Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences
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Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci · Dec 2014
Historical Article"Happily ever after" for cancer viruses?
This essay discusses three common issues arising from the special collection "100 Years of Cancer and Viruses." The first is the tension between small-scale and big-scale approaches to cancer research; the second is the difference between how physicians and biologists regarded cancer, and how they assessed the value of investigating viruses as a causative agent; and the third is how the pace and temporality of science have varied over the century of research on cancer viruses. An unpublished piece written by C. H. Andrewes in 1935, "A Christmas Fairy-Story for Oncologists," provides the touchstone for the commentary.
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Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci · Sep 2013
CommentComplexity, adaptive complexity and the Creative View of natural selection.
In this paper, I respond to arguments proposed by Brunnander in this journal issue concerning my position regarding the Creative View of natural selection (Razeto-Barry & Frick, 2011). Brunnander argues that (i) the Creative View we defend does not serve to answer William Paley's question because (ii) Paley's question is "why there are complex things rather than simple ones" and (iii) natural selection cannot answer this question. ⋯ Thus here I analyze Paley's question from a historical point of view and from a contemporary perspective in a quest for the potential conceptual relevance of Paley's question today. In this vein I argue that from a contemporary point of view statement (iii) may be correct but for different reasons than those adduced by Brunnander.
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Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci · Jun 2012
Biography Historical ArticleVygotsky's Crisis: Argument, context, relevance.
Vygotsky's The Historical Significance of the Crisis in Psychology (1926-1927) is an important text in the history and philosophy of psychology that has only become available to scholars in 1982 in Russian, and in 1997 in English. The goal of this paper is to introduce Vygotsky's conception of psychology to a wider audience. ⋯ For Vygotsky, this meant that "a new man" of the future would become "the first and only species in biology that would create itself." He envisioned psychology as a science that would serve this humanist teleology. I propose that The Crisis is relevant today insofar as it helps us define a fundamental problem: How can we systematically account for the development of knowledge in psychology? I evaluate how Vygotsky addresses this problem as a historian of the crisis.
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An astonishing volume and diversity of evidence is available for many hypotheses in the biomedical and social sciences. Some of this evidence-usually from randomized controlled trials (RCTs)-is amalgamated by meta-analysis. Despite the ongoing debate regarding whether or not RCTs are the 'gold-standard' of evidence, it is usually meta-analysis which is considered the best source of evidence: meta-analysis is thought by many to be the platinum standard of evidence. ⋯ Different meta-analyses of the same evidence can reach contradictory conclusions. Meta-analysis fails to provide objective grounds for intersubjective assessments of hypotheses because numerous decisions must be made when performing a meta-analysis which allow wide latitude for subjective idiosyncrasies to influence its outcome. I end by suggesting that an older tradition of evidence in medicine-the plurality of reasoning strategies appealed to by the epidemiologist Sir Bradford Hill-is a superior strategy for assessing a large volume and diversity of evidence.
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Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci · Sep 2011
Historical ArticleA case study in explanatory power: John Snow's conclusions about the pathology and transmission of cholera.
In the mid-1800s, there was much debate about the origin or 'exciting cause' of cholera. Despite much confusion surrounding the disease, the so-called miasma theory emerged as the prevalent account about cholera's cause. Going against this mainstream view, the British physician John Snow inferred several things about cholera's origin and pathology that no one else inferred. ⋯ In this paper, I want to look at Snow's reasoning in some detail, and show that there were certain principles, explanatory power in particular, that were epistemologically important to Snow in their own right. I will show that Snow himself takes explanatory power to be an epistemic property, and makes explicit links between explanatory power and confirmation. Systematically juxtaposing Snow's claims and his opponents', I will show that Snow was right to tout the explanatory power of his theory, and that his conclusions about the epistemic superiority of his theory over that of the miasmatists' were justified.