TF/P&S Colloquiuim Rachel Ankeny

Joint TF- and P&S Colloquium: "Making philosophy from qualitative research: situatedness, comparison, and inference"

by Rachel A. Ankeny (Wageningen University)

In recent scholarship in the philosophy of science, there has been a
strong push toward practice-based approaches, generally described as
philosophical explorations of science grounded in methodologically
well-grounded studies of real-world scientific research. To support such
approaches, philosophers of science in practice utilize empirical
methods ranging from development of historical narratives to social
scientific explorations of contemporary science to generate
philosophical insights. However, there has been limited exploration of
the thorny questions associated with this type of approach including (1)
what is required when situating empirical insights for philosophical
explorations? (2) what should be the basis for the types of comparisons
that are necessary when developing a philosophical account based on
empirical cases? and (3) how can philosophers make warranted conclusions
about scientific practices based on empirical cases? This paper
analyzes these issues by investigation of existing scholarly literature
on methods in the philosophy of science and the social sciences,
particularly qualitative methods for data collection and analysis;
philosophical discussions of case-based reasoning and other forms of
inference especially based on qualitative findings; and philosophical
and social scientific literature on integrating evidence from rich cases
and drawing conclusions from them. We also build on two decades of our
own experience using qualitative methods to inform our philosophical
thinking about how to study science in practice. We explore how to make
adequate inferences from specific, rich cases or particulars to broader
or even more general, mid-level claims about scientific practices in a
particular domain. We use our repertoires framework to illustrate the
range of factors that should be kept in view when making such
inferences, providing guidance for those seeking to utilize philosophy
of science in practice approaches and for readers of such scholarship.