Data and model operations in computational sciences. The examples of computational embryology and epidemiology

Computer models and simulations have become, since the 1960s, an essential instrument for scientific inquiry and political decision making in several fields, from climate to life and social sciences. Philosophical reflection has mainly focused on the ontological status of the computational modeling, on its epistemological validity and on the research practices it entails. But in computational sciences, the work on models and simulations are only two steps of a longer and richer process where operations on data are as important as, and even more time and energy-consuming than modeling itself. Drawing on two study cases – computational embryology and computational epidemiology –, this article contributes to fill the gap by focusing on the operations of producing and re-using data in computational sciences. The different phases of the scientific and artisanal work of modelers include data collection, aggregation, homogenization, assemblage, analysis and visualization. The article contributes to deconstruct the ideas that data are self-evident informational aggregates and that data-driven approaches are exempted from theoretical work. More importantly, the paper stresses the fact that data are constructed and theory-laden not only in their fabrication, but also in their reusing.

History as engagement: The Historical Epistemology of Raymond Aron

Raymond Aron was a student of Léon Brunschvicg, a representative of French historical epistemology. This article explores Aron’s relation to this tradition through three claims. First of all, it contests that Raymond Aron’s philosophy of history constituted a complete break with this tradition. Secondly, resituating Aron in this tradition is valuable, because it highlights how Aron’s own philosophy of history is to be understood as a normative project, seen as an alternative to that of Brunschvicg. Finally, Aron’s philosophy can still hold valuable lessons for present-day historical epistemology and history and philosophy of science in general.

‘For the Sciences Migrate, Just Like People’: The Case of Botanical Knowledge in the Early Modern Iberian Empires

In his writings, Francis Bacon emphasized the interrelatedness between the migration of people and knowledge, arguing that Europeans of his time had surpassed the greatest civilizations because of their ability to traverse the world freely. Concentrating on Spanish observers who investigated New Spain’s flora, this article bridges theory and practice by examining the Iberian roots of Bacon’s views. The article examines scientific approaches for acquiring bioknowledge by Iberians who specialized in European medicine, including Francisco Hernández, Juan de Cárdenas and Francisco Ximénez. While the article recognizes the contribution of travellers and expatriates to Spain’s bioprospecting project, it also points to the ways in which the limitations of the transfer of botanical information was acknowledged, and discusses its meaning. By presenting the complexities in the communication of knowledge, I argue, naturalists in the colonies could highlight their unique vantage point in relation to “armchair” specialists in the metropole.

Racializing a New Nation: German Coloniality and Anthropology in Maharashtra, India

This paper deals with the transnationalism of racial anthropological frameworks and its role in the understanding of human difference during India’s decolonization and nation-building. With attention to the circulation of objects, I focus on the practices and articulations of Irawati Karve (1905–1970), an Indian anthropologist with a transnational scientific trajectory and nationalistic political engagements. I argue that Karve’s adaptation of an internationally validated German racial approach to study caste, ethnic and religious groups contributed to the further racialization of these categories as well as to the racialization of nationalistic projects in Maharashtra and India. I conclude with a reflection on the transnationalization of the coloniality of racialization.

In the Name of Human Adaptation: Japanese American “Hybrid Children” and Racial Anthropology in Postwar Japan

By focusing on the emergence and integration of “hybrid children” (konketsuji) anthropology into the Human Adaptability section of the International Biological Program (HA-IBP) in Japan during the 1950s and 1970s, this paper presents how transnational dynamics and mechanisms played out in shaping and maintaining the racist aspects while simultaneously allowed them to be included in the HA-IBP framework. It argues that they operated a double play between their national and transnational spaces—that is, they attenuated racist aspects of their research in their international activities while authenticating race in their national work. This paper will conclude with reflections on the transnational nationalism of konketsuji anthropology.

Blood Affairs: Racial Blood Group Research and Nation Building in Greece, 1920s–1940s

This paper examines the transnational exchanges associated with the emergence of racial blood group studies in Greece. It explores the overlap between anthropological and medical perspectives as well as the concurrences and tensions between national and transnational concerns. By following the work of the main Greek physical anthropologist of the interwar period, the paper asks how politics interpenetrates into this case study in a scientifically consequential way and conversely how innovation in research allows anthropologists to intervene with politically timely questions. It showcases how wartime mobilities generated anthropological data that weaved and strengthened the fabric of the Greek national narrative.

The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research and the Organized International Eugenics Movement. Expertise, authority, transnational networks and international organization in Norwegian genetics and eugenics (1919–1934)

The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research played a key role in the rise of genetics as a research field in Norway. The immediate background of its establishment in 1919 was the need for an organization that could clarify scientific issues regarding eugenics and coordinate Norwegian representation in the organized international eugenics movement. The Association never assumed this role. Instead, Norway was represented in the international eugenics movement by the so-called Norwegian Consultative Eugenics Commission, whose leader, Jon Alfred Mjøen, was dismissed as a pseudo-scientist by Norwegian geneticists. The paper explores the Association’s role in defining and delimiting scientific expert knowledge in the field of genetics and eugenics in Norway. It demonstrates how struggles about academic authority on the national arena were intertwined with struggles about representation and impact in the international eugenics movement and how transnational scientific networks where mobilized to legitimize and delegitimize notions about Nordic race supremacy, racial mixing and the politics of eugenic sterilizations.

Transnational isolates: Portuguese colonial race science and the foreign world

This article examines scientific transnationalism as an art of engagement with, and avoidance of, the threats and promises of what was foreign to the nation. Portuguese racial anthropologists experienced a tension between remaining imperial-nationalistic in character, and internationalist in their activities simultaneously. They struggled to exclude foreigners from colonial field sites; they aimed at nativist authority based on total control of colonial data. Yet, they eagerly sought connections with foreign experts to capitalize provincial scientific authority within Portugal’s colonies. The essay conceptualizes this mode of transnationalism as also a kind of isolationism, an inward-oriented form of engaging with foreign sciences and scientists as ambivalently powerful and threatening strangers.

Miriam Tildesley and the Anthropological Politics of Standardizing Racial Measurements

This article examines to what extent nationalist and sexist sentiment and international politics shaped attempts to universalize measurement practices in physical anthropology. On the one hand, racial scientists were interested in creating an international community with a universalized methodology and developing a global taxonomy of human races. On the other hand, they chauvinistically guarded their localized practices from outside influences. By following the standardization efforts of British biometrician Miriam Tildesley, a female racial scientist adamant on unifying a research field largely dominated by men from different countries, this article argues that intersecting forces of nationalism, internationalism, and sexism shaped anthropological practices in the early 20th century.