Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives

10. Understanding in Biology: The Impure Nature of Biological Knowledge

10 Understanding in Biology: The Impure Nature of Biological Knowledge S a b i n a L e o n e L L i L This chapter offers an analysis of understanding in biology based on characteristic biological practices: ways in which biologists think and act when carrying out their research. De Regt and Dieks have forcefully claimed that a philosophical study of scientific understanding should “encompass the historical variation of specific intelligibility standards employed in scientific practice” (2005, 138). In line with this suggestion, I discuss the conditions under which contemporary biologists come to understand natural phenomena and I point to a number of ways in which the performance of specific research practices informs and shapes the quality of such understanding. My arguments are structured in three parts. In the first section, I consider the ways in which biologists think and act in order to produce biological knowledge . I review the epistemic role played by theories and models, and I emphasize the importance of embodied knowledge ( “know-how”) as a necessary complement to theoretical knowledge (“knowing that”) of phenomena. I then argue that it is neither possible nor useful to distinguish between basic and applied knowledge within contemporary biology. Technological expertise and the ability to manipulate entities (or models thereof) are not only indispensable to the production of knowledge, but are as important a component of biological knowledge as are theories and explanations. Contemporary biology can be characterized as an “impure” mix of tacit and articulated knowledge. 189 de Regt Txt•.indd 189 9/8/09 11:27:11 AM 190 Having determined what I take to count as knowledge in biology, in the next section I analyze how researchers use such knowledge to achieve an understanding of biological phenomena. My interest lies in the activities through which researchers achieve understanding: that is, in the role of human agency in creating, applying, and interpreting biological knowledge to comprehend the world. I present a view of scientific understanding as a cognitive achievement of individual biologists that results from their ability to interact with (models of) phenomena and from their training and participation in specific research communities . To obtain understanding of a given phenomenon, biologists need to exercise specific epistemic skills and research commitments, which allow them to materially intervene on and reason about the world. Understanding can only be qualified as “scientific” when obtained through the skillful and consistent use of tools, instruments, methods, theories, and/or models: these are the means through which researchers can effectively understand a phenomenon as well as communicate their understanding to others. In the final section, I conclude that there are different ways in which biologists can understand a given phenomenon, depending on which skills and commitments they are able to muster in their research. The quality of biological understanding obtained by an individual depends on his or her capacity to perform some of the several activities that, together, constitute biological knowledge. The Impure Nature of Biological Knowledge Biology is growing increasingly disunified. Biological research is fragmented into countless epistemic cultures, each with its own terminologies, research interests, practices, experimental instruments, measurement tools, styles of reasoning, journals, and venues.1 These cultures are typically constructed around a specific set of issues, the investigation of which requires training in a series of techniques, software applications, and instruments that are regarded as appropriate to this aim.2 Within this context, it is not surprising to find that different biological fields provide not only different theories about the same sets of phenomena, but also different types of theoretical results, ranging from the mostly descriptive knowledge gathered by experimental or field biologists to the largely speculative claims pursued by theoretical biologists through mathematical reasoning.3 The knowledge produced by the epistemic cultures engaging in biological research takes various forms, ranging from a mechanistic , narrative, functional, or causal type to mathematical equations, descriptions , representations, and categorizations of phenomena. Researchers are not divided as to which type of approach is most informative or correct. More often sabina leonelli de Regt Txt•.indd 190 9/8/09 11:27:11 AM 191 than not, different types of theories can each have relative significance toward understanding a given phenomenon (Beatty 1997, s433). As highlighted by Longino (2001) and Mitchell (2003), this pluralism in theoretical approaches is more conducive to the development of biological knowledge than a uniform landscape centered on a few unifying laws would be. Notably, theoretical results are...