Collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and the epistemology of contemporary science

Abstract

Over the last decades, science has grown increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has come to depart in important ways from the classical analyses of the development of science that were developed by historically inclined philosophers of science half a century ago. In this paper, I shall provide a new account of the structure and development of contemporary science based on analyses of, first, cognitive resources and their relations to domains, and second of the distribution of cognitive resources among collaborators and the epistemic dependence that this distribution implies. On this background I shall describe different ideal types of research activities and analyze how they differ. Finally, analyzing values that drive science towards different kinds of research activities, I shall sketch the main mechanisms underlying the perceived tension between disciplines and interdisciplinarity and argue for a redefinition of accountability and quality control for interdisciplinary and collaborative science.

Specialisation, Interdisciplinarity, and Incommensurability

“…Rescher, for example, notices that while specialties in physics numbered 19 in 1911, in 1954 they were 100 and, by 1970, they were more than 200 (Rescher 1978, 229). It is not just that there are more specialties and sub-disciplines now than in the past but, also, that their Andersen develops this argument in several papers (Andersen 2012(Andersen , 2013a(Andersen , 2013b(Andersen , 2016. In her view, the supporters of different paradigms during a revolution may experience the occasional communication breakdowns associated with incommensurability because they hold and defend incompatible and competing views about the same range of problems and phenomena.…”

Algorithmically generated subject categories based on citation relations: An empirical micro study using papers on overall water splitting

“…physics or chemistry), whereby each discipline is a specific domain of particular research traditions including paradigms, codes of practice, and methods (Ziman, 1996). Although it is practically impossible that a scientist is not located in at least one discipline, the disciplines are rather loosely organizedas an "invisible college" (Andersen, 2016). Scientific publications are the main research outcome of scientists.…”

Collaborative Practice, Epistemic Dependence and Opacity: The case of space telescope data processing

“…In contemporary science, knowledge is increasingly the outcome of collective enterprises that divide epistemic labor, and, therefore, members come to depend upon one another epistemically. Epistemic dependence in collaborative research practice is thus now gaining attention in social epistemology (e.g., de Ridder 2014, Andersen 2016, Andersen and Wagenknecht 2013, Wagenknecht 2014; after the major work of . While discussions on this matter most often focus on the evidential status of testimony and the nature of the knowing subject, Wagenknecht recently (2014) refined the concept.…”