Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:13:17.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evidence Enriched

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nora Mills Boyd
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Traditionally, empiricism has relied on the specialness of human observation, yet science is rife with sophisticated instrumentation and techniques. The present article advances a conception of empirical evidence applicable to actual scientific practice. I argue that this conception elucidates how the results of scientific research can be repurposed across diverse epistemic contexts: it helps to make sense of how evidence accumulates across theory change, how different evidence can be amalgamated and used jointly, and how the same evidence can be used to constrain competing theories in the service of breaking local underdetermination.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 403 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†.

I am grateful for extensive and constructive feedback on this work from John Norton, Aaron Novick, and David Colaço. In addition, Robert Batterman, James Woodward, Christopher Smeenk, Thomas Pashby, Casey McCoy, Michela Massimi, Matthew Brown, Porter Williams, and Slobodan Perović all deserve my sincere thanks for their advice and for insightful discussions about this piece. I would also like to acknowledge helpful comments from audience members at the University of Pittsburgh History and Philosophy of Science graduate student work in progress talk series, the Sixth Biennial Conference of the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice, the work in progress talk series at the Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, the London School of Economics Sigma Club, and the 2017 meeting of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science.

References

Anderl, Sibylle. 2016. “Astronomy and Astrophysics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, ed. Humphreys, Paul, 652–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bogen, James, and Woodward, James. 2005. “Evading the IRS.” In Idealization XII: Correcting the Model; Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences, Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Vol. 86, ed. Martin R. Jones and Nancy Cartwright, 233–67. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Chang, Hasok, and Fisher, Grant. 2011. “What the Ravens Really Teach Us: The Intrinsic Contextuality of Evidence.” In Proceedings of the British Academy 171: Evidence, Inference and Enquiry, ed. Dawid, Philip, Twining, William, and Vasilaki, Dimitra, 345–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, David H., and Stephenson, F. Richard. 1977. The Historical Supernovae. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Colaço, David. 2018. “An Investigation of Scientific Phenomena.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Duhem, Pierre. 1954/1954. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Repr. New York: Atheneum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Allan. 2002. Selectivity and Discord. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, Allan 2015. “The Theory-Ladenness of Experiment.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 46 (1): 155–66..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, Peter. 1987. How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Green, David A. 2015. “Historical Supernova Explosions in Our Galaxy and Their Remnants.” In New Insights from Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson; a Meeting to Honor F. Richard Stephenson on His 70th Birthday, ed. Orchiston, Wayne, Green, David A., and Strom, Richard, 91–100. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Howlett, Peter, and Morgan, Mary S., eds. 2010. How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubble, Edwin. 1929. “A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 15 (3): 168–73..Google ScholarPubMed
Jenni, Peter, et al. 2003. ATLAS High-Level Trigger, Data-Acquisition and Controls. Technical Design Report ATLAS. Geneva: CERN.Google Scholar
Krause, Elisabeth, et al. 2017. “Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Multi-probe Methodology and Simulated Likelihood Analyses.” http://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09359.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1975. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Laymon, Ronald. 1988. “The Michelson-Morley Experiment and the Appraisal of Theories.” In Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific Change, ed. Donovan, Arthur, Laudan, Larry, and Laudan, Rachel, 245–66. Baltimore and London: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
Leonelli, Sabina. 2009. “On the Locality of Data and Claims about Phenomena.” Philosophy of Science 76 (5): 737–49..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonelli, Sabina 2013. “Integrating Data to Acquire New Knowledge: Three Modes of Integration in Plant Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4): 503–14..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonelli, Sabina 2014. “Data Interpretation in the Digital Age.” Perspectives on Science 22 (3): 397–417..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonelli, Sabina 2015. “What Counts as Scientific Data? A Relational Framework.” Philosophy of Science 82:810–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonelli, Sabina 2016. Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Case Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipton, Peter. 2001. “History of Empiricism.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Smelser, Neil J. and Baltes, Paul B., 4481–85. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, Dana. 2018. “The Role of Local Knowledge in Mobilizing Data.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
McDougall, Ian, and Harrison, T. Mark. 1999. Geochronology and Thermochronology by the 40Ar/39Ar Method. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Michael. 2016. “Mathematical Structure and Empirical Content.” http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12678/.Google Scholar
Palmer, Carole L., Weber, Nicholas M., and Cragin, Melissa H. 2012. “The Analytic Potential of Scientific Data: Understanding Re-use Value.” Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 48 (1): 1–10..Google Scholar
Perović, Slobodan. 2017. “Experimenter’s Regress Argument, Empiricism, and the Calibration of the Large Hadron Collider.” Synthese 194 (2): 313–32..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collaboration, Planck. 2016. “Planck 2015 Results XIII: Cosmological Parameters.” Astronomy and Astrophysics 594 (A13): 1–63.Google Scholar
Quine, Quine Willard Van. 1951. “Main Trends in Recent Philosophy: Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” Philosophical Review 60 (1): 20–43..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, Peter. 1981. “Probability, Explanation, and Information.” Synthese 48 (2): 233–56..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephenson, F. Richard, and Green, David A. 2002. Historical Supernovae and Their Remnants. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. 1984. “Theory Comparison and Relevant Evidence.” In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Testing Scientific Theories, ed. Earman, John, 27–42. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earman, John 2008. Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Woodward, James F. 2011. “Data and Phenomena: A Restatement and Defense.” Synthese 182:165–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar