Narrative is ubiquitous in the sciences. Whilst it might be hidden, evident only from its traces,... more Narrative is ubiquitous in the sciences. Whilst it might be hidden, evident only from its traces, it can be found regularly in scientists' accounts of their research, and of the natural, human and social worlds they study. Investigating the functions of narrative, it becomes clear that narrative-making provides scientists with a means of making sense of the materials in their field, that narrative provides a means of representing that knowledge and that narrative may even provide the site for scientific reasoning and knowledge claims. Narrative emerges as a 'general-purpose technology', used in many different forms in different sites of science, enabling scientists to figure out and to express their scientific knowledge. Understanding scientists' use of narrative in this way suggests that narrative functions as a bridge between the interventionist practices of science and the knowledge gained from those practices. 1.1 * The Narrative Science Project was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 694732), whose activities are reported in great detail on the project website: www .narrative-science.org/. This chapterespecially in footnotesrefers to a number of resources on that site, particularly the reports of our workshops, and the entries in our two Anthologies (Anthology I 2019 and Anthology II 2022). This project grew out of an earlier collaboration with Norton Wise that resulted in a special issue (see Morgan and Wise 2017) and I am grateful for Norton's 'wise' advice throughout this current project, including on this chapter. Special thanks for their help with this chapter go to
Studying a social whole such as a city, an economy, or a society, requires the construction of 'g... more Studying a social whole such as a city, an economy, or a society, requires the construction of 'group data sets' where the group is made up of a number of individual data series, each one in turn made up of a string of individual data points or datums. This group set forms the most important context for considering the travels of any single numerical datum. The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain how it is that different kinds of group data sets, where the data are collected and aligned according to different measuring principles and to represent different subject matters, affect the travels of any datum point in the group. Using examples from social science, the paper examines how the relations of the data points within the whole set determine the possibilities for any single individual datum to travel within and out of its set, and how the integrity and fruitfulness of data or datum journeys will be dependent on those bit-whole relations that characterize the group data set.
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 2020
Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empiric... more Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empirical and theoretical, but to reason with them as tools of their science. While the two dimensional space of diagrams might seem restrictive, scientific diagrams can depict many more than two elements, can be used to visualize the same materials in myriad different ways, and can be constructed in a considerable variety of forms. This article takes up two generic puzzles about 2D visualizations. First, How do scientists in different communities use 2D spaces to depict materials that are not fundamentally spatial? This prompts the distinction between diagrams that operate in different kinds of spaces: real, ideal, and artificial. And second, How do diagrams, in these different usages of 2D space, support various kinds of visual reasoning that cross over between inductive and deductive? The argument links the representational form and content of a diagram (its vocabulary and grammar) with the ...
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, May 4, 2018
is Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of E... more is Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics. She published groundbreaking analyses in the history of econometrics, in the methodology of economic models, and in the recent history of economic thought more broadly. The World in the Model, published in 2012, is the culmination of more than a decade of reflection on how economists work and think using small manipulable objects. The book won Morgan the best book award from the European Society for the History of Economic Thought in 2013. Surprisingly, the book had never been reviewed in this journal. Perhaps this omission reflects a feeling among members of the history of economic thought community that the book belongs solely to the methodology of economic literature. Ironically, it has received harsh criticisms from that community (with the exceptions of Sugden, 2013, and Angner, 2015), and I believe it deserves greater attention from historians of economics. Morgan writes a history of models as a specific class of 'scientific objects', to use Daston's (2000) expression. Models are useful because they apprehend types of phenomena. Their typical nature allows models to assume the function of mediators between theory and data (Morgan and Morrison, 1999), or to provide « intermediate services » to economists, as Morgan and Grüne-Yanoff (2013) later argued.
This article examines how the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) redefined their idea of d... more This article examines how the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) redefined their idea of development over the two decades from 1990, no longer presenting it as only a matter of economic progress but instead focusing more on the problem of poverty and its reduction. This change of definition was closely associated with changes in the preferred measurement of development, from average income (based on national income accounting) to the proportion of the population holding certain characteristics of what it meant to live in poverty (instantiated in various index number formulations). Measurements of development thus became direct measures of socioeconomic difference, not just between nations, but also within nations. This change was designed to create numbers that would be effective in capturing and communicating those differences in ways usable for both policy and public purposes. Those numbers thus provided a resource for fighting poverty reduction—though the UNDP had few powe...
From the long viewpoint of history of economics, the two most important contributions that Jan Ti... more From the long viewpoint of history of economics, the two most important contributions that Jan Tinbergen made to economics are surely the development of the first macro-econometric model and a general theory of economic policy-making. This paper explores these two innovations to recover why they deserve such recognition, analyses their technical and conceptual depths, and shows how they relate to the economic history of the period and his personal history. In the process, it becomes clear that they are not separate innovations, but, as Tinbergen recognised, involved the same logic; and as we can recognise, were driven by the same ambition to make economics usable in the world.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2017
This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. Th... more This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. The focus is on the use of narrative in creating a productive ordering of the materials within such cases, and on how such ordering functions in relation to 'narrative explanation'. It argues that narrative ordering based on juxtaposition-using an analogy to certain genres of visual representation-is associated with creating and resolving puzzles in the research field. Analysis of several examples shows how the use of conceptual or theoretical resources within the narrative ordering of ingredients enables the narrative explanation of the case to be resituated at other sites, demonstrating how such explanations can attain scope without implying full generality.
Aims and Objectives The aims were to establish a body of case work assessing "How Well Do Facts T... more Aims and Objectives The aims were to establish a body of case work assessing "How Well Do Facts Travel?" and to develop a conceptual framework for answering this question which would hold for both humanities and sciences. Findings and Conclusions Our main conceptual challenge was to explicate what it means for facts, understood as "pieces of reliable knowledge", to travel well. We focussed on two senses: i) facts travel well when they travel with sufficient "integrity" to be acted upon as facts; and ii) facts travel well when their travels prove "fruitful", as evidenced by their being used again in other times, places, and domains, or for other purposes. Such travels depend on various kinds of "good company": labels, packages (such as cases), vehicles (such as the internet or scientific models) and chaperones (such as the name of a famous producing scientist). More surprisingly, our research found evidence of the importance of "character": those facts that travel well exhibit particular features that get them noticed in the first place or that are developed during their process of travel. Though conventional wisdom might suggest that facts are, like gossip, likely to be corrupted in their re-use, our research suggested the opposite, namely, that with the appropriate good company and character, facts will often travel remarkably well to serve as foundational objects beyond the place and community of their original field of production. Types of Publications Resulting The research team (consisting of post-doc fellows, PhD students, LSE faculty members and a number of senior visiting scholars) has produced (to date) two PhD thesis (with two more forthcoming), a considerable number of articles and book chapters, and a "book of the project". The sixteen essays in How Well Do Facts Travel? (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) use the conceptual materials developed by the group as a whole in the context of the wide variety of case studies. These show how our ideas about facts, their qualities, and their travels are shared across the humanities, the natural, and the social sciences. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Research Strengths * Brought together a wider group of scientists, both natural and social, together with humanists than was originally conceived. * Ethos of home base (Department of Economic History) kept the project firmly grounded on facts understood as well-evidenced pieces of reliable knowledge. * Tightly-focussed workshops brought in outsiders and created more general intersections within the research group. * Succeeded in integrating the case work with the development of conceptual analysis. * Made links between the research group and those responsible (inside and outside university domains) for getting facts to travel well. * Wide participation in our activities, and the subsequent dispersal of junior group members, created many paths for dispersion of the project ideas and findings. Weaknesses * Unavoidable changes in the research team created hiccoughs in the first two years of the project and meant that the intended research strand on direct policy usage of facts was reduced (though the coverage of public usage of facts was increased). * It proved difficult to get papers accepted in some journals early in the project, reflecting both the usual difficulty of cross-disciplinary work but also the innovative approach of the project.
Despite the controversy that often surrounds scientific revolutions, such as the Copernican revol... more Despite the controversy that often surrounds scientific revolutions, such as the Copernican revolution in astronomy or the Freudian revolution in psychology, one usually finds a general consensus among historians about certain basic issues concerning them; there is rarely any dispute about the principal individuals involved, or the specific discipline undergoing change, or the relevant period of time during which that change took place. None of these hold true, however, of the so-called probabilistic revolution that is the subject of this two-volume collection of papers: this is a proposed revolution that is difficult to attribute to any one group of individuals, affected a wide range of fields rather than just one, and took the better part of a century before it was in place. Often an important aspect of a scientific revolution is its impact on the way we view the world. Such far-reaching shifts often have far humbler origins: they are the natural if unintended result of major theoretical changes within a science, adopted initially because they provide new ways of dealing with old problems. The impact of Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton on the thought of their time was profound, but they were largely motivated by specific technical questions of a much more limited character. What is perhaps unique about the probabilistic revolution, however, is that the methodological changes one observes appear to be not so much the cause as the result of external changes in scientific philosophy. The rise of quantitative genetics provides a striking example. The story of how Gregor Mendel's paper of 1866 was ignored until 1900, when it was simultaneously rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich von Tschermak, is too familiar to require recounting here.' Viewed in isolation, Mendel's story seems a mere curiosity. On reflection, however, it is tempting to interpret the initial neglect of Mendel's work, coupled with its subsequent rediscovery, as symptomatic of a much more basic change that was taking place beneath the surface; as a shift in perspective that had taken place in biology, a change from old ways of thought in which Mendel's approach was not even thinkable, to a new way of thinking in which it became natural and inevitable.2 This was after all the period that saw the birth of the English school of biometrics; the work of that eccentric Victorian genius Francis Galton; the founding of the journal Biometrika; and also such developments as Alphonse Bertillon's method of criminal identification by numerical meas~rements.~ This change was not limited to the biological sciences; similar transformations also
The facts of social sciences are ones that stem from scientific expertise, but in the social worl... more The facts of social sciences are ones that stem from scientific expertise, but in the social world, everyone is their own expert. Everyone lives in society, and experiences either first-hand, or closely secondhand , the same phenomena that social scientists investigate. Consequently, people are not only the subjects of scientific investigation, but are themselves amateur reflexive scientists: observing and making sense of their own experiences in social and economic affairs, And, in a democratic community, such personal experience claims a legitimate place in knowledge discussions. These two qualities mean that the observations from personal experience can not be so lightly dismissed by the social scientist, in the same way as the traditional observations of folklore can be trumped by the facts of scientific knowledge in the natural sciences. Yet, these facts of personal experience may not travel easily, for the possibilities of voicing that experience depend in part on the nature of the social science involved and in part on the civic epistemology of the environment within which they can be expressed. The considerations which underlie the successful articulation of experienced knowledge suggest that "voice" differs from both "engagement" and "understanding" as a way to characterize public participation in social science-as opposed to natural science-knowledge discussions.
Two themes are generative for revealing and understanding the history of observation in economics... more Two themes are generative for revealing and understanding the history of observation in economics. First, we argue for the importance of noting that observation is an activity as well as a result, and second that observation is no more identical with quantification than observing is with measuring. These two themes enable us to discuss different historical dimensions of the ways in which economists have observed their economies and so enlarge our understanding of their observational practices. These problematics especially help in delineating the intricate, multilayered, and active interactions between the observer and the observed that take place in all social science observation, and from which our pictures of the economic world emerge.
The provocative paper by John Forrester ‘If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases’ (1996) opened up the... more The provocative paper by John Forrester ‘If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases’ (1996) opened up the question of case thinking as a separate mode of reasoning in the sciences. Case-based reasoning is certainly endemic across a number of sciences, but it has looked different according to where it has been found. This article investigates this mode of science – namely thinking in cases – by questioning the different interpretations of ‘If p?’ and exploring the different interpretative responses of what follows in ‘Then What?’. The aim is to characterize how ‘reasoning in, within, with, and from cases’ forms a mode of scientific investigation for single cases, for runs of cases, and for comparative cases, drawing on materials from a range of different fields in which case-based reasoning appears.
Economists build models to understand the economy, but to outsiders these often seem to be imagin... more Economists build models to understand the economy, but to outsiders these often seem to be imagined or fictional worlds, accounts that seem closer to those of science fiction than to matters of science. Such a judgement underrates the importance of fictional elements and the imagination in the way economists make and use their models. Paying attention to the 'what-if' questions that economists ask when they use their models reveals how they create the keys that enable them to translate between their imaginary model worlds and the real economic world we all live in.
New Methodological PersPectives oN observatioN aNd exPeriMeNtatioN iN scieNce Any form of reprodu... more New Methodological PersPectives oN observatioN aNd exPeriMeNtatioN iN scieNce Any form of reproduction, distribution, public communication or processing of this work can only be done with the permission of their owners, except where exempted by law. Contact CEDRO (Spanish Reprographic Rights Center, www.cedro.org) if you need to scan or photocopy any part of this work. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the owners of the copyright, including but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission or broadcast for distance learning. QR code is a trademark registered by Denso Wave, inc.
Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empiric... more Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empirical and theoretical, but to reason with them as tools of their science. While the two dimensional space of diagrams might seem restrictive, scientific diagrams can depict many more than two elements, can be used to visualise the same materials in myriad different ways, and can be constructed in a considerable variety of forms. This paper takes up two generic puzzles about 2D visualizations. First: How do scientists in different communities use 2D spaces to depict materials which are not fundamentally spatial? This prompts the distinction between diagrams that operate in different kinds of spaces: 'real', 'ideal', and 'artificial'. And second: How do diagrams, in these different usages of 2D space, support various kinds of visual reasoning that cross over between inductive and deductive? The argument links the representational form and content of a diagram (its vocabulary and grammar) with the kinds of inferential and manipulative reasoning that are afforded, and constrained, by scientists' different usages of 2D space.
The provocative paper by John Forrester: 'If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases' (1996) opened up th... more The provocative paper by John Forrester: 'If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases' (1996) opened up the question of case thinking as a separate mode of reasoning in the sciences. Case-based reasoning is certainly endemic across a number of sciences, but it has looked different according to where it has been found. This paper investigates this mode of science-namely thinking in cases-by questioning the different interpretations of 'If p?' and exploring the different interpretative responses of what follows in 'Then What?'. The aim is to characterise how 'reasoning in, within, with, and from cases' forms a mode of scientific investigation for single cases, for runs of cases, and for comparative cases, drawing on materials from a range of different fields in which case-based reasoning appears.
This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. Th... more This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. The focus is on the use of narrative in creating a productive ordering of the materials within such cases, and on how such ordering functions in relation to 'narrative explanation'. It argues that narrative ordering based on juxtaposition-using an analogy to certain genres of visual representation-is associated with creating and resolving puzzles in the research field. Analysis of several examples shows how the use of conceptual or theoretical resources within the narrative ordering of ingredients enables the narrative explanation of the case to be resituated at other sites, demonstrating how such explanations can attain scope without implying full generality.
Separates out cases from case studies across a range of social science fields. • Considers modes ... more Separates out cases from case studies across a range of social science fields. • Considers modes of comparison as ways to deepen knowledge. • Discusses different possibilities for extending knowledge beyond the original case. • Suggests that individual case work may catalyse or crystallize knowledge for further usage. • Argues the best way to frame case-based knowledge transfer is as a mode of exemplification.
Narrative is ubiquitous in the sciences. Whilst it might be hidden, evident only from its traces,... more Narrative is ubiquitous in the sciences. Whilst it might be hidden, evident only from its traces, it can be found regularly in scientists' accounts of their research, and of the natural, human and social worlds they study. Investigating the functions of narrative, it becomes clear that narrative-making provides scientists with a means of making sense of the materials in their field, that narrative provides a means of representing that knowledge and that narrative may even provide the site for scientific reasoning and knowledge claims. Narrative emerges as a 'general-purpose technology', used in many different forms in different sites of science, enabling scientists to figure out and to express their scientific knowledge. Understanding scientists' use of narrative in this way suggests that narrative functions as a bridge between the interventionist practices of science and the knowledge gained from those practices. 1.1 * The Narrative Science Project was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 694732), whose activities are reported in great detail on the project website: www .narrative-science.org/. This chapterespecially in footnotesrefers to a number of resources on that site, particularly the reports of our workshops, and the entries in our two Anthologies (Anthology I 2019 and Anthology II 2022). This project grew out of an earlier collaboration with Norton Wise that resulted in a special issue (see Morgan and Wise 2017) and I am grateful for Norton's 'wise' advice throughout this current project, including on this chapter. Special thanks for their help with this chapter go to
Studying a social whole such as a city, an economy, or a society, requires the construction of 'g... more Studying a social whole such as a city, an economy, or a society, requires the construction of 'group data sets' where the group is made up of a number of individual data series, each one in turn made up of a string of individual data points or datums. This group set forms the most important context for considering the travels of any single numerical datum. The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain how it is that different kinds of group data sets, where the data are collected and aligned according to different measuring principles and to represent different subject matters, affect the travels of any datum point in the group. Using examples from social science, the paper examines how the relations of the data points within the whole set determine the possibilities for any single individual datum to travel within and out of its set, and how the integrity and fruitfulness of data or datum journeys will be dependent on those bit-whole relations that characterize the group data set.
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 2020
Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empiric... more Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empirical and theoretical, but to reason with them as tools of their science. While the two dimensional space of diagrams might seem restrictive, scientific diagrams can depict many more than two elements, can be used to visualize the same materials in myriad different ways, and can be constructed in a considerable variety of forms. This article takes up two generic puzzles about 2D visualizations. First, How do scientists in different communities use 2D spaces to depict materials that are not fundamentally spatial? This prompts the distinction between diagrams that operate in different kinds of spaces: real, ideal, and artificial. And second, How do diagrams, in these different usages of 2D space, support various kinds of visual reasoning that cross over between inductive and deductive? The argument links the representational form and content of a diagram (its vocabulary and grammar) with the ...
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, May 4, 2018
is Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of E... more is Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics. She published groundbreaking analyses in the history of econometrics, in the methodology of economic models, and in the recent history of economic thought more broadly. The World in the Model, published in 2012, is the culmination of more than a decade of reflection on how economists work and think using small manipulable objects. The book won Morgan the best book award from the European Society for the History of Economic Thought in 2013. Surprisingly, the book had never been reviewed in this journal. Perhaps this omission reflects a feeling among members of the history of economic thought community that the book belongs solely to the methodology of economic literature. Ironically, it has received harsh criticisms from that community (with the exceptions of Sugden, 2013, and Angner, 2015), and I believe it deserves greater attention from historians of economics. Morgan writes a history of models as a specific class of 'scientific objects', to use Daston's (2000) expression. Models are useful because they apprehend types of phenomena. Their typical nature allows models to assume the function of mediators between theory and data (Morgan and Morrison, 1999), or to provide « intermediate services » to economists, as Morgan and Grüne-Yanoff (2013) later argued.
This article examines how the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) redefined their idea of d... more This article examines how the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) redefined their idea of development over the two decades from 1990, no longer presenting it as only a matter of economic progress but instead focusing more on the problem of poverty and its reduction. This change of definition was closely associated with changes in the preferred measurement of development, from average income (based on national income accounting) to the proportion of the population holding certain characteristics of what it meant to live in poverty (instantiated in various index number formulations). Measurements of development thus became direct measures of socioeconomic difference, not just between nations, but also within nations. This change was designed to create numbers that would be effective in capturing and communicating those differences in ways usable for both policy and public purposes. Those numbers thus provided a resource for fighting poverty reduction—though the UNDP had few powe...
From the long viewpoint of history of economics, the two most important contributions that Jan Ti... more From the long viewpoint of history of economics, the two most important contributions that Jan Tinbergen made to economics are surely the development of the first macro-econometric model and a general theory of economic policy-making. This paper explores these two innovations to recover why they deserve such recognition, analyses their technical and conceptual depths, and shows how they relate to the economic history of the period and his personal history. In the process, it becomes clear that they are not separate innovations, but, as Tinbergen recognised, involved the same logic; and as we can recognise, were driven by the same ambition to make economics usable in the world.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2017
This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. Th... more This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. The focus is on the use of narrative in creating a productive ordering of the materials within such cases, and on how such ordering functions in relation to 'narrative explanation'. It argues that narrative ordering based on juxtaposition-using an analogy to certain genres of visual representation-is associated with creating and resolving puzzles in the research field. Analysis of several examples shows how the use of conceptual or theoretical resources within the narrative ordering of ingredients enables the narrative explanation of the case to be resituated at other sites, demonstrating how such explanations can attain scope without implying full generality.
Aims and Objectives The aims were to establish a body of case work assessing "How Well Do Facts T... more Aims and Objectives The aims were to establish a body of case work assessing "How Well Do Facts Travel?" and to develop a conceptual framework for answering this question which would hold for both humanities and sciences. Findings and Conclusions Our main conceptual challenge was to explicate what it means for facts, understood as "pieces of reliable knowledge", to travel well. We focussed on two senses: i) facts travel well when they travel with sufficient "integrity" to be acted upon as facts; and ii) facts travel well when their travels prove "fruitful", as evidenced by their being used again in other times, places, and domains, or for other purposes. Such travels depend on various kinds of "good company": labels, packages (such as cases), vehicles (such as the internet or scientific models) and chaperones (such as the name of a famous producing scientist). More surprisingly, our research found evidence of the importance of "character": those facts that travel well exhibit particular features that get them noticed in the first place or that are developed during their process of travel. Though conventional wisdom might suggest that facts are, like gossip, likely to be corrupted in their re-use, our research suggested the opposite, namely, that with the appropriate good company and character, facts will often travel remarkably well to serve as foundational objects beyond the place and community of their original field of production. Types of Publications Resulting The research team (consisting of post-doc fellows, PhD students, LSE faculty members and a number of senior visiting scholars) has produced (to date) two PhD thesis (with two more forthcoming), a considerable number of articles and book chapters, and a "book of the project". The sixteen essays in How Well Do Facts Travel? (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) use the conceptual materials developed by the group as a whole in the context of the wide variety of case studies. These show how our ideas about facts, their qualities, and their travels are shared across the humanities, the natural, and the social sciences. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Research Strengths * Brought together a wider group of scientists, both natural and social, together with humanists than was originally conceived. * Ethos of home base (Department of Economic History) kept the project firmly grounded on facts understood as well-evidenced pieces of reliable knowledge. * Tightly-focussed workshops brought in outsiders and created more general intersections within the research group. * Succeeded in integrating the case work with the development of conceptual analysis. * Made links between the research group and those responsible (inside and outside university domains) for getting facts to travel well. * Wide participation in our activities, and the subsequent dispersal of junior group members, created many paths for dispersion of the project ideas and findings. Weaknesses * Unavoidable changes in the research team created hiccoughs in the first two years of the project and meant that the intended research strand on direct policy usage of facts was reduced (though the coverage of public usage of facts was increased). * It proved difficult to get papers accepted in some journals early in the project, reflecting both the usual difficulty of cross-disciplinary work but also the innovative approach of the project.
Despite the controversy that often surrounds scientific revolutions, such as the Copernican revol... more Despite the controversy that often surrounds scientific revolutions, such as the Copernican revolution in astronomy or the Freudian revolution in psychology, one usually finds a general consensus among historians about certain basic issues concerning them; there is rarely any dispute about the principal individuals involved, or the specific discipline undergoing change, or the relevant period of time during which that change took place. None of these hold true, however, of the so-called probabilistic revolution that is the subject of this two-volume collection of papers: this is a proposed revolution that is difficult to attribute to any one group of individuals, affected a wide range of fields rather than just one, and took the better part of a century before it was in place. Often an important aspect of a scientific revolution is its impact on the way we view the world. Such far-reaching shifts often have far humbler origins: they are the natural if unintended result of major theoretical changes within a science, adopted initially because they provide new ways of dealing with old problems. The impact of Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton on the thought of their time was profound, but they were largely motivated by specific technical questions of a much more limited character. What is perhaps unique about the probabilistic revolution, however, is that the methodological changes one observes appear to be not so much the cause as the result of external changes in scientific philosophy. The rise of quantitative genetics provides a striking example. The story of how Gregor Mendel's paper of 1866 was ignored until 1900, when it was simultaneously rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich von Tschermak, is too familiar to require recounting here.' Viewed in isolation, Mendel's story seems a mere curiosity. On reflection, however, it is tempting to interpret the initial neglect of Mendel's work, coupled with its subsequent rediscovery, as symptomatic of a much more basic change that was taking place beneath the surface; as a shift in perspective that had taken place in biology, a change from old ways of thought in which Mendel's approach was not even thinkable, to a new way of thinking in which it became natural and inevitable.2 This was after all the period that saw the birth of the English school of biometrics; the work of that eccentric Victorian genius Francis Galton; the founding of the journal Biometrika; and also such developments as Alphonse Bertillon's method of criminal identification by numerical meas~rements.~ This change was not limited to the biological sciences; similar transformations also
The facts of social sciences are ones that stem from scientific expertise, but in the social worl... more The facts of social sciences are ones that stem from scientific expertise, but in the social world, everyone is their own expert. Everyone lives in society, and experiences either first-hand, or closely secondhand , the same phenomena that social scientists investigate. Consequently, people are not only the subjects of scientific investigation, but are themselves amateur reflexive scientists: observing and making sense of their own experiences in social and economic affairs, And, in a democratic community, such personal experience claims a legitimate place in knowledge discussions. These two qualities mean that the observations from personal experience can not be so lightly dismissed by the social scientist, in the same way as the traditional observations of folklore can be trumped by the facts of scientific knowledge in the natural sciences. Yet, these facts of personal experience may not travel easily, for the possibilities of voicing that experience depend in part on the nature of the social science involved and in part on the civic epistemology of the environment within which they can be expressed. The considerations which underlie the successful articulation of experienced knowledge suggest that "voice" differs from both "engagement" and "understanding" as a way to characterize public participation in social science-as opposed to natural science-knowledge discussions.
Two themes are generative for revealing and understanding the history of observation in economics... more Two themes are generative for revealing and understanding the history of observation in economics. First, we argue for the importance of noting that observation is an activity as well as a result, and second that observation is no more identical with quantification than observing is with measuring. These two themes enable us to discuss different historical dimensions of the ways in which economists have observed their economies and so enlarge our understanding of their observational practices. These problematics especially help in delineating the intricate, multilayered, and active interactions between the observer and the observed that take place in all social science observation, and from which our pictures of the economic world emerge.
The provocative paper by John Forrester ‘If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases’ (1996) opened up the... more The provocative paper by John Forrester ‘If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases’ (1996) opened up the question of case thinking as a separate mode of reasoning in the sciences. Case-based reasoning is certainly endemic across a number of sciences, but it has looked different according to where it has been found. This article investigates this mode of science – namely thinking in cases – by questioning the different interpretations of ‘If p?’ and exploring the different interpretative responses of what follows in ‘Then What?’. The aim is to characterize how ‘reasoning in, within, with, and from cases’ forms a mode of scientific investigation for single cases, for runs of cases, and for comparative cases, drawing on materials from a range of different fields in which case-based reasoning appears.
Economists build models to understand the economy, but to outsiders these often seem to be imagin... more Economists build models to understand the economy, but to outsiders these often seem to be imagined or fictional worlds, accounts that seem closer to those of science fiction than to matters of science. Such a judgement underrates the importance of fictional elements and the imagination in the way economists make and use their models. Paying attention to the 'what-if' questions that economists ask when they use their models reveals how they create the keys that enable them to translate between their imaginary model worlds and the real economic world we all live in.
New Methodological PersPectives oN observatioN aNd exPeriMeNtatioN iN scieNce Any form of reprodu... more New Methodological PersPectives oN observatioN aNd exPeriMeNtatioN iN scieNce Any form of reproduction, distribution, public communication or processing of this work can only be done with the permission of their owners, except where exempted by law. Contact CEDRO (Spanish Reprographic Rights Center, www.cedro.org) if you need to scan or photocopy any part of this work. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the owners of the copyright, including but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission or broadcast for distance learning. QR code is a trademark registered by Denso Wave, inc.
Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empiric... more Scientists use diagrams not just to visualize objects and relations in their fields, both empirical and theoretical, but to reason with them as tools of their science. While the two dimensional space of diagrams might seem restrictive, scientific diagrams can depict many more than two elements, can be used to visualise the same materials in myriad different ways, and can be constructed in a considerable variety of forms. This paper takes up two generic puzzles about 2D visualizations. First: How do scientists in different communities use 2D spaces to depict materials which are not fundamentally spatial? This prompts the distinction between diagrams that operate in different kinds of spaces: 'real', 'ideal', and 'artificial'. And second: How do diagrams, in these different usages of 2D space, support various kinds of visual reasoning that cross over between inductive and deductive? The argument links the representational form and content of a diagram (its vocabulary and grammar) with the kinds of inferential and manipulative reasoning that are afforded, and constrained, by scientists' different usages of 2D space.
The provocative paper by John Forrester: 'If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases' (1996) opened up th... more The provocative paper by John Forrester: 'If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases' (1996) opened up the question of case thinking as a separate mode of reasoning in the sciences. Case-based reasoning is certainly endemic across a number of sciences, but it has looked different according to where it has been found. This paper investigates this mode of science-namely thinking in cases-by questioning the different interpretations of 'If p?' and exploring the different interpretative responses of what follows in 'Then What?'. The aim is to characterise how 'reasoning in, within, with, and from cases' forms a mode of scientific investigation for single cases, for runs of cases, and for comparative cases, drawing on materials from a range of different fields in which case-based reasoning appears.
This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. Th... more This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. The focus is on the use of narrative in creating a productive ordering of the materials within such cases, and on how such ordering functions in relation to 'narrative explanation'. It argues that narrative ordering based on juxtaposition-using an analogy to certain genres of visual representation-is associated with creating and resolving puzzles in the research field. Analysis of several examples shows how the use of conceptual or theoretical resources within the narrative ordering of ingredients enables the narrative explanation of the case to be resituated at other sites, demonstrating how such explanations can attain scope without implying full generality.
Separates out cases from case studies across a range of social science fields. • Considers modes ... more Separates out cases from case studies across a range of social science fields. • Considers modes of comparison as ways to deepen knowledge. • Discusses different possibilities for extending knowledge beyond the original case. • Suggests that individual case work may catalyse or crystallize knowledge for further usage. • Argues the best way to frame case-based knowledge transfer is as a mode of exemplification.
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Papers by Mary Morgan