Scientific Disagreement and Text Analysis

Pence, Charles H. [UCL]

My talk has two aims. First, I will discuss the uncertainty surrounding concepts in biodiversity and taxonomy, along with approaches developed in the philosophy of biology to resolve or eliminate it. It has long been recognized that disagreement is rampant in taxonomy, and that this disagreement over species inventories has a direct (and a potentially damaging) effect on our understanding of biodiversity, with concomitant worries about practice in conservation biology. Philosophers have offered a number of diagnoses of this state of affairs, including various kinds of fatalism, proposals for standardization, and careful analyses of the roles of social and ethical values in conservation. Second, I will present preliminary work from my group using empirical analyses of the literature in taxonomy with the goal of better understanding the factors that shape and modulate taxonomic disagreement – and thus, we hope, better understanding where this disagreement might negatively affect conservation efforts.