Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T21:57:51.922Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Time of Data: Timescales of Data Use in the Life Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sabina Leonelli
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers the temporal dimension of data processing and use and the ways in which it affects the production and interpretation of knowledge claims. I start by distinguishing the time at which data collection, dissemination, and analysis occur (Data time, or Dt) from the time in which the phenomena for which data serve as evidence operate (Phenomena time, or Pt). Building on the analysis of two examples of data reuse from modeling and experimental practices in biology, I then argue that Dt affects how researchers (1) select and interpret data as evidence and (2) identify and understand phenomena.

Type
Data
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 741 - 754
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This research was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement 335925 (project: The Epistemology of Data-Intensive Science) and the ARC Discovery Grant Organisms and Us (DP160102989). I am very grateful to Dan Bebber, Robert de Bruin, Midori Harris, Val Woods, Steve Oliver, and the many others who wish to remain anonymous for taking time from their schedules to discuss their research with me. Many thanks also to the audience and other participants in the symposium Data in Time: The Epistemology of Historical Data at the 2016 PSA/HSS meeting in Atlanta, where this article was presented; to participants in the Biological Interest Group in Exeter, particularly Niccolò Tempini, Brian Rappert, Ann-Sophie Meincke, Dan Nicholson, Giovanna Colombetti, Thomas Bonnin, and Staffan Müller-Wille for their comments; and to Adrian Currie, Alison Wylie, James McAllister, James Griesemer, Rachel Ankeny, William Bechtel, John Dupré, and David Sepkoski for useful discussions.

References

Bebber, Dan P., Holmes, Timothy, and Gurr, Sarah J.. 2014. “The Global Spread of Crop Pests and Pathogens.” Global Ecology and Biogeography 23 (12): 1398–407..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, William. 2006. Discovering Cell Mechanisms: The Creation of Modern Cell Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bogen, James, and Woodward, James. 1988. “Saving the Phenomena.” Philosophical Review 97 (3): 303–52..10.2307/2185445CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caetano, Catia, Limbo, Oliver, Farmer, Sarah, Klier, Steffi, Dovey, Claire, Russell, Paul, Antonius, Robertus, and de Bruin, Maria. 2014. “Tolerance of De-regulated G1/S Transcription Depends on Critical G1/S Regulon Genes to Prevent Catastrophic Genome Instability.” Cell Reports 9 (6): 2279–89..10.1016/j.celrep.2014.11.039CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, Robert, and Wylie, Alison. 2016. Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Cleland, Carol. 2002. “Methodological and Epistemic Differences between Historical Science and Experimental Science.” Philosophy of Science 69 (3): 474–96..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, Adrian. 2018. Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, Adrian, and Turner, Derek. 2016. “Introduction: Scientific Knowledge of the Deep Past.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 55:43–46.10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.09.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feest, Uljana. 2011. “What Exactly Is Stabilized When Phenomena Are Stabilized?” Synthese 182 (1): 57–71..10.1007/s11229-009-9616-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griesemer, James R., and Yamashita, Grant. 2005. “Zeitmanagement bei Modellsystemen: Drei Beispiele aus der Evolutionsbiologie” [Managing time in model systems: Illustrations from evolutionary biology]. In Lebendige Zeit, ed. Schmidgen, H., 213–41. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos.Google Scholar
Leonelli, Sabina. 2015. “What Counts as Scientific Data? A Relational Framework.” Philosophy of Science 82:810–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonelli, Sabina 2016. Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonelli, Sabina 2017. “[DATA_SCIENCE] Interviews PomBase Users, January–February 2016.” Figshare. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.5484010.v1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonelli, Sabina, and Ankeny, Rachel A.. 2012. “Re-thinking Organisms: The Epistemic Impact of Databases on Model Organism Biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1): 29–36..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massimi, Michela. 2009. “From Data to Phenomena: A Kantian Stance.” Synthese 182:101–16.Google Scholar
McAllister, James W. 2010. “The Ontology of Patterns in Empirical Data.” Philosophy of Science 77 (5): 804–14..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAllister, James W. 2018. “Scientists’ Reuse of Old Empirical Data: Epistemological Aspects.” Philosophy of Science, in this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Maureen A., and Soyer, Orkun S.. 2012. “The Roles of Integration in Molecular Systems Biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1): 58–68..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sober, E. 1988. Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Derek. 2004. “Local Underdetermination in Historical Science.” Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 209–30..Google Scholar
Woodward, James. 2000. “Data, Phenomena, and Reliability.” Philosophy of Science 67 (Proceedings): S163–S179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James 2010. “Phenomena, Signal, and Noise.” Philosophy of Science 77:792–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 2017. “How Archeological Evidence ‘Bites Back’: Strategies for Putting Old Data to Work in New Ways.” Science, Technology and Human Values 42 (2): 203–25..CrossRefGoogle Scholar