Pradeu, Thomas and Lemoine, Maël and Khelfaoui, Mahdi and Gingras, Yves (2021) Philosophy in Science: Can philosophers of science permeate through science and produce scientific knowledge? [Preprint]

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Abstract

Most philosophers of science do philosophy ‘on’ science. By contrast, others do philosophy ‘in’ science (‘PinS’), i.e., they use philosophical tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific journals (‘intervention’), cited in scientific journals (‘visibility’) and sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (‘contribution’). We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ‘specialized’ in this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Pradeu, Thomas thomas.pradeu@u-bordeaux.fr 0000-0002-6590-3281 Lemoine, Maël mael.lemoine@u-bordeaux.fr 0000-0002-2139-0488 Khelfaoui, Mahdi Gingras, Yves
Keywords:	Philosophy of science; philosophy-science dialogue; bibliometrics; digital humanities
Subjects:	General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > Philosophers of Science General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Science Education General Issues > Science and Policy
Depositing User:	Thomas Pradeu
Date Deposited:	01 May 2021 05:18
Last Modified:	01 May 2021 05:18
Item ID:	18972
Subjects:	General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > Philosophers of Science General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Science Education General Issues > Science and Policy
Date:	2021
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18972

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