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Double session: How does dirt become soil? Categorizations of soil in the agricultural sciences. Organized and chaired by Catherine Kendig with presenters Roberta Millstein, Denise Hossom, Robert Meunier, Aja Watkins, and Özlem Yilmaz Silverman. Biennial meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology. University of Porto, Porto, Portugal. 

Part of the 90-minute paper panel “Epistemic and ethical functions of categorizing and tool use in the agricultural sciences”. Organized by Catherine Kendig with Özlem Yilmaz Silverman and Paul Thompson. Food Cultures and Social Justice, the 2025 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (ASFS/AFHVS). Corvallis, Oregon State University. 

10th Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Conference. California Institute of Technology. Pasadena, California. 

Part of symposium organized by Sandra Mitchell and Holly Andersen, Pragmatist or merely pragmatic? Using pragmatism in biological practice. The 29th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. New Orleans, Louisiana. 14 November 2024. https://site.pheedloop.com/event/psa24/home 

Rethinking MEAT: Ethics, Practices, Politics. Organized by KLIMAFORSK collaboration project MEATigation: Towards sustainable meat-use in Norwegian food practices for climate mitigation. Supported by Norges Forskningsrådet. 

Part of symposium organized by Kendig and Thompson on The social epistemology of engineered agricultural ecosystems (with Paul Thompson, Per Sandin and Rachel Ankeny). European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics (EurSafe) Congress. 

Part of symposium organized by Kate Millar on Examining the need for RRII and Ethics by Design Thinking in Agricultural and Food Research (with Rachel Ankeny, Raymond Antony, Trine Antonsen, Bernice Bovenkerk, Emily Buddle, Matthias Kaiser). European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics (EurSafe) Congress. Ede, The Netherlands 11 September 2024. https://www.eursafe2024.org/programme 

Abstract: What role, if any, does the concept of naturalness play in the development of scientific knowledge and understanding? Whether naturalness is taken to be an ontological dimension of the world or a cognitive dimension of our human perspective within it, assumptions of naturalness seem to frame concepts and practices that inform the partitioning of parts and the kinding of kinds. Within the natural sciences, knowledge of what something is and how it’s studied rely on conceptual commitments. These conceptual commitments often shape how entities and processes are categorized as natural depending on how naturalness has been understood within that discipline. I explore how commitments to naturalness shaped different incompatible conceptualizations of what were (and in some cases still are) considered to be fundamental parts in plant morphology. Employing an historically informed epistemological approach, I trace the development of three models of plant morphology: Goethe’s LEAF-ROOT-STEM archetype; Agnes Arber’s partial-shoot theory of the leaf; and Rolf Sattler’s processual model of plant morphology. These models are ontologically and epistemologically inconsistent. I explore what this inconsistency means for the concept of naturalness and the role it plays in plant morphology? 

What is philosophically interesting about how soil is managed and categorized? This paper begins by investigating how different soil ontologies develop and change as they are used within different social communities. Analyzing empirical evidence from soil science, ethnopedology, sociology, and agricultural extension reveals that efforts to categorize soil are not limited to current scientific soil classifications but also include those based in social ontologies of soil. I examine three of these soil social ontologies: (1) local and Indigenous classifications farmers and farming communities use to conceptualize their relationships with soil in their fields; (2) categorizations ascribed to farmers in virtue of their agricultural goals and economic priorities relied upon in sociological research; and (3) federal agency classifications of land capability employed by agricultural scientists. Studying the interplay of these social ontologies shows how assessing soil properties and capabilities are the result of previous agricultural strategies informed by culture, agroecological history, weather, soil biodiversity, crop rotation, and the goals held by decision-makers. The paper then identifies the soil relationships and interactions that constitute ontology-making activities. Building on recent work, I outline a novel interactive account of perspectival realism grounded in agricultural extension research and ethnopedological data that captures the haptic nature of farmers’ soil strategies. This interactive account explains how ontologies are chosen, why they are chosen, and how they interact and inform soil management decision-making. The paper concludes by examining the values laden in these ontologies and those which are causally implicated in the choice of soil management strategies. 

Abstract What role does the concept of naturalness play in the development of scientific knowledge and understanding? Whether naturalness is taken to be an ontological dimension of the world or a cognitive dimension of our human perspective within it, assumptions of naturalness seem to frame both concepts and practices that inform the partitioning of parts and the kinding of kinds. Within the natural sciences, knowledge of what something is as well as how it is studied rely on conceptual commitments. These conceptual commitments shape how entities and processes are categorizedasnatural depending on how naturalness has been understood within that discipline. In this paper, I explore how commitments to naturalness shape different conceptualizations of what were previously and what are now considered to be fundamental parts in plant morphology. Relying on an historically informed epistemological approach, I trace the origins and development of models of plant morphology from (1) Goethe’s classical LEAF-ROOT-STEM archetype model; (2) Agnes Arber’s revisions to Goethe’s model reconceived in her partial-shoot theory of the leaf; and (3) Rolf Sattler’s proposal for a processual model of plant morphology. These influential models posit ontologically and epistemologically inconsistent conceptualizations of the natural fundamental parts of plants and how they are related to each other. To explain what this inconsistency means for the concept of naturalness and the role it plays in plant morphology, I suggest naturalness might best be conceived of as a contextually bound classificatory concept that is made and remade through its operationalized use within a model, theory, set of practices, or discipline.