Current
Research
General
Science & Technology Studies
(STS)
Most of
my research explores the philosophical consequences of
seeing science as a thoroughly social activity. Historical
and sociological work on the practice of science should
affect our views of a diverse set of issues in the
philosophy of science, from the realism/anti-realism debate
to the scope of standpoint epistemologies. For this reason
I try to be aware of very general issues and trends in the
field of STS. See my
Introduction to Science and Technology
Studies. The
2nd edition of this will be appearing in the fall of
2009.
Pharmaceutical
Knowledge
Drug
companies provide pathways on which information flows, and
energy to make it flow. Through bottlenecks and around
curves, new knowledge is created, and given shape by the
channels it traverses. My project is a case study in the
political economy of knowledge, of the production and
distribution of knowledge. See
PharmaStudies.org.
Deflationary
Philosophy of Science
I
combine a down-to-earth or deflationary approach that
focuses on ordinary scientific work, while insisting that
we can draw philosophical lessons from that work. I argue
that by adopting a deflationary attitude we can understand
how realism, instrumentalism, and constructivism can all be
right about science.
