophical bias, and then the students present their own cases and philosophical analyses in a final conference.
The Philosophy of Science book mirror the course design in Parts II and III, so, with this book, anyone can learn what we teach in our courses. Each chapter includes repetition and reflection questions that we use in class, plus sample essay questions and further readings. We hope that the book will be used not only by philosophy students and teachers, but also by students from natural and social science. Before buying the book, however, make sure to check if the university network provides access to free download of the ebook or a reduced price soft copy.