Testing times: regularities in the historical sciences

Jeffares, Ben

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.09.003

Cited by 59 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…1). Background theories, and theories generally, link our observations to the past (Jeffares 2008). Note, that Turner also believes that this is where the asymmetry lies.…”

Section: Evidence and The Pastmentioning

confidence: 72%

Guessing the future of the past

Jeffares

2009

Biol Philos

Self Cite

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I review the book ''Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate'' by Derek Turner. Turner suggests that philsophers should take seriously the historical sciences such as geology when considering philosophy of science issues. To that end, he explores the scientific realism debate with the historical sciences in mind. His conclusion is a view allied to that of Arthur Fine: a view Turner calls the natural historical attitude. While I find Turner's motivations good, I find his characterisation of the historical sciences unconvincing. I say why in a section at the end of the review. The result is that I am unpersuaded by his thesis.

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“…1). Background theories, and theories generally, link our observations to the past (Jeffares 2008). Note, that Turner also believes that this is where the asymmetry lies.…”

Section: Evidence and The Pastmentioning

confidence: 72%

Guessing the future of the past

Jeffares

2009

Biol Philos

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“…Given these challenges, it is perhaps not unexpected that the pace of historical reconstruction in some contexts lags behind scientific inquiry into phenomena that occur regularly or repeatedly. Jeffares (2008) persuasively argues, paradigmatic historical sciences-such as paleobiology, archaeology, and geology-make extensive use of regularities, and often construct models with the aim of identifying new regularities. Turner (2009) makes the case that part of paleobiology involves testing distribution hypotheses about large-scale patterns rather than causal reconstructions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some (Cleland 2001;Jeffares 2008), following up a powerful idea discussed in geology, argue that a "smoking gun"-an extant trace that definitively supports one hypothesis over its rivals-provides the main source of epistemic support for historical hypotheses. On this view, a smoking gun constitutes a naturally occurring experimentum crucis: This focus on individual lines of evidence makes clear the importance of auxiliary hypotheses but downplays the concomitant problem of testing holism.…”

Section: The Problem Of Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Connecting an extant trace to a hypothesized event deep into prehistory, back (say) 65 million years to the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, requires many auxiliary hypotheses. These auxiliaries include assumptions about the rates of geological and evolutionary processes, the nature of the fossil record, the calibration of instrumentation, and, as Jeffares (2008) makes clear, applicable causal regularities. Often these indispensable auxiliaries enjoy weak to intermediate epistemic support.…”

Section: The Problem Of Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Historical Reconstruction: Gaining Epistemic Access to the Deep Past

Forber¹,

Griffith²

2011

Philosophy and Theory in Biology

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We discuss the scientific task of historical reconstruction and the problem of epistemic access. We argue that strong epistemic support for historical claims consists in the consilience of multiple independent lines of evidence, and analyze the impact hypothesis for the End-Cretaceous mass extinction to illustrate the accrual of epistemic support. Although there are elements of the impact hypothesis that enjoy strong epistemic support, the general conditions for this are strict, and help to clarify the difficulties associated with reconstructing the deep past.

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“…Thus, the relationship between historical contingency and trend dynamics is one that could be of interest to researchers in virtually any field that's concerned with historical processes. Although I will continue to focus rather narrowly on evolutionary theory, because that's where these issues have been discussed, the issues themselves could be said to belong to the philosophy of historical science more generally, an area that has received a lot of philosophical attention in recent years (Cleland 2001(Cleland , 2002(Cleland , 2011Jeffares 2008;Tucker 2004, Turner 2007among others). If WP is correct, then these methods of determining whether a trend is passive or driven might give scientists an indirect way of addressing questions about contingency.…”

Section: Is There a Deeper Connection Between Contingency And Passivementioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Contingency and the Explanation of Evolutionary Trends

Turner

2015

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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One "big question" of macroevolutionary theory is the degree to which evolutionary history is contingent. A second "big question" is whether particular large-scale evolutionary trends, such as size increase or complexity increase, are passive or driven. Showing that a trend is passive or driven is a way of explaining it. These two "big questions" are related in both a superficial and a deep way. Superficially, defending historical contingency and showing that major trends are passive are two complementary ways of downplaying the importance of natural selection in evolutionary history. A passive trend is one that's not explained by selection. In order to appreciate the deeper connection between the two issues, it is necessary to distinguish different senses of contingency (especially sensitivity to initial conditions vs. unbiased sorting). It's plausible that passive trends are generally due to unbiased sorting processes. Serendipitously, thinking of contingency as unbiased sorting also helps to clarify its relationship to species selection, which some think of as biased sorting. Macroevolutionary theory thus turns out to have considerable unity.

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Testing times: regularities in the historical sciences

Cited by 59 publications

References 8 publications

Guessing the future of the past

Guessing the future of the past

Historical Reconstruction: Gaining Epistemic Access to the Deep Past

Historical Contingency and the Explanation of Evolutionary Trends

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