Research
Between the Earth and Life Sciences
I am a historian and philosopher of science interested in the intersection of the earth and life sciences. My philosophical approach is practice-based and operates under the assumption that a deep understanding of the sciences can only emerge from a close scrutiny of their norms and practices. I am omnivorous in the questions I ask, which span the areas of Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of the Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Science and Values. However, I am generally interested in how science works on difficult epistemic circumstances, as well as how failures are identified and metabolized in scientific practice. Recently, I have become interested in the science-policy interface (especially in conservation biology) and in issues stemming from the history of colonialism in paleontology. Here I describe a few problems at the heart of my current research.
Evidential Reasoning In Extremis
In my dissertation I analyzed how scientists reconstruct the distant past, focusing on cases where the past was relatively well-behaved. Yet the past can be unruly too: “a foreign country” where “they do things differently.” In these cases, familiar reasoning strategies are prone to break down, especially strategies that use contemporary analogs to interpret historical evidence based on postulated similarity relationships.
In recent work I have begun to look at what happens in these difficult epistemic situations. Put differently, I have begun to ask how historical scientists learn about conditions that depart in significant ways from our own. By “conditions that depart... from our own” I don’t mean anything metaphysically strange. Instead I mean actual past (and future) states of our planet, its biosphere, and its climate. How do scientists reason about these, especially when the present world provides few guide-rails for interpretation?
Image: Fossils from the soft-bodied Ediacaran macrofauna—aliens on Earth if ever there were
An entry point is provided by the motto, “the present is the key to the past.” But this raises as many questions as it answers. The present does not resemble the past absolutely, after all. Material configurations have shifted, certain causes have come into being or ceased operating (like human intentionality), and others have changed in their intensity or complexion over time. All these changes need to be accommodated if we are to reason responsibly about past worlds. But this is difficult to do, not least because the situation is likely to contain “unknown unknowns”—things we don’t know that we don’t know, which are nonetheless crucial to establishing a good epistemic connection with the past.
How can we arrive at a more adequate picture of evidential reasoning in extremis? One approach is to examine cases in which scientists have ostensibly learned about alien features of the past and ask how they managed to pull this off. We can ask, for example, what strategies researchers have devised to study features of the past that lack analogs on the modern Earth. Here a promising case is provided by research into Earth’s first tectonic regime, which both lacks a modern analog and left few surviving traces in the geological record. We can also ask what kinds of mistakes researchers have made when confronted with alien features and how they recognized them as mistakes. Here paleontology provides a wealth of examples, none more instructive than research into the soft-bodied Ediacaran fauna. It may also be instructive to consider cases where researchers have turned to the past to better understand other compartments of the past. Cases like this sometimes arise in Precambrian paleobiology, and are useful when past worlds resemble other past worlds more closely than either resembles the present.
My goal in this project is not just to understand historical reconstruction, however. It is also to understand how reconstructions of the past can inform projections about the future (including future climates, sometimes described as “no-analog” for obvious reasons). This is an increasingly popular research strategy in areas ranging from climate science to conservation paleobiology. However, it must confront the problem that past events are likely to resemble future ones only imperfectly. Complicating matters, nontrivial decisions intrude upon every step in the comparative process. These include decisions about (1) how to characterize ongoing or predicted events, (2) what kinds of similarity relationships are relevant, and (3) what kinds of post-hoc corrections should be applied. At each step, bad decisions can render the comparison non-probative; and this establishes a role for philosophy in illuminating what decisions must be made, as well as what is at stake, at each step in the reasoning process.
Other Projects
There are several other projects I am currently pursuing. One of these investigates the role of conceptual models and typologies in ecosystem conservation, focusing on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Ecosystems. Within the “RLE,” conceptual models function to delineate conservation units and facilitate the alignment of monitoring efforts with action targets; but these functions are purchased at a cost, since the models tend to be highly schematic and speculative. How should conservationists manage these trade-offs in light of their stated aims and limitations? A quite different project examines the influence of phylogenetic systematics on paleobiological practice, and seeks to characterize what my collaborator and I term “procedural anomalies”: serious difficulties for a system of practice that arise from a forced choice between two undesirable alternatives. A third project examines recent attempts to “Darwinize” the Gaia hypothesis, and argues that Darwinization is not an appropriate goal for those interested in explaining the emergence of planetary-scale self-regulation. Finally, I have begun to explore whether natural historical specimens (like fossils) can be regarded as cultural property—a status that could supply a warrant for their repatriation in the absence of demonstrable illegality in their acquisition.
History of Science
In addition to my philosophical interests, I have a number of interests in history of science. One current project explores the emergence of a new approach to stratigraphic complexity, first in geology, and then, following its creative appropriation, in paleobiology. Another examines the empirical research of the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, and seeks to elucidate its influence on his better-known work in evolutionary theory and the history of life. Methodologically, I believe that philosophy of science is best practiced in tandem with other forms of science studies research, particularly historical research. For this reason, I am interested in the methodological intersection between history and philosophy of science, and the possibility of an integrated HPS (see my article in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, and look out for my forthcoming chapter on HPS in Debating Contemporary Approaches to History of Science, London: Bloomsbury, with a commentary by Hasok Chang).
Land snails in the genus Cerion, the major subject of Stephen Jay Gould's empirical research