European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1):1-26 (2021)
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Abstract |
We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets’ having a phylogeny—an origin and complex evolutionary history—that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data.
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Keywords | Data Data Model Data Processing Evidence Models Representation Legacy Data Climate Science Astrophysics Geosciences Pragmatism |
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DOI | 10.1007/s13194-020-00345-2 |
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References found in this work BETA
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality.William C. Wimsatt - 2007 - Harvard University Press.
Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford University Press UK.
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings. Piecewise Approximations to Reality.William C. Wimsatt - 2010 - Critica 42 (124):108-117.
How Models Are Used to Represent Reality.Ronald N. Giere - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):742-752.
View all 48 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Model Evaluation: An Adequacy-for-Purpose View.Wendy S. Parker - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (3):457-477.
The Epistemic Risk in Representation.Stephanie Harvard & Eric Winsberg - 2022 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 32 (1):1-31.
Taming the Tyranny of Scales: Models and Scale in the Geosciences.Alisa Bokulich - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14167-14199.
What is a data model?: An anatomy of data analysis in high energy physics.Antonis Antoniou - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-33.
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