Papers by S. Andrew Inkpen
The Quarterly Review of Biology, Jun 1, 2022
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Metascience
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Perspectives on Science, 2017
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Biology & Philosophy, 2016
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Endeavour, 2014
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Open Ecology Journal, 2010
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Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians... more Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the implications of disciplinarity. For Kuhn, rigid disciplinary training was essential for progress within periods of “normal” science. “A commitment to a discipline,” as Andrew Barry and colleagues put it, “is a way of ensuring that certain disciplinary methods and concepts are used rigorously and that undisciplined and undisciplinary objects, methods and concepts are ruled out” (Barry et al. 2008). This “ruling out” is valuable as it discourages intellectual wandering or false-starts, but it is also, and necessarily, normatively restrictive: the ideal of disciplinary purity—that each discipline is defined by a commitment to an appropriate, unique set of objects, methods, theories, and aims—has powerful implications for the structure and practices of many sciences, including life sciences, such as ecology, and social scienc...
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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2021
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Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2020
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eLife, 2019
Advances in microbiomics have changed the way in which many researchers think about health and di... more Advances in microbiomics have changed the way in which many researchers think about health and disease. These changes have also raised a number of philosophical questions around these topics, such as the types of living systems to which these concepts can be applied. Here, I discuss the human microbiome from two perspectives: the first treats the microbiome as part of a larger system that includes the human; the second treats the microbiome as an independent ecosystem that provides services to humans. Drawing on the philosophy of medicine and ecology, I explore two questions: i) how can we make sense of disease and dysfunction in these two perspectives? ii) are these two perspectives complimentary or do they compete with each other?
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Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology, 2019
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Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2017
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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2016
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Biology & Philosophy, 2019
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Apr 17, 2018
Many practicing biologists accept that nothing in their discipline makes sense except in the ligh... more Many practicing biologists accept that nothing in their discipline makes sense except in the light of evolution, and that natural selection is evolution's principal sense-maker. But what natural selection actually is (a force or a statistical outcome, for example) and the levels of the biological hierarchy (genes, organisms, species, or even ecosystems) at which it operates directly are still actively disputed among philosophers and theoretical biologists. Most formulations of evolution by natural selection emphasize the differential reproduction of entities at one or the other of these levels. Some also recognize differential persistence, but in either case the focus is on lineages of material things: even species can be thought of as spatiotemporally restricted, if dispersed, physical beings. Few consider-as "units of selection" in their own right-the processes implemented by genes, cells, species, or communities. "It's the song not the singer" (ITSNTS)...
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Journal of Molecular Evolution, 2016
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Papers by S. Andrew Inkpen