Thursday, April 1, 1999
at 4:00 PM
Francis Scott Key Building, Room 1117

The products of contemporary neurobiology are coherent, hierarchically organized descriptions of mechanisms. They are produced in a piecemeal discovery process consisting of cycles of construction, evaluation, and revision. The spatial, temporal, and hierarchical organization of mechanisms places conceptual and empirical constraints on their discovery that go beyond the constraints enshrined in Mill's methods. These claims are illustrated by recent work on the mechanisms of spatial memory at levels of molecules, cells, brain regions, and behaving organisms. This work contains the first steps toward a new philosophy of neurobiology, founded on details of scientific practice and centered on mechanisms.

Carl Craver is a Research Associate in CHPS in UMCP. He received his Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science in 1998 from the University of Pittsburgh, where he also completed a B.A. in Philosophy and M.S. in Neuroscience. His dissertation was titled "Neural Mechanisms: On the Structure, Function, and Development of Theories in Neurobiology." Lindley Darden is Professor of Philosophy and in CHPS, the Committee on Cognitive Studies, and Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, at UMCP. She received her Ph.D. from the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the University of Chicago in 1974. Her book, Theory Change in Science: Strategies from Mendelian Genetics (Oxford University Press, 1991) discusses strategies for discovery in genetics, which she is now applying to the discovery of mechanisms in molecular biology and neurobiology.

Spring 1999