Forms of Practice, Forms of Knowledge: Method, Notation and the Dynamics of Perspectives in the Life Sciences

• Applicant: Dr. Robert Meunier
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; History of Science
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 362545428

• Final Report Year: 2022

Final Report Abstract

In the project, I developed a conceptual framework for the study of research in the life sciences. I explicated two central categories that researchers use to speak about their work, research projects and research approaches, and thereby turned them into analytic categories supporting the epistemic aims of science studies after the practice turn. These concepts were developed through in-depth case studies that were used to raise conceptual questions and to demonstrate the usefulness of the resulting framework to provide practice-focused accounts of scientific knowledge and the dynamics of research fields. Research projects were addressed in terms of a typology of activities that constitute research and an analysis of the types of knowledge researchers draw on when designing and pursuing a project. This includes knowledge on a) possible goals, b) methods to achieve them, c) forms of social-material organization enabling the methods, and c) forms of notation to record and communicate data and results. An approach was defined as the alignment of a problem and a method in the context of a project. This concept highlights the way problems shared in a community become interpreted, thereby positioning the research within a broader research landscape. Approaches can be transferred between projects and possibly be changed or re-combined. These processes can lead to the formation, integration, or challenging of research fields. Together, these categories provide a general framework to study the plurality of ways in which elements of research come together. They serve the objectives of the project to give accounts of 1) the ways in which forms of practice yield forms of knowledge and 2) the dynamic relations of research fields (scientific change). The case studies were instrumental in developing the philosophical framework, but also contributed to the historiography of the fields in question. My work on interconnected episodes in the history of genetics (Beadle and Ephrussi’s developmental genetics (1930s); Hirsch’s behavioral genetics (1960s); Benzer’s behavioral neuro-genetics (1970s)) enriched the history of genetics beyond the canonical history of the shift from classical to molecular genetics in the middle of the twentieth century. The work of a PhD student expanded the scope of cases by focusing on the ecology/microbiology intersection (late 1970s onwards). They opened the perspective to field-based research (microbial ecology) and applied research (bioremediation). Ideas developed in the project thus appear robust for the analysis of the modern life sciences. Follow-up research will focus on applied science contexts, where problem choice and interpretation are strongly shaped by social and political aims and research practices are integrated with other practices (e.g., clinical care or agriculture). I started with project on precision medicine and plan further work on how biological research is shaped by the UN sustainability goals.

Publications

• (2019). Project knowledge and its resituation in the design of research projects: Seymour Benzer’s behavioral genetics, 1965-1974. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 77, 39–53
  Robert Meunier
  
• (2021). Metagenomics approaches in microbial ecology and research for sustainable agriculture. TATuP – Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice. (Part of the SI “Next Generation Sequencing: Challenges for Science and Society”, E. Bösl & S. Samida, eds.)
  Robert Meunier, Bayır, S.
  
• (2022). Gene. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta
  Robert Meunier
  
• (2022). Research Narratives and Narratives of Nature in Scientific Articles: How Scientists Familiarize Their Communities with New Approaches and Epistemic Objects. In: M. S. Morgan, K. M. Hajek, and D. J. Berry (eds.), Narrative Science. Reasoning, Representing and Knowing since 1800. Cambridge University Press (247–266)
  Robert Meunier
  
• (2023). Die Formierung der Verhaltensgenetik und ihr Begriff des Verhaltens. Der Ansatz von Jerry Hirsch, 1956-1967. In: G. Toepfer and S. Gräfe (eds.), Wissensgeschichte des Verhaltens. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven. De Gruyter, Berlin
  Robert Meunier