Natural Kinds as Scientific Models

From the end of World War II through the U.S. Bicentennial, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation granted close to $300 million (approximately $2.3 billion in 2017 dollars) in the field of music alone. In deciding what to fund, these three grantmaking institutions decided to “ask the experts,” adopting seemingly objective, scientific models of peer review and specialist evaluation. They recruited music composers at elite institutions, professors from prestigious universities, and leaders of performing arts organizations. Among the most influential expert-consultants were Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Milton Babbitt. The significance was twofold: not only were male, Western art composers put in charge of directing large and unprecedented channels of public and private funds, but also, in doing so, they determined and defined what was meant by artistic excellence. They decided the fate of their peers and shaped the direction of music making in this country. By asking the experts, the grantmaking institutions produced a concentrated and interconnected field of artists and musicians. Officers and directors utilized ostensibly objective financial tools like matching grants and endowments in an attempt to diversify and stabilize applicants’ sources of funding, as well as the number of applicants they funded. Such economics-based strategies, however, relied more on personal connections among the wealthy and elite, rather than local community citizens. Ultimately, this history demonstrates how “expertise” served as an exclusionary form of cultural and social capital that prevented racial minorities and nondominant groups from fully participating.

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Because Without Cause

10.1093/oso/9780198777946.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Marc Lange

Keyword(s):

Natural Kinds ◽

Explanatory Power ◽

Scientific Explanations ◽

Physical Necessity ◽

Explanatory Priority ◽

Causal Laws

This chapter investigates non-causal scientific explanations that work by describing how the explanandum involves stronger-than-physical necessity by virtue of certain facts (“constraints”) that possess some variety of necessity stronger than ordinary causal laws possess. In particular, the chapter offers an account of the order of explanatory priority in explanations by constraint. It examines several important examples of explanations by constraint, distinguishing their natural kinds. It gives an account of the sense in which constraints are modally stronger than ordinary causal laws and an account of why certain deductions of constraints exclusively from other constraints possess explanatory power whereas others lack explanatory power.

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Mechanisms, Models, and Kinds

10.1093/oso/9780198779711.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Stuart Glennan

Keyword(s):

Natural Kinds ◽

Multiple Models

This chapter explores how mechanisms and their constituents can be classified into kinds. It argues for a weakly realist account of natural kinds—one which suggests that classification into kinds is based upon real similarities between instances of those kinds, but which denies that kinds have essences or have some reality apart from their instances. I introduce a models-first account of kinds, which suggests that two things are of the same kind to the extent that they can be represented by the same model. Because target entities can be represented by multiple models, they will belong to multiple kinds. I illustrate the approach by showing how the entities and activities that make up mechanisms can be classified into kinds.

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Between History and Nature

10.1093/oso/9780198779650.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Anik Waldow

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

History Of Science ◽

Philosophy Of History ◽

Literary Translation ◽

Scientific Models ◽

Human Sciences ◽

Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽

History Of ◽

Point Of Departure ◽

The Way

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.

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Scientific Representation and the Application of Mathematics

10.1093/oso/9780198815044.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Otávio Bueno ◽

Steven French

Keyword(s):

Scientific Models ◽

Scientific Representation ◽

Partial Structures

In this chapter, we show how the partial structures framework can be used to give an account of how scientific models represent systems, and in a way that pays due regard to the relations between the relevant mathematics and such models. In particular, both the open-ended nature of these developments and the transfer of relations between one structure and another can be accommodated within the partial structures account. Finally, the expansion of the framework to include partial homomorphisms holding between structures also allows us to accommodate the fact that typically not all of the mathematics is used in a particular application, leaving surplus structure that can be subsequently exploited.

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Are Scientific Models of Life Testable? A Lesson from Simpson’s Paradox

Sci ◽

10.3390/sci2030073 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 73

Author(s):

Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay ◽

Nolan Grunska ◽

Don Dcruz ◽

Mark C. Greenwood

Keyword(s):

Origin Of Life ◽

Rna World ◽

Scientific Models ◽

Scientific Model ◽

Simpson’S Paradox ◽

World Theory ◽

Life Issues ◽

The Origin Of Life ◽

Logical Sense ◽

Simpson's Paradox

We address the need for a model by considering two competing theories regarding the origin of life: (i) the Metabolism First theory and (ii) the RNA World theory. We discuss two inter-related points. (I) Models are valuable tools in understanding both the processes and intricacies of the origin of life issues. (II) Insights from models also help us to evaluate the core objection to origin of life theories called “the inefficiency objection” commonly raised by proponents of both the Metabolism First theory and the RNA World theory against each other. We use Simpson’s paradox as a tool for challenging this objection. We will use models in various senses ranging from taking them as representations of reality to treating them as theories/accounts that provide heuristics for probing reality. In this paper, we will frequently use models and theories interchangeably. Additionally, we investigate Conway’s Game of Life and contrast it with our Simpson’s Paradox (SP)-based approach to emergence of life issues. Finally, we discuss some of the consequences of our view. A scientific model is testable in three senses: (i) a logical sense, (ii) a nomological sense, and (iii) a current technological sense. The SP-based model is testable in the logical sense. It is also testable nomologically. However, it is not currently feasible to test it.

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Plato on Natural Kinds: The Promethean Method of the Philebus

Apeiron ◽

10.1515/apeiron-2020-0060 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

John D. Proios

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Natural Kind ◽

Intelligent Design ◽

Expert Knowledge ◽

Natural Kinds ◽

Natural World ◽

History Of Philosophy ◽

The World ◽

History Of

Abstract Plato’s invention of the metaphor of carving the world by the joints (Phaedrus 265d–66c) gives him a privileged place in the history of natural kind theory in philosophy and science; he is often understood to present a paradigmatic but antiquated view of natural kinds as possessing eternal, immutable, necessary essences. Yet, I highlight that, as a point of distinction from contemporary views about natural kinds, Plato subscribes to an intelligent-design, teleological framework, in which the natural world is the product of craft and, as a result, is structured such that it is good for it to be that way. In Plato’s Philebus, the character Socrates introduces a method of inquiry whose articulation of natural kinds enables it to confer expert knowledge, such as literacy. My paper contributes to an understanding of Plato’s view of natural kinds by interpreting this method in light of Plato’s teleological conception of nature. I argue that a human inquirer who uses the method identifies kinds with relational essences within a system causally related to the production of some unique craft-object, such as writing. As a result, I recast Plato’s place in the history of philosophy, including Plato’s view of the relation between the kinds according to the natural and social sciences. Whereas some are inclined to separate natural from social kinds, Plato holds the unique view that all naturalness is a social feature of kinds reflecting the role of intelligent agency.

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Complexity as Practice: A Reflection on the Creative Outcomes of a Sustained Engagement with Complexity

Leonardo ◽

10.1162/leon_a_00275 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 106-112 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Tom Davis

Keyword(s):

Complexity Theory ◽

Scientific Models ◽

Creative Work ◽

Research Practice ◽

Creative Practice ◽

Conceptual Problems ◽

The Creation ◽

The Relationship

This article presents a reflection on a body of creative work carried out during four years of Ph.D. research that explored the relationship between complexity theory and music. The article highlights conceptual problems that arose during the creation of the work, especially those associated with the exploration of scientific models for the creation of art. The author does not attempt to offer any final solutions but rather presents the journey undertaken through the combined artistic and research practice as a way of documenting the strategies he developed during this period of creative practice.

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