Standard Research: Social Dynamics and Diversity in Epistemic Communities

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary The aim of this project is to use formal methods, game theory and evolutionary game theory, to gain insight into whether and how diversity does and does not improve knowledge creation. It will investigate whether the dynamics of social interaction can help explain why some academic disciplines (such as the STEM fields and philosophy) have failed to diversify. The results of this study will be used to propose concrete suggestions for how to improve participation of underrepresented groups, and women in particular, in academia and other epistemic communities. Analyzing the claim that diversity in epistemic communities improves knowledge creation, and assessing how to improve diversity in epistemic communities has the potential to significantly impact scientific outcomes and scientific inquiry. Furthermore, an exploration of why epistemic communities fail to diversify and how to change this has clear impacts for women in academia and their professional success. This project will include an integrated teaching component which will involve the development of a new undergraduate course, a new unit to be added to a second course, and two graduate seminars focusing on the outcomes of the proposed research. These courses will include results obtained from this project. Throughout the project the PI will collaborate with graduate students, providing further integration of research and graduate education/advising. This project will also incorporate broader impacts activities including ongoing support for the UC Irvine Hypatia society for female graduate students in philosophy, a meeting for women entering graduate school in philosophy of science. Technical Summary Game theory and evolutionary game theory are methods primarily employed by social scientists and biologists. In recent years, however, these methods have increasingly been adopted by philosophers to address a number of traditional philosophical problems, including epistemological ones. This project proposes extending this methodology into an area of philosophy, feminist philosophy of science, where it has not been used previously, but where it has transformative potential. The problems of interest to feminist philosophers of science (such as how diversity influences knowledge creation, how to increase diversity in epistemic communities, the role of values in science) are well informed by the dynamics of social interaction and these dynamics can be fruitfully understood through game theoretic models. The results of the proposed project will be of interest to philosophers and philosophers of science, but also to game theorists and evolutionary game theorists in the social sciences, especially in economics which has an existing literature on women in the work force.