Thursday, April 22, 1999
at 4:00 PM
Francis Scott Key Building, Room 1117

One of the significant problems for contemporary philosophy of science is reaching a better understanding of the laboratory sciences. This problem is often couched in terms of theories, experiments, and the relations between them. I begin this paper with the hypothesis that our understanding of the laboratory sciences can be facilitated by replacing accepted concepts of theories with the concept of a mechanism proposed by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver. I offer support for this hypothesis by arguing, in particular, that their concept of a mechanism does facilitate our understanding of the design and interpretation of experiments in laboratory sciences such as molecular and developmental biology.

Sylvia Culp is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. She has a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Virginia and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute and SUNY Stony Brook. She also has a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Science Studies) from the University of California, San Diego. Her published papers in philosophy include "Defending Robustness: The Bacterial Mesosome as a Test Case," "Objectivity in Experimental Inquiry: Breaking Data-Technique Circles," and "Establishing Genotype/Phenotype Relationships: Gene Targeting as an Experimental Approach."

Spring 1999