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Key research themes
1. How do visual and multimodal inscriptions contribute epistemically to scientific understanding and knowledge generation?
This research area investigates the role of visual representations (photographs, diagrams, graphs, models) as autonomous epistemic objects in scientific practice and education. It focuses on how diverse types of inscriptions support knowledge formation, conceptual understanding, and reasoning, beyond merely conveying cognitive content. This theme matters because visual and multimodal inscriptions are integral in both expert scientific inquiry and science learning, yet their epistemic functions and potentials for supporting scientific explanation, argumentation, and communication remain underexplored.
Key finding: This paper identifies various types of inscriptions (photographs, drawings, diagrams, graphs, tables, equations) as distinct, autonomous carriers of meaning that communicate different aspects of scientific concepts. It... Read more
Key finding: Through historical case studies (DNA structure discovery, Faraday's magnetic lines of force) and contemporary experiments, this paper argues that visual representations function as epistemic objects in science, intrinsic to... Read more
Key finding: Employing Peirce’s triadic semiotics and transduction theory, this study demonstrates how a novel bridging model (cross-and-portion model) facilitates students’ coordination and meaning-making across submicroscopic and... Read more
Key finding: This paper analyses how teachers guide young students in constructing and transducing across multimodal scientific and mathematical representations during interdisciplinary inquiry in ecology. It reveals specific pedagogical... Read more
2. What philosophical frameworks best explain the nature and epistemic role of scientific representation, including its inferential and structural aspects?
This research theme addresses foundational philosophical questions about what constitutes scientific representation, how models represent their targets, and how this representational relation supports epistemic functions like knowledge generation and explanation. It critically evaluates multiple approaches—such as structural (homomorphism, similarity), inferentialist-expressivist, and causal-informational theories—assessing their capacity to resolve challenges including misrepresentation, the nature of surrogative inference, and the interplay between representation and scientific identity.
Key finding: This paper develops a thoroughgoing inferentialist-expressivist account wherein scientific representation is grounded in justified surrogative inferences from models to targets, foregoing traditional notions of denotation,... Read more
Key finding: Scrutinizing Suárez’s arguments against similarity-based views, this paper defends the thesis that similarity is a necessary condition for scientific representation, specifically that models must resemble targets in relevant... Read more
Key finding: This critical response to Andreas Bartels’ structural homomorphism account shows that homomorphism fails to adequately capture misrepresentation in scientific models, as illustrated in abstraction, pretence, and simulation... Read more
Key finding: Addressing critiques from enactivists, this paper defends causal-informational theories of mental representation by proposing that mental representations arise within cognitive architectures when they play explanatory roles... Read more
Key finding: Arguing that scientific representation is a special case of general representation, this paper contends that philosophical debates specifically targeting scientific representation often mistake broader representational issues... Read more
3. How do conceptual and symbolic systems, including visual and geometric models, mediate knowledge construction and identity in scientific learning and practice?
This theme explores the cognitive and educational dimensions of how scientific concepts and identities are developed and expressed through the use of varied representational systems, notably symbolic notations, geometric conceptualizations, and disciplinary conventions. It highlights the role of mental abstractions, inferential reasoning, and disciplinary enculturation in advancing conceptual understanding and professional identity, focusing on chemistry and cognitive models of conceptual representation.
Key finding: Introducing an inferentialist account of Lewis structures (LSs) in chemistry, the paper argues that LSs do not realistically depict molecules but serve as tools for surrogate reasoning within chemical practice. The use of LSs... Read more
Key finding: This paper proposes representing concepts as geometrical objects encoding mental features relevant to first-person experience and neural activity, bridging symbolic and neural levels of cognition. It argues that geometric... Read more
Key finding: Challenging the ontic conception of scientific explanation, this paper advocates a deflationary, communicative conception where explanations are cognitive products facilitating understanding rather than ontic exhibitions.... Read more