The Impure Nature of Biological Knowledge

This chapter offers an analysis of understanding in biology based on characteristic biological practices: ways in which biologists think and act when carrying out their research. De Regt and Dieks have forcefully claimed that a philosophical study of scientific understanding should 'encompass the historical variation of specific intelligibility standards employed in scientific practice' (2005, 138). In line with this suggestion, I discuss the conditions under which contemporary biologists come to understand natural phenomena and I point to a number of ways in which the performance of specific research practices informs and shapes the quality of such understanding. My arguments are structured in three parts. In Section 1, I consider the ways in which biologists think and act in order to produce biological knowledge. I review the epistemic role played by theories and models and I emphasise the importance of embodied knowledge (so-called 'know-how') as a necessary complement to theoretical knowledge ('knowing that') of phenomena. I then argue that it is neither possible nor useful to distinguish between basic and applied knowledge within contemporary biology. Technological expertise and the ability to manipulate entities (or models thereof) are not only indispensable to the production of knowledge, but are as important a component of biological knowledge as are theories and explanations. Contemporary biology can be characterised as an 'impure' mix of tacit and articulated knowledge. Having determined what I take to count as knowledge in biology, in Section 2 I analyse how researchers use such knowledge to achieve an understanding of biological     «

This chapter offers an analysis of understanding in biology based on characteristic biological practices: ways in which biologists think and act when carrying out their research. De Regt and Dieks have forcefully claimed that a philosophical study of scientific understanding should 'encompass the historical variation of specific intelligibility standards employed in scientific practice' (2005, 138). In line with this suggestion, I discuss the conditions under which contemporary biologists come t...     »