Models are widely used tools in biological research, but their uses by biologists in their day-to-day research activities are not well understood. What roles do models play in everyday research? Should we think of models as serving various aims in science or as serving some overarching aim despite the apparent diversity of their uses? This project will address these questions by developing a case study of Seymour Benzer's uses of genetic maps, meaning diagrammatic models of genes, in his research during the 1950s and 1960s on the fine scale structure of genes.
Intellectual Merit
The project analyzes Benzer's research notebooks and correspondence at the Caltech Archives, extending the existing work on Benzer's research. Using the detailed account of scientific practice generated from the archival research, the project will explore possible philosophical perspectives on the aims of models and identify a perspective that is well motivated by the detailed analysis of the uses of genetic maps. The project will thus enrich a long-standing debate in general philosophy of science over positions regarding the aims of science.
Potential Broader Impacts
The project will address diverse concerns of researchers in history, cognitive science, and philosophy. First, from the historical analysis of Benzer's genetic maps, historians will be able to gain a detailed understanding of what the maps did in the everyday research of one of the key figures in the history of genetics. Second, since genetic maps are diagrammatic models drawn on paper, those historians interested in similar tools in other sciences may gain a new perspective on their own work. Third, the study of Benzer's notebooks may also uncover novel cognitive phenomena that may become the subject of future studies in cognitive science. Finally, by firmly grounding a philosophical debate over models in the details of a biologist's practice, this project has the potential to transform this debate in philosophy of science.
This award allowed the student to explore models in experimental molecular genetics and to enrich a long-standing debate in general philosophy of science over scientific realism with the details of actual scientific practice. The student's project aimed to analyze the roles of the genetic maps--diagrammatic models of genes--in Seymour Benzer’s research on genetic fine structure during the 1950s and 60s, using Benzer’s research notebooks as a primary source, and to explore philosophical perspectives on models, particularly the perspectives within the spectrum of realism and instrumentalism, using the analysis of the roles of the genetic maps. The student did extensive research of Benzer’s personal papers at the Caltech Archives while working closely with Professor Kyle Stanford at University of California, Irvine to examine the relevance of the Benzer materials for the debate over realism and instrumentalism. The student's project provided support for the thesis that in successful scientific research, a scientist uses a model according to the methodological principles of realism and instrumentalism despite the tension that they create among the scientist's uses of the model over time. Realism and instrumentalism are widely understood as incompatible views about scientific theories and models, but the student's thesis suggests that this dichotomy is importantly mistaken, not because realism and instrumentalism amount to the same position but because successful scientific practice embraces both positions despite the tension between them. The project further suggested that forms of realism and instrumentalism familiar in the philosophical literature do not agree with this key feature of successful scientific practice. The project thus generated new challenges to realists and instrumentalists. Moreover, the student's historical approach to general philosophical problems may encourage other philosophers and historians to take similar approaches to general philosophy of science. The student also presented some results of the project at an international conference on history, philosophy, and social studies of biology.
