The Philosophy of the Science of Team Science: Disciplines, Peers, and SciTSeers

J. Britt Holbrook

Assistant DirectorCenter for the Study of InterdisciplinarityResearch Assistant Professor, Philosophy

University of North Texas

britt.holbrook@unt.edu

June 26, 2013SciTS 2013 Conference

Evanston, IL

If SciTS were a discipline …

• What would it mean for SciTS to be a discipline?

• Answers to this question can go beyond the question of conceptual integration.

• A philosophy of SciTS is also a history of SciTS.

• Whether we want SciTS to become a discipline is above all a political issue.

Which Came First, the Discipline or the Peer?

• Disciplines produce and define peers

• Peers define and produce disciplines

• What is a discipline?

• What is a peer?

Disciplining SciTS

• SciTS is currently being organized as if it were a discipline.

• Presentations at the SciTS conference are judged by peers … as if peers exist.

• But to what rules, to what standards, do our ostensible peers appeal?

• How can we navigate the different islands of expertise that constitute SciTS?

The archipelago

• Jasanoff (2010) appeals to the notion of an ‘archipelago’ in discussing STS.

• Lyotard (1988, 2009) also refers to the ‘archipelago’ in discussing Kant.

• For both Jasanoff and Lyotard, the ‘archipelago’ is symbolic … as if.

• Both emphasize the archipelago is not merely – or primarily – a collection of islands.

The archipelago

• The archipelago is (also, but also mainly) the sea that surrounds the islands.

• The archipelago is the condition for the possibility of exchange between islands.

• The archipelago allows us to pass between and among its islands.

• How to navigate these passages is always a matter of reflective judgment.

Integration

• Do we want – and do we need – a single conceptual framework for SciTS?

Navigation

• Can SciTS be guided by the idea of navigating passages between territories?

SciTSeers

• ‘Integration’ means more than mere relation.

• Do we want or need the level of organization marked by ‘integration’?

• Even well-established disciplines are not theoretically integrated.

• Although it seems that collaboration requires communication, I’m not convinced that collaboration requires integration (theoretical or otherwise).

Bibliography

Holbrook, J. Britt (2013). “What is interdisciplinary communication? Reflections on the very idea of disciplinary integration.” Synthese, 190 (11): 1865-1879. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-012-0179-7.

Jasanoff, Sheila (2010). “A field of its own: the emergence of science and technology studies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, Carl Mitcham, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 191-205.

Lyotard, Jean-François (1988). The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Lyotard, Jean-François (2009). Enthusiasm: the Kantian Critique of History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.