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Black Boxes: How Science Turns Ignorance Into Knowledge
Textbooks and other popular venues commonly present science as a progressive "brick-by-brick" accumulation of knowledge and facts. Despite its hallowed history and familiar ring, this depiction is nowadays rejected by most specialists. There currently are two competing models of the scientific reductionism and antireductionism . Neither provides an accurate depiction of the productive interaction between knowledge and ignorance, supplanting the old metaphor of the "wall" of knowledge.
This book explores an original conception of the nature and advancement of science. Marco J. Nathan's proposed shift brings attention to a prominent, albeit often neglected, construct-- the black box --which underlies a well-oiled technique for incorporating a productive role of ignorance and failure into the acquisition of empirical knowledge. The black box is a metaphorical term used by scientists for the isolation of a complex phenomenon that they have deliberately set aside or may not yet fully understand. What is a black box? How does it work? How do we construct one? How do we determine what to include and what to leave out? What role do boxes play in contemporary scientific practice? Nathan's monograph develops an overarching framework for thinking about black boxes and discusses prominent historical cases that used it, including Darwin's view of inheritance in his theory of evolution and the "stimulus-response model" in psychology, among others. By detailing some fascinating
episodes in the history of biology, psychology, and economics, Nathan revisits foundational questions about causation, explanation, emergence, and progress, showing how the insights of both reductionism and antireductionism can be reconciled into a fresh and exciting approach to science.
This book explores an original conception of the nature and advancement of science. Marco J. Nathan's proposed shift brings attention to a prominent, albeit often neglected, construct-- the black box --which underlies a well-oiled technique for incorporating a productive role of ignorance and failure into the acquisition of empirical knowledge. The black box is a metaphorical term used by scientists for the isolation of a complex phenomenon that they have deliberately set aside or may not yet fully understand. What is a black box? How does it work? How do we construct one? How do we determine what to include and what to leave out? What role do boxes play in contemporary scientific practice? Nathan's monograph develops an overarching framework for thinking about black boxes and discusses prominent historical cases that used it, including Darwin's view of inheritance in his theory of evolution and the "stimulus-response model" in psychology, among others. By detailing some fascinating
episodes in the history of biology, psychology, and economics, Nathan revisits foundational questions about causation, explanation, emergence, and progress, showing how the insights of both reductionism and antireductionism can be reconciled into a fresh and exciting approach to science.
- GenresPhilosophy
310 pages, Hardcover
Published August 2, 2021
25 people want to read
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June 10, 2022
Overview
The thesis of the book is that black boxes play an important role in the progress of science. Black boxes are positioned as a way of resolving the debate between reductionism and antireductionism. Reductionism is the thesis that our understanding of some phenomena is always enhanced by finding a deeper explanation. Antireductionism wants to say that higher level explanations are not inferior to lower level ones. Early on in the book, Nathan shows how the best versions of both of these theses converge. The rest of the book seeks to characterise this middle ground using the concept of a black box.
Nathan defines a black box as “a placeholder in a causal explanation represented in a model.” Essentially, this definition says that black boxes are context-relative in three ways. The first two ways relate black boxes acting as placeholders. Placeholders can be expletive or explanatory, they can stand in for a kind of behaviour or a high-level cause. Consider an example from evolutionary biology. One can ask, what happens when species a and b are introduced to an isolated island? An answer could be that ‘a proves to be fitter than b’. In this case fitness stands in to describe the fact that as tend to produce more offspring than bs. Here, fitness isn’t explaining anything but it is still informative. It picks out a behaviour which can be contrasted with other behaviours relevant to a different context such as the tendency of as to occupy the north side of the island and bs the south side. However, one can ask a different question where fitness is playing an explanatory role, such as, in virtue of what do as tend to reproduce more successfully than bs? The same answer as the previous question is adequate: ‘that a proves to be fitter than b’. However, this time fitness is playing the role of an explanation. It may not be the most informative explanation but consider how it is a different answer to something like ‘humans have sterilised one of the species’. The role of fitness in an explanation can also be deepened by the explanation that as beaks are better equiped to find food bs. Thus, depending on the context, placeholders can act to frame some phenomenon in question or act to stand in for a deeper cause.
Black boxes are content relative in a third way. Placeholders sit within a model that is itself at a certain level of abstraction. This kind of context relativity is used to resolve the debate on emergence:
“Consider protein folding. The structural details of how and why a protein folds are often irrelevant for the macro-explanation of gene expression, as witnessed by the observation that this information is typically idealized or abstracted away in introductory textbooks in genetics and molecular biology. At the same time, if the explanandum is reframed as a more specific inquiry, for instance, if the target is a depiction of the precise mechanisms governing a genetic switch, then many cytological components will become relevant to the explanandum. Protein folding is thus emergent relative to the former frame, but not the latter. For this reason, I contend, it is meaningless to ask if this process is emergent in a context-independent fashion.” (207/8)
How does any of this show how black boxes progress science? Science progresses through three steps which Nathan calls black boxing. “The framing stage sharpens the object of explanation. The difference- making stage provides a causal analysis of this explanandum by identifying the factors which influence significantly its production. The representation stage optimizes the explanatory “bang for the buck” by embedding the causal narrative into a suitable model.” (162) This supposedly shows how “ignorance” can advance science by usefully framing a phenomenon and setting the stage for a deeper explanation.
Evaluation
I focused the overview on the context-relativity of science because this what I found most useful about the book. Nathan’s use of examples to show the place of black boxes in science is illuminating. One issue I had with the book is the use of the terms ‘black boxes’ and ‘ignorance’. When I began reading the book I wondered why he had used the idea of black boxes when the idea of bracketing is used elsewhere in the phenomenological tradition. I was satisfied with the idea of a placeholder and think the use of this term, while less sexy than black boxes, would have focussed the reader on the relevant phenomena more easily. My second issue was with the term ‘ignorance’ which Nathan argues has a productive role in science. I could as go far as accepting that placeholders have a productive role in science but equating placeholders with ignorance is like equating mere information with knowledge, it stretches the definition too far.
The thesis of the book is that black boxes play an important role in the progress of science. Black boxes are positioned as a way of resolving the debate between reductionism and antireductionism. Reductionism is the thesis that our understanding of some phenomena is always enhanced by finding a deeper explanation. Antireductionism wants to say that higher level explanations are not inferior to lower level ones. Early on in the book, Nathan shows how the best versions of both of these theses converge. The rest of the book seeks to characterise this middle ground using the concept of a black box.
Nathan defines a black box as “a placeholder in a causal explanation represented in a model.” Essentially, this definition says that black boxes are context-relative in three ways. The first two ways relate black boxes acting as placeholders. Placeholders can be expletive or explanatory, they can stand in for a kind of behaviour or a high-level cause. Consider an example from evolutionary biology. One can ask, what happens when species a and b are introduced to an isolated island? An answer could be that ‘a proves to be fitter than b’. In this case fitness stands in to describe the fact that as tend to produce more offspring than bs. Here, fitness isn’t explaining anything but it is still informative. It picks out a behaviour which can be contrasted with other behaviours relevant to a different context such as the tendency of as to occupy the north side of the island and bs the south side. However, one can ask a different question where fitness is playing an explanatory role, such as, in virtue of what do as tend to reproduce more successfully than bs? The same answer as the previous question is adequate: ‘that a proves to be fitter than b’. However, this time fitness is playing the role of an explanation. It may not be the most informative explanation but consider how it is a different answer to something like ‘humans have sterilised one of the species’. The role of fitness in an explanation can also be deepened by the explanation that as beaks are better equiped to find food bs. Thus, depending on the context, placeholders can act to frame some phenomenon in question or act to stand in for a deeper cause.
Black boxes are content relative in a third way. Placeholders sit within a model that is itself at a certain level of abstraction. This kind of context relativity is used to resolve the debate on emergence:
“Consider protein folding. The structural details of how and why a protein folds are often irrelevant for the macro-explanation of gene expression, as witnessed by the observation that this information is typically idealized or abstracted away in introductory textbooks in genetics and molecular biology. At the same time, if the explanandum is reframed as a more specific inquiry, for instance, if the target is a depiction of the precise mechanisms governing a genetic switch, then many cytological components will become relevant to the explanandum. Protein folding is thus emergent relative to the former frame, but not the latter. For this reason, I contend, it is meaningless to ask if this process is emergent in a context-independent fashion.” (207/8)
How does any of this show how black boxes progress science? Science progresses through three steps which Nathan calls black boxing. “The framing stage sharpens the object of explanation. The difference- making stage provides a causal analysis of this explanandum by identifying the factors which influence significantly its production. The representation stage optimizes the explanatory “bang for the buck” by embedding the causal narrative into a suitable model.” (162) This supposedly shows how “ignorance” can advance science by usefully framing a phenomenon and setting the stage for a deeper explanation.
Evaluation
I focused the overview on the context-relativity of science because this what I found most useful about the book. Nathan’s use of examples to show the place of black boxes in science is illuminating. One issue I had with the book is the use of the terms ‘black boxes’ and ‘ignorance’. When I began reading the book I wondered why he had used the idea of black boxes when the idea of bracketing is used elsewhere in the phenomenological tradition. I was satisfied with the idea of a placeholder and think the use of this term, while less sexy than black boxes, would have focussed the reader on the relevant phenomena more easily. My second issue was with the term ‘ignorance’ which Nathan argues has a productive role in science. I could as go far as accepting that placeholders have a productive role in science but equating placeholders with ignorance is like equating mere information with knowledge, it stretches the definition too far.
March 11, 2025
Read for TOK essay. Kinda buss
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews