A Critical Reflection on Automated Science

This book provides a critical reflection on automated science and addresses the question whether the computational tools we developed in last decades are changing the way we humans do science. More concretely: Can machines replace scientists in crucial aspects of scientific practice? The contributors to this book re-think and refine some of the main concepts by which science is understood, drawing a fascinating picture of the developments we expect over the next decades of human-machine co-evolution. The volume covers examples from various fields and areas, such as molecular biology, climate modeling, clinical medicine, and artificial intelligence. The explosion of technological tools and drivers for scientific research calls for a renewed understanding of the human character of science. This book aims precisely to contribute to such a renewed understanding of science.

• automated science
• computational biology
• bio-medical sciences
• ethics of digital networks
• auto-reflexitivity
• technoscience and humanity
• technology and the body
• social games
• research ethics
• philosophy of technology

• Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy

  Marta Bertolaso

• Department of Philosophy, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

  Fabio Sterpetti

1.      Marta Bertolaso is Associate Professor for Philosophy of Science in the Faculty of Engineering and at the Institute of Philosophy of the Scientific and Technological Practice at Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome. Her research projects deal with new epistemological and philosophical challenges in the fields of biological and systemic development (with a special focus on cancer), scientific advancement, in silico medicine, modeling and validation processes. She has been lecturer for philosophy of science and bioethics in different universities in Italy, Munich and St. Louis (USA). Among her last publications there are Philosophy of Cancer – A Dynamic and Relational View. Springer Series in History, Philosophy & Theory of the Life Sciences, 2016, and The Future of Scientific Practice: ‘Bio-Techno-Logos’, Pickering & Chatto Publishers, London, 2015.

2.      Fabio Sterpetti is fixed-term Assistant Professor in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy, Sapienza University of Rome. His research focuses on some aspects surrounding the realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science, such as the difficulty of making scientific realism compatible with a naturalist stance, and related issues in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mathematics, such as the analysis of those attempts that aim to naturalize mathematics through Darwinism and those attempts that aim to formalize Darwinism through mathematics. He is also interested in some metaphilosophical issues, namely the metaphilosophical implications of Darwinism. He co-edited, with Emiliano Ippoliti and Thomas Nickles, the book Models and Inferences in Science, Springer, 2016.

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