Abstract

While many neuroscientists and philosophers share an interest in integrating neuroscience, both camps suggest that this integration is challenging. Why is this the case? In this paper, I account for why tools, or the materials and technologies that researchers use to study brain structure and activity, are obstructions to integrating neuroscience. The constraints of tools and their productivity create neuroscience practices that can be in tension with methodological, data, and explanatory integration. My account explains why integration in neuroscience likely will not occur unless new tools are developed. At the same time, my account explains why new tools can facilitate local integration between neuroscience subfields for the same reasons why they can obstruct it.