Sandra D Mitchell
Biographic Data
| ID | 958683 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sandra D Mitchell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sandra D |
| FAMILY NAME | Mitchell |
| SIGNATURE | MITCHELL S D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The landscape of integrative pluralism
In this essay, I revisit and extend my arguments for a view of science that is pluralistic, perspectival and pragmatist. I attempt to resolve mismatches between metaphysical assumptions, epistemological desiderata, and scientific practice. I consider long-held views about unity of science and reductionism, emergent properties and physicalism, exceptionless necessity in explanatory laws, and in the justification for realism. My solutions appeal to…
Through the Fractured Looking Glass
I argue that diversity and pluralism are valuable not just for science but for philosophy of science. Given the partiality and perspectivism of representation, pluralism preserving integration can increase accuracy. Perspectivism is often supported by appeal to visual representation. I draw further insights from multimodel sensory integration for understanding experiment-based predictions of protein structure. The epistemic lessons learned from t…
After Fifty Years, Why Are Protein X-ray Crystallographers Still in Business
It has long been held that the structure of a protein is determined solely by the interactions of the atoms in the sequence of amino acids of which it is composed, and thus the stable, biologically functional conformation should be predictable by ab initio or de novo methods. However, except for small proteins, ab initio predictions have not been successful. We explain why this is the case and argue that the relationship among the different metho…
Multilevel Research Strategies and Biological Systems
Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical unde…
Human By Nature
Representing a wide range of disciplines -- biology, sociology, anthropology, economics, human ethology, psychology, primatology, history, and philosophy of science -- the contributors to this book recently spent a complete academic year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) discussing a plethora of new insights in reference to human cultural evolution. These scholars acted as a living experiment of "interdisciplinarity in vivo." The…
Emergence
Unsimple Truths
Exporting Causal Knowledge in Evolutionary and Developmental Biology
In this article I consider the challenges for exporting causal knowledge raised by complex biological systems. In particular, James Woodward's interventionist approach to causality identified three types of stability in causal explanation: invariance, modularity, and insensitivity. I consider an example of robust degeneracy in genetic regulatory networks and knockout experimental practice to pose methodological and conceptual questions for our un…
Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism
This fine collection of essays by a leading philosopher of science presents a defence of integrative pluralism as the best description for the complexity of scientific inquiry today. The tendency of some scientists to unify science by reducing all theories to a few fundamental laws of the most basic particles that populate our universe is ill-suited to the biological sciences, which study multi-component, multi-level, evolved complex systems. Thi…
Integrative Pluralism
Ceterus Paribus Laws
Dimensions of Scientific Law
Biological knowledge does not fit the image of science that philosophers have developed. Many argue that biology has no laws. Here I criticize standard normative accounts of law and defend an alternative, pragmatic approach. I argue that a multidimensional conceptual framework should replace the standard dichotomous law/accident distinction in order to display important differences in the kinds of causal structure found in nature and the correspo…
Pragmatic Laws
Beatty, Brandon, and Sober agree that biological generalizations, when contingent, do not qualify as laws. Their conclusion follows from a normative definition of law inherited from the Logical Empiricists. I suggest two additional approaches: paradigmatic and pragmatic. Only the pragmatic represents varying kinds and degrees of contingency and exposes the multiple relationships found among scientific generalizations. It emphasizes the function o…
Competing Units of Selection? A Case of Symbiosis
The controversy regarding the unit of selection is fundamentally a dispute about what is the correct causal structure of the process of evolution by natural selection and its ontological commitments. By characterizing the process as consisting of two essential steps—interaction and transmission—a singular answer to the unit question becomes ambiguous. With such an account on hand, two recent defenses of competing units of selection are considered…
Dimensions of Scientific Law
Biological knowledge does not fit the image of science that philosophers have developed. Many argue that biology has no laws. Here I criticize standard normative accounts of law and defend an alternative, pragmatic approach. I argue that a multidimensional conceptual framework should replace the standard dichotomous law/accident distinction in order to display important differences in the kinds of causal structure found in nature and the correspo…
Pragmatic Laws
Beatty, Brandon, and Sober agree that biological generalizations, when contingent, do not qualify as laws. Their conclusion follows from a normative definition of law inherited from the Logical Empiricists. I suggest two additional approaches: paradigmatic and pragmatic. Only the pragmatic represents varying kinds and degrees of contingency and exposes the multiple relationships found among scientific generalizations. It emphasizes the function o…
Exporting Causal Knowledge in Evolutionary and Developmental Biology
In this article I consider the challenges for exporting causal knowledge raised by complex biological systems. In particular, James Woodward's interventionist approach to causality identified three types of stability in causal explanation: invariance, modularity, and insensitivity. I consider an example of robust degeneracy in genetic regulatory networks and knockout experimental practice to pose methodological and conceptual questions for our un…
After Fifty Years, Why Are Protein X-ray Crystallographers Still in Business
It has long been held that the structure of a protein is determined solely by the interactions of the atoms in the sequence of amino acids of which it is composed, and thus the stable, biologically functional conformation should be predictable by ab initio or de novo methods. However, except for small proteins, ab initio predictions have not been successful. We explain why this is the case and argue that the relationship among the different metho…
Multilevel Research Strategies and Biological Systems
Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical unde…
Emergence
Competing Units of Selection? A Case of Symbiosis
The controversy regarding the unit of selection is fundamentally a dispute about what is the correct causal structure of the process of evolution by natural selection and its ontological commitments. By characterizing the process as consisting of two essential steps—interaction and transmission—a singular answer to the unit question becomes ambiguous. With such an account on hand, two recent defenses of competing units of selection are considered…
Through the Fractured Looking Glass
I argue that diversity and pluralism are valuable not just for science but for philosophy of science. Given the partiality and perspectivism of representation, pluralism preserving integration can increase accuracy. Perspectivism is often supported by appeal to visual representation. I draw further insights from multimodel sensory integration for understanding experiment-based predictions of protein structure. The epistemic lessons learned from t…
Competing Units of Selection? A Case of Symbiosis
The controversy regarding the unit of selection is fundamentally a dispute about what is the correct causal structure of the process of evolution by natural selection and its ontological commitments. By characterizing the process as consisting of two essential steps—interaction and transmission—a singular answer to the unit question becomes ambiguous. With such an account on hand, two recent defenses of competing units of selection are considered…
Pragmatic Laws
Beatty, Brandon, and Sober agree that biological generalizations, when contingent, do not qualify as laws. Their conclusion follows from a normative definition of law inherited from the Logical Empiricists. I suggest two additional approaches: paradigmatic and pragmatic. Only the pragmatic represents varying kinds and degrees of contingency and exposes the multiple relationships found among scientific generalizations. It emphasizes the function o…
Dimensions of Scientific Law
Biological knowledge does not fit the image of science that philosophers have developed. Many argue that biology has no laws. Here I criticize standard normative accounts of law and defend an alternative, pragmatic approach. I argue that a multidimensional conceptual framework should replace the standard dichotomous law/accident distinction in order to display important differences in the kinds of causal structure found in nature and the correspo…
Integrative Pluralism
Ceterus Paribus Laws
Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism
This fine collection of essays by a leading philosopher of science presents a defence of integrative pluralism as the best description for the complexity of scientific inquiry today. The tendency of some scientists to unify science by reducing all theories to a few fundamental laws of the most basic particles that populate our universe is ill-suited to the biological sciences, which study multi-component, multi-level, evolved complex systems. Thi…
Exporting Causal Knowledge in Evolutionary and Developmental Biology
In this article I consider the challenges for exporting causal knowledge raised by complex biological systems. In particular, James Woodward's interventionist approach to causality identified three types of stability in causal explanation: invariance, modularity, and insensitivity. I consider an example of robust degeneracy in genetic regulatory networks and knockout experimental practice to pose methodological and conceptual questions for our un…
Unsimple Truths
Emergence
Human By Nature
Representing a wide range of disciplines -- biology, sociology, anthropology, economics, human ethology, psychology, primatology, history, and philosophy of science -- the contributors to this book recently spent a complete academic year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) discussing a plethora of new insights in reference to human cultural evolution. These scholars acted as a living experiment of "interdisciplinarity in vivo." The…
Multilevel Research Strategies and Biological Systems
Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical unde…
After Fifty Years, Why Are Protein X-ray Crystallographers Still in Business
It has long been held that the structure of a protein is determined solely by the interactions of the atoms in the sequence of amino acids of which it is composed, and thus the stable, biologically functional conformation should be predictable by ab initio or de novo methods. However, except for small proteins, ab initio predictions have not been successful. We explain why this is the case and argue that the relationship among the different metho…
Through the Fractured Looking Glass
I argue that diversity and pluralism are valuable not just for science but for philosophy of science. Given the partiality and perspectivism of representation, pluralism preserving integration can increase accuracy. Perspectivism is often supported by appeal to visual representation. I draw further insights from multimodel sensory integration for understanding experiment-based predictions of protein structure. The epistemic lessons learned from t…
The landscape of integrative pluralism
In this essay, I revisit and extend my arguments for a view of science that is pluralistic, perspectival and pragmatist. I attempt to resolve mismatches between metaphysical assumptions, epistemological desiderata, and scientific practice. I consider long-held views about unity of science and reductionism, emergent properties and physicalism, exceptionless necessity in explanatory laws, and in the justification for realism. My solutions appeal to…
Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Biology (5 works) · Philosophy of science (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works)