Nancy J. Nersessian's Books

Interdisciplinarity in the Making

Models and Methods in Frontier Science

By: Nancy J. Nersessian

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Interdisciplinarity in the Making

Models and Methods in Frontier Science

By: Nancy J. Nersessian

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian’s case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well.

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Page Count

393

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262544660

ISBN 13

9780262544665

Science as Psychology

Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice

By: Lisa M. Osbeck,Nancy J. Nersessian,Kareen R. Malone,Wendy C. Newstetter

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Science as Psychology

Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice

By: Lisa M. Osbeck,Nancy J. Nersessian,Kareen R. Malone,Wendy C. Newstetter

Science as Psychology reveals the complexity and richness of rationality by demonstrating how social relationships, emotion, culture, and identity are implicated in the problem-solving practices of laboratory scientists. In this study, the authors gather and analyze interview and observational data from innovation-focused laboratories in the engineering sciences to show how the complex practices of laboratory research scientists provide rich psychological insights, and how a better understanding of science practice facilitates understanding of human beings more generally. The study focuses not on dismantling the rational core of scientific practice, but on illustrating how social, personal, and cognitive processes are intricately woven together in scientific thinking. The book is thus a contribution to science studies, the psychology of science, and general psychology.

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285

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1139495135

ISBN 13

9781139495134

Creating Scientific Concepts

By: Nancy J Nersessian

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Creating Scientific Concepts

By: Nancy J Nersessian

An account that analyzes the dynamic reasoning processes implicated in a fundamental problem of creativity in science: how does genuine novelty emerge from existing representations? How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. Her investigations of scientific practices show conceptual change as deriving from the use of analogies, imagistic representations, and thought experiments, integrated with experimental investigations and mathematical analyses. She presents a view of constructed models as hybrid objects, serving as intermediaries between targets and analogical sources in bootstrapping processes. Extending these results, she argues that these complex cognitive operations and structures are not mere aids to discovery, but that together they constitute a powerful form of reasoning—model-based reasoning—that generates novelty. This new approach to mental modeling and analogy, together with Nersessian's cognitive-historical approach, make Creating Scientific Concepts equally valuable to cognitive science and philosophy of science.

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Page Count

267

Publisher

MIT Press

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ISBN 10

0262293455

ISBN 13

9780262293457

Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories

By: Nancy Nersessian

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Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories

By: Nancy Nersessian

Einstein often expressed the sentiment that "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility," and that science is the means through which we comprehend it. However, nearly every one - including scientists - agrees that the concepts of modem physics are quite incomprehensible: They are both unintelligible to the educated lay-person and to the scientific community itself, where there is much dispute over the interpretation of even (and especially) the most basic concepts. There is, of course, almost universal agreement that modem science quite adequately accounts for and predicts events, i. e. , that its calculations work better than those of classical physics; yet the concepts of science are supposed to be descriptive of 'the world' as well - they should enable us to comprehend it. So, it is asked, and needs tobe"asked: Has modem physics failed in an important respect? It failed with me as a physics student. I came to physics, as with most naIve students, out of a desire to know what the world is really like; in particular, to understand Einstein's conception of it. I thought I had grasped the concepts in classical mechanics, but with electrodynamics confusion set in and only increased with relativity and quantum mechanics. At that point I began even to doubt whether I had really understood the basic concepts of classical mechanics.

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216

Publisher

Springer Science & Business Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

9024729971

ISBN 13

9789024729975

The Process of Science

Contemporary Philosophical Approaches to Understanding Scientific Practice

By: Nancy Nersessian

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The Process of Science

Contemporary Philosophical Approaches to Understanding Scientific Practice

By: Nancy Nersessian

For some time now the philosophy of science has been undergoing a major transfor mation. It began when the 'received view' of scientific knowledge -that developed by logical positivists and their intellectual descendants - was challenged as bearing little resemblance to and having little relevance for the understanding of real science. Subsequently, an overwhelming amount of criticism has been added. One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would support the 'received view' today. Yet, in the search for a new analysis of scientific knowledge, this view continues to exert influence over the tenor of much of present-day philosophy of science; in particular, over its problems and its methods of analysis. There has, however, emerged an area within the discipline - called by some the 'new philosophy of science' - that has been engaged in transforming the problems and methods of philosophy of science. While there is far from a consensus of beliefs in this area, most of the following contentions would be affirmed by those working in it: - that science is an open-ended, on-going activity, whose character has changed significantly during its history - that science is not a monolithic enterprise - that good science can lead to false theories - that science has its roots in everyday circumstances, needs, methods, concepts, etc.

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Page Count

246

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Springer Science & Business Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

9024734258

ISBN 13

9789024734252

Creating Scientific Concepts

By: Nancy J Nersessian

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Creating Scientific Concepts

By: Nancy J Nersessian

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Page Count

267

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MIT Press

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ISBN 10

0262293455

ISBN 13

9780262293457

Science as Psychology

Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice

By: Lisa M. Osbeck,Nancy J. Nersessian,Kareen R. Malone,Wendy C. Newstetter

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Science as Psychology

Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice

By: Lisa M. Osbeck,Nancy J. Nersessian,Kareen R. Malone,Wendy C. Newstetter

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

285

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1139495135

ISBN 13

9781139495134

Book's by Nancy J. Nersessian

Interdisciplinarity in the Making

Interdisciplinarity in the Making

Science as Psychology

Science as Psychology

Creating Scientific Concepts

Creating Scientific Concepts

Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories

Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories

The Process of Science

The Process of Science

Creating Scientific Concepts

Creating Scientific Concepts

Science as Psychology

Science as Psychology

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