Angela Potochnik
Biographic Data
| ID | 1161504 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Angela Potochnik |
| GIVEN NAMES | Angela |
| FAMILY NAME | Potochnik |
| SIGNATURE | POTOCHNIK A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cincinnati |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0448-591X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Public Engagement with Science
'Public engagement with science' is gaining currency as the framing for outreach activities related to science. However, knowledge bearing on the topic is siloed in a variety of disciplines, and public engagement activities often are conducted without support from relevant theory or familiarity with related activities. This first Element in the Public Engagement with Science series sets the stage for the series by delineating the target of invest…
Science and the Public
Science is a product of society: in its funding, its participation, and its application. This Element explores the relationship between science and the public with resources from philosophy of science. Chapter 1 defines the questions about science's relationship to the public and outlines science's obligation to the public. Chapter 2 considers the Vienna Circle as a case study in how science, philosophy, and the public can relate very differently…
Critical Notice
There's a recurrent divide among philosophical views about science—those focused on practice vs those focused on metaphysics, assertions of pluralism vs assertions of realism, and accounts of how science's history could have gone otherwise vs accounts of how science achieves knowledge. Michela Massimi's Perspectival Realism (2022) is ultimately a bridging project, aiming to cross this divide. The project is to recruit resources from perspectivism…
Divergence of values and goals in participatory research
Idealization and Many Aims
In this article, I first outline the view developed in my recent book on the role of idealization in scientific understanding. I discuss how this view leads to the recognition of a number of kinds of variability among scientific representations, including variability introduced by the many different aims of scientific projects. I then argue that the role of idealization in securing understanding distances understanding from truth but that this un…
True Enough
The project Catherine Elgin embarks on in her latest book, True Enough, is expansive and ambitious. The book shares its title with a 2004 paper of Elgin's, and both take inspiration from the role—apparently epistemic—in science played by idealizations and other falsehoods. But, whereas the earlier paper focuses on motivating a particular view of scientific understanding on that basis, this book is a wide-ranging project in epistemology. I interpr…
Idealization and the Aims of Science
Idealizations are rampant and unchecked in science. That is, they exist throughout our best representations, and there is little focus on eliminating them or controlling their influence. This is because idealizations, despite their falsity, play a positive representational role. This account of idealization motivates a reconstrual of the aims of science. Science has a variety of epistemic and non-epistemic aims, and the ultimate epistemic aim is …
Scientific Explanation
Scientific explanations must bear the proper relationship to the world: they must depict what, out in the world, is responsible for the explanandum. But explanations must also bear the proper relationship to their audience: they must be able to create human understanding. With few exceptions, philosophical accounts of explanation either ignore entirely the relationship between explanations and their audience or else demote this consideration to a…
The diverse aims of science
Modeling social and evolutionary games
Feminist implications of model-based science
The Limitations of Hierarchical Organization
The concept of levels of organization is prominent in science and central to a variety of debates in philosophy of science. Yet many difficulties plague the concept of universal and discrete hierarchical levels, and these undermine implications commonly ascribed to hierarchical organization. We suggest the concept of scale as a promising alternative. Investigating causal processes at different scales allows for a notion of quasi levels that avoid…
Levels of Explanation Reconceived
A common argument against explanatory reductionism is that higher-level explanations are sometimes or always preferable because they are more general than reductive explanations. Here I challenge two basic assumptions that are needed for that argument to succeed. It cannot be assumed that higher-level explanations are more general than their lower-level alternatives or that higher-level explanations are general in the right way to be explanatory.…
Explanatory Independence and Epistemic Interdependence
The value of optimality modeling has long been a source of contention amongst population biologists. Here I present a view of the optimality approach as at once playing a crucial explanatory role and yet also depending on external sources of confirmation. Optimality models are not alone in facing this tension between their explanatory value and their dependence on other approaches; I suspect that the scenario is quite common in science. This inve…
Optimality Modeling and Explanatory Generality
The optimality approach to modeling natural selection has been criticized by many biologists and philosophers of biology. For instance, Lewontin (1979) argues that the optimality approach is a shortcut that will be replaced by models incorporating genetic information, if and when such models become available. In contrast, I think that optimality models have a permanent role in evolutionary study. I base my argument for this claim on what I think …
Revisiting Galison’s ‘Aufbau/Bauhaus’ in light of Neurath’s philosophical projects
The diverse aims of science
The Limitations of Hierarchical Organization
The concept of levels of organization is prominent in science and central to a variety of debates in philosophy of science. Yet many difficulties plague the concept of universal and discrete hierarchical levels, and these undermine implications commonly ascribed to hierarchical organization. We suggest the concept of scale as a promising alternative. Investigating causal processes at different scales allows for a notion of quasi levels that avoid…
Explanatory Independence and Epistemic Interdependence
The value of optimality modeling has long been a source of contention amongst population biologists. Here I present a view of the optimality approach as at once playing a crucial explanatory role and yet also depending on external sources of confirmation. Optimality models are not alone in facing this tension between their explanatory value and their dependence on other approaches; I suspect that the scenario is quite common in science. This inve…
Optimality Modeling and Explanatory Generality
The optimality approach to modeling natural selection has been criticized by many biologists and philosophers of biology. For instance, Lewontin (1979) argues that the optimality approach is a shortcut that will be replaced by models incorporating genetic information, if and when such models become available. In contrast, I think that optimality models have a permanent role in evolutionary study. I base my argument for this claim on what I think …
Levels of Explanation Reconceived
A common argument against explanatory reductionism is that higher-level explanations are sometimes or always preferable because they are more general than reductive explanations. Here I challenge two basic assumptions that are needed for that argument to succeed. It cannot be assumed that higher-level explanations are more general than their lower-level alternatives or that higher-level explanations are general in the right way to be explanatory.…
Idealization and Many Aims
In this article, I first outline the view developed in my recent book on the role of idealization in scientific understanding. I discuss how this view leads to the recognition of a number of kinds of variability among scientific representations, including variability introduced by the many different aims of scientific projects. I then argue that the role of idealization in securing understanding distances understanding from truth but that this un…
Scientific Explanation
Scientific explanations must bear the proper relationship to the world: they must depict what, out in the world, is responsible for the explanandum. But explanations must also bear the proper relationship to their audience: they must be able to create human understanding. With few exceptions, philosophical accounts of explanation either ignore entirely the relationship between explanations and their audience or else demote this consideration to a…
Divergence of values and goals in participatory research
Revisiting Galison’s ‘Aufbau/Bauhaus’ in light of Neurath’s philosophical projects
True Enough
The project Catherine Elgin embarks on in her latest book, True Enough, is expansive and ambitious. The book shares its title with a 2004 paper of Elgin's, and both take inspiration from the role—apparently epistemic—in science played by idealizations and other falsehoods. But, whereas the earlier paper focuses on motivating a particular view of scientific understanding on that basis, this book is a wide-ranging project in epistemology. I interpr…
Feminist implications of model-based science
Revisiting Galison’s ‘Aufbau/Bauhaus’ in light of Neurath’s philosophical projects
Optimality Modeling and Explanatory Generality
The optimality approach to modeling natural selection has been criticized by many biologists and philosophers of biology. For instance, Lewontin (1979) argues that the optimality approach is a shortcut that will be replaced by models incorporating genetic information, if and when such models become available. In contrast, I think that optimality models have a permanent role in evolutionary study. I base my argument for this claim on what I think …
Levels of Explanation Reconceived
A common argument against explanatory reductionism is that higher-level explanations are sometimes or always preferable because they are more general than reductive explanations. Here I challenge two basic assumptions that are needed for that argument to succeed. It cannot be assumed that higher-level explanations are more general than their lower-level alternatives or that higher-level explanations are general in the right way to be explanatory.…
Explanatory Independence and Epistemic Interdependence
The value of optimality modeling has long been a source of contention amongst population biologists. Here I present a view of the optimality approach as at once playing a crucial explanatory role and yet also depending on external sources of confirmation. Optimality models are not alone in facing this tension between their explanatory value and their dependence on other approaches; I suspect that the scenario is quite common in science. This inve…
Modeling social and evolutionary games
Feminist implications of model-based science
The Limitations of Hierarchical Organization
The concept of levels of organization is prominent in science and central to a variety of debates in philosophy of science. Yet many difficulties plague the concept of universal and discrete hierarchical levels, and these undermine implications commonly ascribed to hierarchical organization. We suggest the concept of scale as a promising alternative. Investigating causal processes at different scales allows for a notion of quasi levels that avoid…
The diverse aims of science
Scientific Explanation
Scientific explanations must bear the proper relationship to the world: they must depict what, out in the world, is responsible for the explanandum. But explanations must also bear the proper relationship to their audience: they must be able to create human understanding. With few exceptions, philosophical accounts of explanation either ignore entirely the relationship between explanations and their audience or else demote this consideration to a…
Idealization and the Aims of Science
Idealizations are rampant and unchecked in science. That is, they exist throughout our best representations, and there is little focus on eliminating them or controlling their influence. This is because idealizations, despite their falsity, play a positive representational role. This account of idealization motivates a reconstrual of the aims of science. Science has a variety of epistemic and non-epistemic aims, and the ultimate epistemic aim is …
True Enough
The project Catherine Elgin embarks on in her latest book, True Enough, is expansive and ambitious. The book shares its title with a 2004 paper of Elgin's, and both take inspiration from the role—apparently epistemic—in science played by idealizations and other falsehoods. But, whereas the earlier paper focuses on motivating a particular view of scientific understanding on that basis, this book is a wide-ranging project in epistemology. I interpr…
Idealization and Many Aims
In this article, I first outline the view developed in my recent book on the role of idealization in scientific understanding. I discuss how this view leads to the recognition of a number of kinds of variability among scientific representations, including variability introduced by the many different aims of scientific projects. I then argue that the role of idealization in securing understanding distances understanding from truth but that this un…
Divergence of values and goals in participatory research
Critical Notice
There's a recurrent divide among philosophical views about science—those focused on practice vs those focused on metaphysics, assertions of pluralism vs assertions of realism, and accounts of how science's history could have gone otherwise vs accounts of how science achieves knowledge. Michela Massimi's Perspectival Realism (2022) is ultimately a bridging project, aiming to cross this divide. The project is to recruit resources from perspectivism…
Science and the Public
Science is a product of society: in its funding, its participation, and its application. This Element explores the relationship between science and the public with resources from philosophy of science. Chapter 1 defines the questions about science's relationship to the public and outlines science's obligation to the public. Chapter 2 considers the Vienna Circle as a case study in how science, philosophy, and the public can relate very differently…
Public Engagement with Science
'Public engagement with science' is gaining currency as the framing for outreach activities related to science. However, knowledge bearing on the topic is siloed in a variety of disciplines, and public engagement activities often are conducted without support from relevant theory or familiarity with related activities. This first Element in the Public Engagement with Science series sets the stage for the series by delineating the target of invest…
Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Political science (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Philosophy of science (4 works)