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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. 

In her recent "What's Social About Social Epistemology?" (Longino 2022, JFP 109(4)) Helen Longino turns her attention to a particular aspect of the sociality of science, which she terms “the sociality of interaction.” (171) In her account, social interaction among scientific groups is essential to the production of scientific knowledge. She discusses many activities that exemplify the sociality of interaction in the sciences — from the uses of testimony and shared categories for representing phenomena to collecting, sharing, and disagreeing about data — and argues that these activities produce scientific knowledge through social interaction. We are broadly sympathetic to this view. However, in her analysis, Longino argues that “concern with practices that are productive of knowledge, rather than with the content and subject of knowledge” should be the focus. (173, emphasis added) This suggests that it is both possible and desirable to analyze practices without analyzing the content and subject of knowledge, and further that analysis of content-knowledge in a given scientific domain should not be the focus of attention if the goal of a philosophical investigation is understanding scientific knowledge production. We disagree. Consider the agricultural-scientific practice of extension, a type of knowledge-producing work in agricultural science. Extension is a legally and institutionally defined social system that produces interactions between scientists and the public in contemporary U.S. agricultural science. The success conditions of producing extension knowledge are inherently, deeply, and interactively social. In this talk, we show that the sociality of successful knowledge production in extension is inextricable from the “content and subject” of new scientific knowledge produced through extension. We illustrate our point through a discussion of agricultural-scientific research on potatoes. Such research is often carried out via extension. We argue that what potatoes are is intertwined with human interaction. The significance of potatoes as a food crop impacts how research on potatoes occurs, from what questions are asked to what scientific practices are able to be carried out to answer those questions. Most field trials on potatoes occur on privately-held farms that partner with researchers, and commercial farm workers rather than principal investigators grow the crops that produce the objects of study. Extension often mediates these partnerships, and from historical and present-day farmers and extension workers to commercial and academic agricultural scientists, networks of interactively social partnerships remain intertwined with the production of potatoes — and knowledge about them. We show how extension generates content-knowledge that is inseparable from the practices productive of that knowledge. Our analysis is ultimately a friendly amendment to Longino’s view. We take seriously the centrality of the sociality of interaction in producing scientific knowledge. We contend that knowledge co-production practices in agricultural science illustrate (1) how knowledge about agricultural experiment is made through social interaction and (2) why such interaction is essential for epistemic content. What we propose is an admittedly strong form of sociality in which sociality is constitutive of knowledge in a way that without it, that which is being discussed ceases to be knowledge if it is not social. 

An inclusive and socially legitimate governance structure is absent to address concerns over new agricultural biotechnologies. Establishing an agricultural bioethics commission devoted to inclusive deliberation on ethics and governance in agricultural and food biotechnology is urgent. Highlighting the social and ethical dimensions of current agricultural bioengineering disputes in the food system, we discuss how a nationally recognized policy forum could improve decision-making and increase public understanding of the issues. We clarify ways the concepts that are used to categorize food and frame governance of food affect consumer choices, and how dissemination of information and the mode of dissemination can contribute to social inequities. We cite the record of medically-oriented bioethic commissions and the history of international bioethic commissions in support of our argument, and end by discussing what such a commission dedicated to agriculture and food issues could reasonably be expected to achieve. 

Draft of paper disseminated in workshop 

Natural kinds are widely understood to be the real classifications of things that actually exist in the world. Natural kinds are the categories we tend to aim for when we seek to understand the world, as it really is. Discovering what these real classifications are is often considered to be the project of scientific research in many fields from astronomy and agronomy to zoology and zymurgy. When we discover something unfamiliar to us and we want to know what sort of thing it is, we might ask: ‘what kind is that?’ For instance, in a physics class, we might ask: ‘what kind of quark is that?’, where the answer might be: ‘that is a charm quark’. In biology, we might ask: ‘what kind of plant is that?’, with the answer being: ‘it is a Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula)’. Or, in chemistry, we might ask: ‘what element is that?’, with the answer being: ‘lithium’. Knowing that the thing we asked about is a member of that particular kind tells us a lot about it if it is a natural kind. Membership in a natural kind tells us that the thing in question shares many important characteristics with other things that are in the same natural kind category. For example, consider the category of Venus flytraps. All plants that belong to that category share many important characteristics; among these include: perennial flowering, carnivorous eating habits, capable of thigmonastic responses (closing their ‘trap’ when prey alight on their trichomes), ability to photosynthesise, belonging to the family Droseraceae and the kingdom Plantae. Some of these important characteristics and properties have been referred to as ‘essential’ by philosophers because they are the properties that are thought to be necessary for the thing to be a member of that natural kind. That means that if the thing does not have those necessary properties, then it cannot be a member of that natural kind. When we ask the question: ‘what kind is that?’, we do not always discover natural kinds. Sometimes when we ask: ‘what kind of thing is that?’, we find out, for instance, that this thing that we are asking about is green. This means we find out that it belongs to the category of green things. The category of green things is a kind category, but it is not a natural kind. The category of all green things includes the Venus flytrap but also green tra"c lights, green tea, guacamole, collards, and dark jade-painted 1978 Ford Mustang sportscars. What all of these things have in common is that they are all green. However, they do not share any other properties or characteristics apart from being green. Green kinds of things are not natural kinds like those mentioned earlier. The kinds that are picked out by the classifications of charm quark, Venus flytrap, and lithium are considered to be very di#erent from the classification of green things. Whilst all charm quarks, all Venus flytraps, and all samples of lithium are each considered to be classifications of natural kinds, the category of green things is not. The philosophical question that arises is: ‘what makes classifications like that of the natural kind that includes all charm quarks natural and classifications like that of all green things not natural?’ Put a di#erent way: ‘what makes something a natural kind and how can we tell the di#erence between natural kinds and what we might call “artificial kinds”, like the grouping of green things?’ A popular answer to this question is that natural kinds pick out natural groupings whose existence in the world is not dependent upon human interests or activities, whereas artificial kinds pick out groupings whose existence in the world is dependent upon human interests or activities. However, others have provided substantial evidence challenging this claim, arguing that there are at least some natural kinds that are dependent upon human activities and practices for their existence. In addition to questions concerning what qualifies as naturalness in natural kinds and what is the distinction between natural and artificial kinds, philosophical discussion also focuses on the metaphysics of natural kinds and the epistemic value of natural kinds. A perennial question widely debated is whether the classifications used in scientific disciplines – physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, geology, linguistics, anthropology, and more –really do map on to a natural classification that really exists in the world. That is, are the ways we partition elements in chemistry, organisms in biology, or quarks in physics, the same partitionings that naturally exist? A lot of the literature on natural kinds relies on using examples that are thought to be quintessential natural kinds, like biological species and chemical elements. But others argue that there is clear evidence that many, if not most, biological species and chemical elements are not natural kinds, especially if membership within a natural kind requires possession of an essential property. Within the discussion of natural kinds, there are also questions with regard to the conditions of membership that challenge the view that natural kinds membership is determined by the possession of a particular essence. Instead of the possession of a particular essence, some argue that membership in a natural kind may instead be determined by the possession of a cluster of properties, a relationship, or something else. In many of these discussions, Plato’s metaphor of carving nature at its joints is used to describe the mapping of natural classifications onto natural kinds by the implied comparison to the butchering of an animal along its natural divisions (knuckles, limbs, etc.) rather than partitioning it in a way that does not coincide with the animal’s body structure. Whilst the metaphor helps explain the nature of natural kinds, it does so by assuming nature is that which is pre-partitioned. 

We propose that reality is not the sort of thing that is out there in the world waiting to be discovered by scientists but is instead performatively constituted. What we mean by something being performatively constituted borrows from drag. We suggest that the reality relied upon as the basis for experimentation and technological interventions exists as a performative project, and analyse the work of science as reality-drag. We posit that performing and achieving realness happens as part of drag, but also in scientific practice and in particular through devising scientific categories and concepts. For instance, science-drag is performed in the making of scientific kinds and categories that aim to capture the ontological structure of the world (kinding). Science-drag is also performed in the generation of scientific concepts from everyday ideas (founding). We explore these performances in the case of food and agriculture, especially in the generation of plant-based meats. 

Abstract Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This article reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subjugated forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a focus on demarcation obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, transdisciplinary philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production.