本文データは平成22年度国立国会図書館の学位論文(博士)のデジタル化実施により作成された画像ファイルを基にpdf変換したものである / Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(エネルギー科学) / 乙第10221号 / 論エネ博第7号 / 新制||エネ||3(附属図書館) / UT51-99-S338 / (主査)教授 伊藤 靖彦, 教授 八尾 健, 教授 尾形 幸生 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当

本文データは平成22年度国立国会図書館の学位論文(博士)のデジタル化実施により作成された画像ファイルを基にpdf変換したものである / Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(エネルギー科学) / 乙第10279号 / 論エネ博第9号 / 新制||エネ||4(附属図書館) / UT51-99-Z54 / (主査)教授 佐野 史道, 教授 若谷 誠宏, 教授 近藤 克己 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当

本文データは平成22年度国立国会図書館の学位論文(博士)のデジタル化実施により作成された画像ファイルを基にpdf変換したものである / Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(エネルギー科学) / 甲第8474号 / エネ博第13号 / 新制||エネ||5(附属図書館) / UT51-2000-F378 / 京都大学大学院エネルギー科学研究科エネルギー社会・環境科学専攻 / (主査)教授 吉川 榮和, 教授 新宮 秀夫, 教授 片井 修 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

Many studies in public understanding of science emphasise that learning how to do science also involves learning about the philosophical issues surrounding the nature of science. This thesis aims to find out how scientists themselves talk and write about these philosophical topics, and how these topics get used in scientific thought. It contrasts scientists' opinions on these issues with how they are portrayed in popular science, and also contrasts them with how philosophers themselves have justified their ideas. Through analysing how scientists talk and write about philosophical topics, it aims to find out what and how scientists themselves think and learn about the nature of science, and what they would like other people to learn about it. 30 popular science books were analysed for how they treat philosophical topics on the nature of science. 40 academic scientists were then asked in a series of semi- structured interviews questions based on the philosophical topics that were found discussed most often in the books. Five philosophical topics are dealt with in detail: The demarcation question of "what is science", the philosophies of Popper and Kuhn, Occam's razor and reductionism, which reflect the most common philosophical themes in the popular science books. In interpreting the books and the scientists' responses on these topics, I use the concepts of boundary work and boundary objects, and social identity theory. It demonstrates that philosophical topics can be used to draw boundaries and to define social identities around science or various disciplinary affiliations. Philosophies and famous philosophers like Popper also act as boundary objects facilitating scientific communication across boundaries. The talk surrounding the various philosophical categories however often hides a big variation in actual philosophical opinion, which is set slightly apart from how the philosophy itself is discussed.

The thesis analyses the challenges that liberal theory, and in particular the liberal characterization of the self, encounters when dealing with nature. The thesis argues that liberal theory is ultimately unable to deal with the challenges of nature because of the characterization of the self that it embraces. In order to understand how liberal theory conceptualizes and deals with the challenges of nature, the thesis critically engages with the ’green liberal’ theories elaborated by Marcel Wissenburg, Brian Baxter and Simon Hailwood. The main goal of each of these theories, like any other liberal theory, is to ensure the survival and flourishing of the liberal self and community thereof. It is argued that the stratagem each of these theories adopts to achieve this goal in the context of dealing with nature and its challenges is to constitute nature as an imperfect approximation of the liberal self. This theoretical move would offer some form of protection to at least some parts of nature while at the same time ensuring that a more general instrumentalization of nature can continue undisturbed. The stratagem these theories implement is far from flawless. Quite the contrary. It is responsible for the creation of a number of destabilizing tensions within the liberal conceptualization of the self that could lead to its demise. At the same time, these tensions also offer the opportunity for alternative conceptualizations the self to be forged. The thesis will examine a number of such alternative conceptualizations of the self. It will conclude by discussing the ’allentic self’ - an original contribution of the thesis. It will be argued that whereas other conceptualizations of the self are ultimately unsatisfactory, the ’allentic self’ is able to resolve the aforementioned tensions and promote care, respect, gratitude, humility towards nature.

This thesis explores how ‘big science’ becomes public within an era of digital scholarship and evolving professional practices. Focusing on research conducted at CERN, I explore the strategic approaches and operational principles and practices of communication professionals and researchers working in High-Energy Physics. A review of current research into the dissemination of scientific information in the digital age shows a dearth of empirical studies that explore the role of communication professionals within scientific organisations. I argue that communication professionals within scientific organisations play an important intermediary role between scientists, external media professionals and publics, often being the first to mediate information for audiences beyond academia. Such groups, therefore, should be explored in order to understand the role they play in mediating science for the contemporary public sphere. This requires that some account be taken of the context within which the communication is produced. At CERN this includes issues of openness and transparency, organisational structures, whilst also taking account of the role of technology in mediating information. A mixed methods approach was used, combining document analysis with ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews to create eight detailed case studies. In my analysis I argue that scientific public relations is integral to the process of mediation, yet has so far been unrepresented within it. This thesis contributes to a wider understanding of the role organisation plays in the production of High-Energy Physics communication, noting the importance of timing in relation to openness and proposing a methodological approach for the continued research of communications groups in other scientific organisations. Furthermore, this thesis has demonstrated that digital scholarly practices are yet to be fully realised. Instead, a muddled culture of practices exists across CERN, with multiple analogue and digital tools used by individuals and groups working in distinctly separate ways. Overall, the thesis adds to the growing discussion in a number of fields, including the role of scientific public relations in the process of mediation of scientific information and how digital scholarly practices are enacted within a ‘big science’ project.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(エネルギー科学) / 甲第16327号 / エネ博第238号 / 新制||エネ||51(附属図書館) / 28944 / 京都大学大学院エネルギー科学研究科エネルギー基礎科学専攻 / (主査)教授 森井 孝, 教授 木下 正弘, 教授 片平 正人 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

This thesis attempts to assess the viability of arguing for realism from a naturalistic perspective. It demonstrates that extant attempts to carry out this project fail to establish realism as a better explanation of science than various antirealist alternatives (particular attention is given to Laudan's naturalistic antirealism, van Fraassen's constructive empiricism and social constructivist accounts of science). In particular, it is shown that various attempts to refute Laudan's pessimistic induction are not successful. Further, it is argued that there is a good prima facie case for saying that naturalism and realism are not compatible philosophical positions. Accordingly, an attempt is made to develop a naturalistic account of science that is neither realist nor antirealist. Here it is argued that the main candidate for such a position, Arthur Fine's NOA, faces four major problems. In order to fix these problems I turn to Rorty's antirepresentationalist account of science and culture but conclude that as an attempt to develop and defend NOA, this account is inadequate in several important ways.

The Philosophy of Science is the subject of various methods of analysis, from Kuhn’s paradigms to Hacking’s styles of reasoning. Each of these methods seeks to address the many questions we might pose about the nature of theories and the theorists who shape them. However, there is yet one issue which remains unresolved: the question of how we may best account for persistent disagreements between rival scientific theories in cases where there are no genuine incompatibilities, conceptual or empirical. This thesis offers a novel solution to this problem in the form of a new unit of analysis, the Epistemic Horizon. An Epistemic Horizon is defined by the dialectical relationship between two components: a world-view (weltanschauung) and a set of presuppositions (lichtung) that direct the way individuals investigate the world. The thesis first explores this proposal in a general way. It then turns to an extensive case study involving a persistent disagreement in contemporary evolutionary biology over niche construction. Separate chapters consider the outline of the debate; the historical emergence of the constructionist weltanschauung; the parallel emergence of the constructionist lichtung (and also the competitor lichtung); and how certain metaphors have functioned to catalyze these changes. A further chapter examines two further case studies more briefly, in chemistry and psychology, to illustrate the wider applicability of the Epistemic Horizon approach.

This thesis examines the contemporary scientific realism debate, with a special focus on the various forms of structural realism. It comprises three parts. The first part prefaces the work with a scrutiny of the principal arguments of the classic debate. The global and local explanationist arguments are critically analysed, and juxtaposed with the so-called experimental arguments for realism. It is argued that focusing on explanatory considerations does not serve the justificatory task the realist faces, but a local analysis of ampliative reasoning can nevertheless secure a level of realist commitment to a significant class of unobservables. This part also defends the anti-realist argument of Pessimistic Induction against two challenges that take it to be fallacious. The second part looks at the main structural realist suggestions for an image of theoretical knowledge that harmonises with our best understanding of the current and past science. It concludes that both of these—epistemic Ramsey sentence realism in the syntactic-axiomatic framework, and the ontological structural realism in the semantic framework—are incomplete and inadequate responses to the anti-realist challenge. In addition to providing a comparative review of the various structuralist motivations and intuitions, this part contributes to the literature by clarifying the often referred to, but also by and large misunderstood, problem of unintended models faced by the Ramseyfying realist (‘Newman’s problem’). The third part begins by looking at the notion of approximate truth in detail, in order to argue that the traditional ‘standard’ realist alternative to structural realism is not the only alternative. Paying due attention to the explanatory requirements for the realist argument yields an informally articulated notion of explanatory approximate truth which gives rise to a fresh realist perspective: eclectic realism is realism about success-fuelling multiply realised properties. This part concludes the thesis by developing and defending this position, by conducting a detailed case study of the historical theory change from Fresnel’s ether to Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory of optics.