Tomorrow, I'm off to the ISHPSSB meetings in Vienna. ISHPSSB is the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology. The abbreviation is usually pronounced "Ish-ka-bibble", but nobody seems to know why. The Society's web site is here, and the program (with abstracts) can be downloaded here. This year's program is the biggest we've ever had.
I especially enjoy these meetings because they are so very interdisciplinary. The relations between specialties at most academic meetings often reminds me of an airport waiting lounge or maybe (when things are going well) a football game. At ISHPSSB it's much friendlier and more cooperative; like a junior high school prom, tentative but optimistic.
My paper is about modes of research, which is a major theme in my work. Here's the abstract:
Many of the changes in evolutionary biology which took place around the turn of the 20th century have been described in terms of a conflict between two competing ways of doing research (e.g., as "naturalists" vs. "experimenters"). Often, the debates have been described in terms of a new and better way of doing science replacing an older one. This paper proposes an alternative way of thinking about these events.
There were three, not two, modes of conducting research active around 1900: the historical-comparative, the causal-analytic, and the mechanical-elucidative. Each mode had its own typical way of framing problems, theorizing and handling data, although each made at least occasional use of others approaches as well.
In each mode, some researchers were pushing forward with new theories and methods, while others were lagging behind. The organization of the debates which took place at the time were therefore much more complex than a simple division between older/less scientific and newer/more scientific. Instead there were multiple overlapping debates in which work in the different modes was often misunderstood and misrepresented.
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