科学实践哲学视域下计算生物学的干实验  

“Dry Experiments”in Computational Biology from the Perspective of Philosophy of Scientific Practice

作　　者：陈泓邑 Chen Hongyi(Department of Philosophy,School of Government,Yunnan University,Kunming 650500,China)

机构地区：[1]云南大学政府管理学院哲学系

出　　处：《科学.经济.社会》2024年第6期82-93,共12页Science Economy Society

基　　金：国家社会科学基金重大项目“大数据驱动下的生命科学研究范式变革研究”(22&ZD045)。

摘　　要：科学实践哲学家曾基于20世纪的传统科学实验模式,批评表征主义,降格表征的认识论地位,并强调“以实践为中心”,模糊“发现语境—辩护语境”二分,但他们在科学知识的辩护问题上仍有较大分歧。进入大数据时代,生物学中兴起了一种基于计算的科学实验模式,即科学家通过在数据上开展计算来预测生物机制,这被称为计算生物学的干实验。围绕这一实验模式,文章反思了科学实践哲学对表征主义和语境二分的批评,并论证了计算在认识论上的重要性在于:首先,它提升了表征的认识论地位;其次,科学家在发现语境中通过计算预测生物机制,并通过算法本身的可靠性为计算方法产生的结果提供辩护;最后,基于历史知识论可以推出,虽然在对知识的辩护方式上,20世纪传统实验与干实验有所不同,但由于两种辩护方式可以融贯整合,因此不会有损科学知识的规范性。Based on traditional scientific experiments in the 20th century, philosophers of scientific practice criticized representationalism, downgraded the epistemological status of representation, emphasized a “practice-centered” approach to philosophy of science, and blurred the discovery-justification context distinction. However, they still had significant disagreements on the issue of justification of scientific knowledge. In the era of big data, a computational approach of doing scientific experiments has emerged in biology, where scientists predict biological mechanisms through computations on data. This is known as the “dry experiments” of computational biology. Centered on this dry experiments, the article reflects on the criticisms from the philosophy of scientific practice toward representationalism and the context distinction, and argues that the epistemological significance of computation lies in the following points:first, it upgraded the epistemological status of representation;second, scientists use computation to predict biological mechanisms in the context of discovery and justify the results of computational methods through the reliability of the algorithms themselves;finally, based on historical epistemology, it can be concluded that although the ways of justification differ between traditional experiments and dry experiments, the coherence and integration of the two ways of justification ensure that the normativity of scientific knowledge is not compromised.

关 键 词：科学实践哲学 计算生物学 干实验 语境二分 历史性知识论 

分 类 号：N02[自然科学总论—科学技术哲学]