2023/08/22 by Christophe Malaterre, Martin Léonard · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks #Biology #Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Discipline #Epistemology #Mechanism (biology) #Philosophy #Philosophy and History of Science #Philosophy of science #Social science #Sociology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/psa.2023.97
published in Philosophy of Science 91(1), 151-174 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2023/08/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Abstract The central role of such epistemic concepts as theory , explanation , model , or mechanism is rarely questioned in philosophy of science. Yet, what is their actual use in the practice of science? Here, we deploy text-mining methods to investigate the usage of 61 epistemic notions in a corpus of full-text articles from the biological and biomedical sciences ( N = 73,771). The influence of disciplinary context is also examined by splitting the corpus into subdisciplinary clusters. The results reveal the intricate semantic networks that these concepts actually form in the scientific discourse, not always following our intuitions, at least in some parts of science.