Lindley Darden (born 1945) is a contemporary
philosopher of science
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
,
with a research focus on the
philosophy of biology
The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemology, epistemological, metaphysics, metaphysical, and ethics, ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and ...
.
Biography
She received her Ph.D. from the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
in 1974 and B.A. in 1968 from
Rhodes College
Rhodes College is a private liberal arts college in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Historically affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), it is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South and is accredited by the Southern Associa ...
, and is currently Distinguished Scholar Teacher at the
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
. Between 2001 and 2003, she was the president of the
International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.
Research
Darden's research has led to the publication of several books. In her 1991 book, ''Theory Change in Science'', Darden argues, ''contra''
Kuhn, that science is a self-correcting enterprise which progresses through a thoroughly piecemeal process of "reiterative refinement," consisting of three stages: (1) theory construction, (2) theory assessment, and (3) theory modification. Although there are similarities between stages (1) and (2) and the traditionally recognized contexts of scientific discovery and justification, Darden argues that her stages are not easily mapped onto this dichotomy.
Furthermore, Darden attempts to illumine the "mysterious" process of constructing scientific theories by positing various "strategies" that she claims are sufficient for solving actual historical cases of theory change. For example, Darden examines the
Mendelian "Theory of the Gene," which underwent significant theoretical modifications from around 1900 (when Mendel was "rediscovered") to 1926 (when
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan (September 25, 1866 – December 4, 1945) was an Americans, American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, Embryology, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries e ...
published his famous textbook defining Mendelian theory in its roughly modern form). Looking at these cases, Darden describes procedures for devising the hypotheses that early twentieth-century Mendelian theorists actually proposed, although she does not claim that these theorists actually employed such procedures, or ''strategies''. Ultimately, by constructing a list of such strategies for discovery, Darden hopes that scientists can use them to solve present theoretical problems that contemporary science encounters. As such, she ''advises'' scientists to use them, calling her model "advisory" (rather than "descriptive" or "normative").
Darden has also worked on
mechanisms, notably in her collaborative paper entitled "Thinking about Mechanisms" (2000), co-authored with
Peter Machamer and
Carl Craver. In 2006, Darden completed her second book, entitled ''Reasoning in Biological Discoveries: Essays on Mechanisms, Interfield Relations, and Anomaly Resolution''. In it, Darden propounds a number of strategies for discovering mechanisms in biology, including "Schema Instantiation," "Modular Subassembly," and "Forward/Backward Chaining."
References
External links
Darden's faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Darden, Lindley
1945 births
Living people
Philosophers of science
Philosophers of biology
20th-century American philosophers
American women philosophers
21st-century American philosophers