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Knowledge transfer, templates, and the spillovers

  • Paper in Philosophy of Science in Practice
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Abstract

Mathematical models and their modeling frameworks developed to advance knowledge in one discipline are sometimes sourced to answer questions or solve problems in another discipline. Studying this aspect of cross-disciplinary transfer of knowledge objects, philosophers of science have weighed in on the question of whether knowledge about how a mathematical model is previously applied in one discipline is necessary for the success of reapplying said model in a different discipline. However, not much has been said about whether the answer to that epistemological question applies to the reapplication of a modeling framework. More generally, regarding the nature of the production of knowledge in science, a metaphysical question remains to be explored whether historical contingencies associated with a mathematical construct have a genuine impact on the nature—as opposed to sociological practices or individual psychology—of advancing scientific knowledge with said construct. Focusing on this metaphysical question, this paper analyzes the use of mathematical logic in the development of the Chomsky hierarchy and subsequent reapplications of said hierarchy; with these examples, this paper develops the notion of “spillovers” as a way to detect cross-disciplinary justifications for better understanding the relations between reapplications of the same mathematical construct across disciplines.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, “knowledge transfer” refers to applying objects of knowledge in this sense.

  2. Another implication may be that philosophers of science should prefer analyzing knowledge transfer as such, but Humphreys’ (2019) text does not decisively exclude either interpretation.

  3. In formal language theory, a formal language is defined as a set of strings, whereas a grammar of a formal language is the set of rules that describe the language.

  4. By Chomskyan linguistics, I refer to his early work in the 1950s.

  5. This review is based on Levelt (2008, 10); c.f., Partee, Meulen, and Wall (1990).

  6. Unlike in computer science, in linguistics the process time required for producing such an answer was not an issue.

  7. For example, context-free grammars and the linguistic derivation system have been used in molecular biology to investigate biological sequences comprised of nucleotide bases (see Searls, 2002 for a review). A similar approach to biological sequences is seen in synthetic biology where context-free grammars are used to help identify and engineer DNA sequences with certain desired biological functions (e.g., Czar et al., 2009).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Paul Humphreys, Tarja Knuuttila, Mary Morgan, Colin Allen, Tecumseh Fitch, and Michael Dickson for their helpful discussions and/or comments on earlier drafts; thanks also the participants of several meetings for their feedback, including the workshop on “Transdisciplinary Model Transfer and its Interfaces,” at the University of Vienna, the graduate seminar on “Scientific Ontology and the Epistemology of Science,” at the University of Virginia, and NeuroTech: An Interdisciplinary Early Career Workshop on Tools and Technology in Neuroscience at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. A special thanks goes to the two anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments and constructive criticisms helped improve and clarify this manuscript. Finally, this material is based upon work supported by the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (Austria) and the National Science Foundation (United States) under grant no. 1922143. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of either funding agency.

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This study was funded by National Science Foundation (grant number 1922143).

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  1. College of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, R513, TSMC Building, No.101, Section 2, Kuang-Fu Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan, 30013, Republic of China

    Chia-Hua Lin

  2. Corcoran Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Chia-Hua Lin

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Lin, CH. Knowledge transfer, templates, and the spillovers. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 12, 6 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-021-00426-w

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