Emotions in scientific practice

ABSTRACT

For a long time, emotions were seen as incompatible with rationality and objectivity of science, and so were a marginal topic in the philosophy of science. This trend has changed progressively since it was determined that objectivity is much linked to social factors while rationality can’t do without emotions. As a result, emotions are now slowly finding their way into our understanding of what science is. Here, I make an overview of some aspects of science where emotions and scientific reasoning seem to come into tight contact. For my survey, I will consider such themes as scientific motivation, scientific evaluations, scientific explanations, scientific understanding, scientific imagination, and coherence in science. Using these examples, I discuss the epistemic role of emotions in scientific progress. In conclusion, I advocate for a nuanced view of emotions in science as values that contribute to both epistemic and humanistic dimensions of science.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions in science
• aesthetics of science
• scientific understanding
• values in science
• scientific narratives
• scientific imagination
• scientific creativity
• curiosity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Emil Toescu, Adam Tuboly, Adrain Currie and Alice Murphy for the helpful feedback on this manuscript as well as Swiss National Science Foundation for funding and support (Grant number P500PH_206687).

Notes

1 Scientists interested in philosophy of science might want to look into collection edited by Kampourakis and Uller (2020).

2 The status of the computer-based simulations is presently debated: on the one hand they involve math and deductions, but, on the other, they rely on brute-force calculations made by computer, that is, a material-based instrument. However, the argument holds since the computations are typically used when the mathematical model cannot be solved analytically.

3 A detailed overview of debates on what is understanding can be found in Baumberger, Beisbart and Brun (2017) and Hannon (2020).

4 Some philosophers take thought experiments to be merely arguments dressed in picturesque clothes (e.g., Norton 2004). This view has been criticised on the grounds that the epistemic import of thought experiments is quite larger than argument-view suggest (Murphy 2020b; Stuart 2020b; Meynell 2017).

5 It is important to note that narratives don’t only mean verbal stories. There are different ways of narrating content, which can include, for instance, the use of images and diagrams. Perhaps, what unifies different instances of narrative is the critical importance of ordering. As Morgan (2017) suggests, re-ordering events in a narrative must result into a different story.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant P500PH_206687.

Notes on contributors

Anatolii Kozlov

Anatolii Kozlov is a philosopher of science interested in scientific emotions, imagination, understanding and aesthetics in science and scientific practice. He obtained his empirical biology degree researching Drosophila circadian rhythms. Further he won an SNSF Spark Rapid Funding for Unconventional Ideas for the project on epistemic role of emotions in science, thus transitioning to philosophy. His current project is focused on aesthetics of scientific models and narratives.