Can patchwork approaches to scientific concepts be generalized?

• Applicant: Dr. Philipp Haueis
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: from 2018 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 408804291

How do scientists use concepts to describe and explain different phenomena? Patchwork accounts in the practice-based philosophy of science answer this question by holding that scientists subdivide their concepts often implicitly into several "Patches" to describe and explain an investigated part of reality efficiently. For example: depending on the procedure of measurement, the concept "hardness" picks out different properties, such that the meaning of "hardness" is 'framed' in different ways. These local applications and the procedures delineating them form different patches of the concept "hardness". During the last decade philosophers of science showed that central concepts in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences exhibit such patchwork structures. However, a systematic generalization of these discipline-specific approaches is missing so far. To fill this gap, my project investigates whether patchwork approaches of concepts can be described and defended in a discipline-independent way.The first part of my project compares patchwork approaches with regard to the functional roles that concepts can fulfill in various disciplines. Concepts allow researchers to identify different phenomena (description) and provide a mechanism to correlate their descriptions with one or several features of the world (reference). Concepts are building blocks for the systematic categorization of observed cases (classification) and for generalizations which describe unobserved cases (generalizability). They help scientists to determine why observed phenomena occur (explanation), when they occur and how to control them (prediction and control). The comparison of patchwork approaches in physics, chemistry and neuroscience suggests that the analysis of functional roles (e.g. the role of instruments for reference, or the role of scale in description and classification), is suited to describe general feature of any patchwork approach to scientific concepts.The second part of my research project investigates whether a generalized patchwork approach captures the systematic relations between the functional roles of concepts better than essentialist or holistic accounts of concepts. Essentialists, for instance, claim that a universal reference relation explains the meaning of concepts that can be generalized. They therefore overlook how shifts in reference constrain the generalizability of a concept in practice. In contrast, holists claim that the meaning of a concept is determined by its position in a larger scientific theory. They therefore posit that explanation and prediction require the classification system of such a theory, although this is often not the case in practice. If these arguments can be confirmed, then a generalized patchwork approach would explain the role of concepts in scientific practice better than holism or essentialism, without losing touch with the reality of empirical research practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Edouard Machery