#Philsci
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pepperqi.bsky.social
Teaching an octopus to play piano
#animal #sentience #philsci #philsky #science

youtu.be/PcWnQ7fYzwI?...
I taught an octopus piano (It took 6 months)
YouTube video by Mattias Krantz
youtu.be
November 8, 2025 at 12:58 PM
hkandersen.bsky.social
One upside of the week's news is that I am reading cool historical stuff on Rosalind Franklin and her work #philsci
November 9, 2025 at 5:47 PM
gregpriest.bsky.social
Conrad Hal Waddington was born OTD in 1905.

His “epigenetic landscape” is a diagrammatic representation of the constraints influencing embryonic development.

On his 50th birthday, his colleagues gave him a pinball machine on the model of the epigenetic landscape.

🧪 🦫🦋 🌱🐋 #HistSTM #philsci #evobio
November 8, 2025 at 4:03 PM
alisabokulich.bsky.social
Some of you may know #philsci #philbio Subrena Smith, Prof of #philosophy at UNH. Her family in Jamaica lives in one of parishes hardest hit by Hurricane Melissa: Westmoreland. She & David are raising funds to support them w/ generators, supplies, truck water in to them, etc. Please donate if can!
A photo of Subrena smiling
November 8, 2025 at 7:18 PM
ocrampal.bsky.social
Why we know everything and comprehend nothing

www.ocrampal.com/from-light-t...

#philosophy #science #psychology #AI #intelligence #physics #biology #philmind #philsci #philsky #philpsy #neurosky #neuroskyence
From Light to Blindness: How the Enlightenment Lost Its Way
We live in an age of breathtaking technical sophistication and profound existential confusion. We can manipulate matter at the atomic level but can't agree on what makes life worth living. We've mappe...
www.ocrampal.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:45 PM
petinozappala.bsky.social
My paper for the Synthese special issue on Gatekeeping in science is out! 🎉
#PhilSci #HPBio #evobio
Gatekeeping in interdisciplinary fields: the case of paleontology after the Modern Synthesis - Synthese
Setting standards for budding interdisciplinary fields is a crucial step in the acquisition of their identity and in making possible their coalescence and institutionalization. However, negotiating wh...
link.springer.com
November 5, 2025 at 1:04 PM
roto-rub.bsky.social
Next Monday, we'll have our first reading group session in this semester. We'll discuss "The epistemic superiority of experiment to simulation" by Sherrilyn Roush: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Wanna join the discussion at 4pm CET? Just write an e-mail to jan.baedke[at]rub.de!
#HPBio #PhilSci
Screenshot of the title and abstract of "The epistemic superiority of experiment to simulation" by Sherrilyn Roush
November 10, 2025 at 3:07 PM
theramseylab.bsky.social
How did hominins became human? And what is the fate of the "behavioural modernity" concept? Preprint 👇📄

#hpbio #paleosky #philsci
andrameneganzin.bsky.social Andra Meneganzin @andrameneganzin.bsky.social · 2d
Much of the empirical & theoretical landscape on #behaviouralmodernity has changed, and many think it’s high time we ditched the concept altogether. Here’s a minority voice in the choir: I’m skeptical that eliminativism is the panacea it’s often made out to be. 🔜 in Biol Theory

#philsky #evosky🧪🏺
The Fate of Behavioral Modernity - PhilSci-Archive
philsci-archive.pitt.edu
November 8, 2025 at 2:49 PM
iai.tv
Will we ever understand the cosmos? | https://iai.tv/video/physics-next-paradigm-shift-with-matt-odowd

Join Matt O'Dowd to discuss cutting-edge black hole research, the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, and the next big paradigm shift in physics.

#philsci 🧪 ⚛️
Physics' next paradigm shift with Matt O'Dowd
Join astrophysicist and science communicator Matt O'Dowd for an in-depth interview on physics, in which he discusses cutting-edge black hole research, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the imp...
iai.tv
November 8, 2025 at 6:30 PM
gregpriest.bsky.social
OTD in 1880, Charles Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants. D believed that plants are active agents in the world: “A radicle may be compared with a burrowing animal such as a mole, which wishes to penetrate perpendicularly down into the ground.”

🧪🌱🐋 #philsci #HistSTM 🦋🦫
Cover, title page, and page of figures from the book.
November 6, 2025 at 4:26 PM
gregpriest.bsky.social
Because plants move so slowly relative to human time scales, Darwin developed a diagrammatic system to make their movements more easily perspicuous to us.

Below is a cartoon of the apparatus, and one of Darwin’s diagrams.

🧪🌱🐋 #philsci #HistSTM 🦋🦫
Apparatus diagram drawn by Keith Roberts, from Darwin and his Flowers by Mea Allen (1977). Movement diagram from Darwin Online.
November 6, 2025 at 4:29 PM
steveesser.bsky.social
Enjoyed this paper. Hard to see how one can do philosophy of mind or cognitive science while remaining innocent of biology. #philsci #philsky
November 10, 2025 at 4:45 PM
neohempelian.bsky.social
Teaching Newton on absolute space, time and motion. Today in seminar I brought my drill and a pack of cards and we made a spacetime. 😁
#philsci
November 6, 2025 at 12:50 AM
philsci-archive.bsky.social
New on the Archive:

Meneganzin, Andra (2025) The Fate of Behavioral Modernity. [Preprint]

https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27162/
November 8, 2025 at 2:12 PM
annaalexandrova.bsky.social
Listening to the first panel on history of #philsci in CEE. Inspiring that so many colleagues around the world tuned in. A wonderful first talk by Marta Sznajder on Janina Hosiasson (her heartbreaking story below). Now Angela Potochnik on the role of Marie Neurath (Reidemeister) in the Vienna Circle
November 6, 2025 at 2:42 PM
masssimons.bsky.social
For the next two days, I will be at 'The human phenomenon. Plessner's crossroads' conference in Cologne, talking about Helmuth Plessner's reception history in Dutch philosophy of technology and science #hopot #hopos #philsci #philtech philevents.org/event/show/1...
The human phenomenon. Plessner's crossroads
Among the great European thinkers of the 20th century, HelmuthPlessner occupied a special position. Having studied medicineand zoology and then turning to philosophy, his thought articulatesvarious ce...
philevents.org
November 6, 2025 at 5:44 AM
iai.tv
Are we wrong about the beginning of the universe? | https://bit.ly/4onZkn1

Join Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose, theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham, and philosopher of science Karen Crowther as they debate if we can determine the age of the universe once and for all.

#philsci ⚛️ 🧪
The age of the universe
bit.ly
November 6, 2025 at 6:30 PM
lisabortolotti.com
Tonight #philsci quiz! What is this?
Mystery sculpture at night
November 6, 2025 at 5:43 PM
neohempelian.bsky.social
Jumped the shark today. In my heart I swore to never do it. But the abyss called to me in seminar this week, I couldn’t resist. Today I assigned my students to read some of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

I deserve and condemn myself to eternal hell fire, but it couldn’t be helped. #philsci
November 7, 2025 at 2:56 AM
markrubin.bsky.social
"Basic scientists consistently enhance scientific output quality, yet research and newly joining researchers have shifted toward applied orientations."

Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.01530

#PhilSci #MetaSci #AcademicSky 🧪
Despite broad acclaim for basic research, science is undergoing an applied shift that marginalizes basic scientists. This gap reflects an incomplete understanding of their distinctive roles, which prevents translating philosophical appreciation into effective support. We introduce a scalable metric--the application score--to position research along the basic-applied spectrum and apply it to 62 million publications (1970-2023) to reveal the distinctive contributions of basic scientists. We find a structural asymmetry: involvement of basic scientists substantially increases citation impact, even more so in applied contexts, while applied scientists show no such effect in basic domains. This asymmetric effect arises from their intellectual leadership in conceptualization, writing, and experimental design, amplified in large, multidisciplinary, and intermediate career teams. Yet basic scientists remain concentrated in historically prestigious institutions, while new entrants shift toward applied work, indicating critical undersupply. These findings provide large-scale evidence for the indispensable role of basic scientists, guiding policy and institutional strategy to sustain the foundations of discovery and innovation.
November 8, 2025 at 11:37 AM
michelamassimi.bsky.social
A very thought-provoking afternoon with Robert Northcott discussing his excellent book with us and presenting some more recent work on the philosophy of history — the role of singular causal inference in explaining historical events. #philsci
November 4, 2025 at 4:26 PM
ramonalvarado.bsky.social
🚨New paper! My response to @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social’s Environmental Intelligence. In short: maybe we should stop using ‘intelligence’ altogether and recognize these technical artifacts as what they are: epistemic technologies with new and distinct affordances.

#AIEthics #Philsci #Philtech
Artifactual Epistemology and Environmental Intelligence
hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu
November 7, 2025 at 12:33 AM
alejandrofabregastejeda.com
What makes a neurolinguistics experiment worth pursuing? Nevia Dolcini & colleagues propose two axes of pursuitworthiness standing in an asymmetric relationship: methodological (thresholds for epistemic adequacy) & pragmatic (contextual priorities) 👇📃 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #HPS
Screenshot of the article header from the European Journal for Philosophy of Science titled “The pursuitworthiness of experiments in neurolinguistics” by Nevia Dolcini, Bernard A. J. Jap, Chan Wa Kun and Stephen Politzer-Ahles. The header indicates it is a paper in philosophy of science in practice. The DOI is https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-025-00691-z
November 7, 2025 at 3:34 PM
philsci-archive.bsky.social
New on the Archive:

Seifert, Vanessa A. (2024) The many laws in the periodic table. [Preprint]

https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27178/
November 10, 2025 at 12:31 PM
philsci-archive.bsky.social
New on the Archive:

Elliott, Kevin and Richards, Ted (2025) An Introduction to Values and Science. [Preprint]

https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27173/
November 10, 2025 at 12:31 PM