A Social and Historical Study of Interdisciplinary Collaborations between Biologists and Philosophers

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary This project uses historical and social scientific methods to study collaborations between biologists and philosophers of biology during a particularly productive period during the second half of the twentieth century. The investigator will use quantitative analyses, archival research, and oral history interviews to track and describe the behavior of hundreds of actors. The study will make a significant contribution to the history of biological science, as well as to the understanding of scientific collaboration, disciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity. It provide a novel framework for addressing such questions as the division of epistemic labor and authority between humanities and natural science disciplines, as well as questions about the motives, institutional supports, mechanics, effects, and appraisal of interdisciplinary research. Outcomes include two publically accessible archives: an electronic archive of raw and processed data and select archival materials, to be stored at an online repository at Arizona State University, and an archive of oral history interviews with some of the most influential biologists and philosophers of biology of the twentieth century, to be stored at the American Philosophical Society. In addition, the project will produce a series of papers in academic journals that will contribute to ongoing and widespread discussions and policy evaluations of interdisciplinarity. Finally, it will produce a book written for a broad audience showing how researchers in the humanities have effectively collaborated with those in the exact sciences with mutually beneficial results that impact both fields. Technical Summary From the 1950s to the present day, professional biologists and professional philosophers have often worked together to address questions about the anthropological and sociological reach of biological models, the relation of evolutionary and organismic explanations and perspectives to molecular and physical ones, and the interpretation of such contested concepts as "species," "gene," "fitness," "race," "biological function," and "ecological diversity." These collaborations helped shape the field today known as "philosophy of biology." The project promises to shed new light on the history of both biology and the philosophy of biology in the late twentieth-century. It also makes a contribution to contemporary research on interdisciplinary collaborations. Biological science has raised and confronted fundamental questions throughout its modern history. By providing a detailed historically and theoretically informed study of how researchers from the prima facie quite different disciplinary backgrounds of biology and philosophy addressed these questions during the period in question, both separately and in dialogue and collaboration, the project helps us to see biology and its implications for intellectual life and culture in a new way.