Título: WHEN ECOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY MEET: CONSTRUCTING EXPLANATION AND ASSESSING UNDERSTANDING IN SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE
Discente: Luana Poliseli
Orientadores: Charbel Niño El-Hani (UFBa) e Federica Russo (Uva)
Debatedor: Juan Manuel Sánchez Arteaga
Resumo: Biological explanations usually use mechanisms to provide understanding of life phenomena and, in ecology, mechanisms are not only used to derive descriptive explanations but also predictive models of ecological systems. Although the widespread usage, these mechanisms for long have been developed with no solid framework concerning strategies of models and mechanisms constructions. Thus, if mechanisms are used to provide explanations and understanding, how can understanding exist when there is no framework to enable so? In this thesis, I consider a case study from ecology that aimed to construct a set of heuristics to guide the development of an explanatory model of an ecological phenomenon: the functional structure of autochthonous bee’s community as well as the maintenance of their pollination services in the agricultural system. Therefore, a communicative bridge between ecology and philosophy of science (PoS) was constructed reflecting a partnership between two Ph.D. students. In Part I of this thesis I investigated if PoS, through heuristic process, can help construct explanations in ecology. In Part II, I examined how understanding of an explanation in ecology is achieved by scientist themselves during the process of model construction. And, in Part III I do a metanalysis about the interdisciplinarity and heuristics bias in the nature of sciences and in philosophy of science in practice (PoSiP). As results, I assert that (i) an explicative model was successfully created using as an instrument the heuristics derived from the theoretical framework between those areas; (ii) the understanding process happened through distinct levels and is not always related to normativity, on the contrary, is also deeply related to abstraction and intuition; (iii) PoS, through heuristics, enhance the scientists virtues by means of improvement of his skills; (iv) interdisciplinarity and heuristics work as a toolbox for PoSiP and (v) it reflects different ways of producing science than those defended by Kuhn, Lakatos & Shapere.
Português, Brasil