J Gen Philos Sci (2009) 40:125128

DOI 10.1007/s10838-009-9086-0
CONFERENCE REPORT

Data-Phenomena-Theories: Whats the Notion

of a Scientific Phenomenon Good for?
Jochen Apel Monika Dullstein Pawel Radchenko

Published online: 4 August 2009

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

The international symposium DataPhenomenaTheories: Whats the notion of a

scientific phenomenon good for? took place at the University of Heidelberg from 11th to
13th of September 2008. The symposium was organized by the research group Causality,
Cognition and the Constitution of Scientific Phenomena (Jochen Apel, Monika Dullstein
and Pavel Radchenko) in cooperation with the Philosophy Department in Heidelberg (Peter
McLaughlin, Andreas Kemmerling) and the IWH Heidelberg. The aim of the symposium
was to illuminate the notion of a scientific phenomenona notion that is common in
science, but, with a few exceptions in the 1980s, has not been systematically discussed in
philosophy of science. The symposium also commemorated the late Daniela Bailer-Jones,
a philosopher of science who had initiated and directed the research group in its work on
scientific phenomena.
The conference focused on a proposal put forward by Jim Bogen and Jim Woodward in
a series of papers in the 1980s. Rejecting the empiricist notion of scientific phenomena as
observable facts, they had suggested taking scientific phenomena to be non-observable
patterns that can be inferred from data and should be explained by scientific theories. The
talks given at the conference can be aligned in four broad topics:
1.
2.
3.
4.

General issues concerning the notion of a scientific phenomenon

Epistemological questions related to the Bogen-Woodward account
Metaphysical implications of the Bogen-Woodward account
Further elaboration and application of the Bogen-Woodward account.

J. Apel (&)
P. Radchenko

Philosophisches Seminar, Universitat Heidelberg, Schulgasse 6, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: j.apel@uni-heidelberg.de
P. Radchenko
e-mail: pawel.radchenko@urz.uni-hd.de
M. Dullstein (&)
Klinik fur Allgemeine Psychiatrie, Universitatsklinikum Heidelberg, Vostrae 4,
69115 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: monika.dullstein@med.uni-heidelberg.de

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Among the talks which addressed the topic of the conference from a general perspective
was Brigitte Falkenburgs talk Phenomena, Data and Experiment in Physics. Falkenburg pointed out that the different conceptions of scientific phenomena are intimately
connected to particular positions in the debate on scientific realism. As examples, she
discussed Kants, Newtons and Bohrs notion of phenomena as well as the current use of
the concept in particle physics and quantum optics. She compared those conceptions to the
work on phenomena in Daniela Bailer-Jones forthcoming book on scientific models.
Peter Machamer emphasized in his talk Data, Phenomena, Reliability and Validity
that it is, among other things, scientists epistemic aims and pragmatic interests that
determine what counts as data or phenomena. Thus, the individuation of phenomena is
context-dependent. He also focused on the validity of inferences from data to phenomena,
which, he argued, is not guaranteed exclusively by their reliability.
A second group of talks focused more closely on the BogenWoodward account raising
epistemological questions of how to acquire knowledge of phenomena. In his talk
Refusing the Bottom-up Construction of Scientific Phenomena, Samuel Schindler tried
to rebut Bogen and Woodwards (1988) thesis that no causal-explanatory theory is necessary to establish claims about phenomena. Schindler presented two case studies, the
discovery of the zebra-pattern of magnetic anomalies on the sea floor and the discovery of
weak neutral currents. He argued that in both cases experimental procedures were not
sufficient to establish the respective phenomenon. Rather, the very theory under test
influenced the inferences from data to phenomena.
In Data meet Theory: Up Close and Personal Ioannis Votsis focused on Bogen and
Woodwards claim that models of confirmation which represent evidential relations as
inferential relations between sentences (the so-called IRS accounts) are misguided. Votsis
rejected the arguments provided by Bogen and Woodward against the IRS accounts and
highlighted some neglected merits of these accounts.
In response to these critics, Jim Woodward defended the Bogen-Woodward account in
his paper Data and Phenomena Revisited. He emphasized that inferences from data to
phenomena always require additional assumptions that go beyond the data. Woodward
reasoned that there is no universal answer to the question of the extent to which inferences
from data to phenomena are theory-laden or data-driven.
Emergent Biological Phenomena was the title of Sandra Mitchells talk. She pointed
out that many biological systems, such as flocks of starlings, show complex and unpredictable behavior. This explains why the discovery of regular and stable phenomena in
biology is often intricate and highly context-dependent. Mitchell claimed that at least a
minimal theory of the phenomenon is needed to determine what counts as good data for
establishing that phenomenon.
In his talk From Data to Phenomena: Signatures of a Quantum Phase Transition
Eran Tal invoked the distinction between data and phenomena as well as an account of
evidential reliability put forward by Woodward (2000) in order to explain why computer
simulations might help to establish the reliability of experimental data. To illustrate his
claim he presented a case study of the recent detection of the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator
phase transition in ultracold atomic gases.
In addition to these epistemological issues some speakers at the conference discussed
the metaphysical implications of Bogen and Woodwards account. James McAllister raised
the question What do Patterns in Empirical Data Sets Tell Us About the Structure of the
World?. He started off by identifying scientific phenomena with patterns exhibited in
empirical data sets. As any data set can in principle be decomposed in infinitely many ways
into a pattern and a noise term, there is, he argued, no reason to believe that some patterns

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are more real than others. For this reason, we should conceptualize the world as radically
polymorphic, i.e., as objectively containing all possible patterns into which data sets can be
decomposed.
Jim Bogens talk was titled Saving the Phenomena and Saving the Phenomena. He
criticized empiricist philosophy of science in the tradition of Duhem and van Fraassen.
Based on examples from neuroscience, he argued that empiricism is both unfaithful to real
world scientific practice and epistemically imprudent, if not incoherent. In particular,
Bogen put forward the thesis that it is the commitment to the existence of unobservable
causal mechanisms that licenses us to draw inductive generalizations from data. Therefore,
phenomena should be conceptualized realistically, i.e., as stable and regular features of the
world.
Michela Massimi also drew attention to the metaphysical assumptions behind Bogen
and Woodwards distinction between data and phenomena. In her talk From Data to
Phenomena: A Kantian Stance she argued for an intermediate position between Bogen
and Woodwards full-fletched realism and McAllisters conventionalist position. According to her view, phenomena are neither found ready-made in nature nor are they stipulated
by investigators. Rather, they have to be understood as objects of experience in a Kantian
sense.
Finally, several speakers further elaborated and applied Bogen and Woodwards distinction. Mauricio Suarez focused on a yet unconsidered asymmetry between theories and
phenomena. Based on his inferential conception of scientific representation he argued in
his talk Data, Phenomena and Representation that theories may often represent phenomena, while phenomena are not representational at all. He illustrated this asymmetry by
examples from cosmology and astrophysics.
Uljana Feest raised the question What exactly is Stabilized when Phenomena are
Stabilized? and argued that the process of stabilizing a phenomenon is a complex
interplay between concept formation and data production. By stressing the importance of
the difference between phenomena and concepts of phenomena, Feest resolved some
ambiguities in the data-phenomena-distinction as well as in the closely related philosophical program of New Experimentalism.
In his talk What scientific phenomena are not Jochen Apel criticized an interpretation
of Bogen and Woodwards account according to which scientific phenomena are entities to
which we have specific ways of epistemic access. By contrast Apel proposed to specify the
notion of a phenomenon by its functional roles in scientific practice and by scientists
epistemic attitudes towards putative claims about phenomena.
Stephan Hartmann spoke on Theories, Models and Phenomena: A Bayesian Account.
Hartmann proposed a Bayesian account of theories according to which theories should be
understood as Bayesian networks of interrelated models. Each model can thereby be said to
account for a particular phenomenon within the domain of the theory. In this context
Hartmann emphasized the crucial role of coherence between these models when it comes
to questions of theory-acceptance.
In his talk Phenomena and Idealization Andreas Huttemann called attention to the
fact that scientists often rely on idealizations of various kinds in order to explain scientific
phenomena. He provided a classification of various kinds of idealization to elucidate some
aspects of the relation between data and phenomena and tried to show that at least some
kinds of idealization are truth-conducive.
Finally, Benedikt Lowe and Thomas Muller presented the talk Which phenomena for
philosophy of science? offering a meta-philosophical application of Bogen and Woodwards distinction to philosophy of science itself. What philosophers (should) do, can,

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according to Lowe and Muller, be seen as an iterative process consisting of three steps:
theory formation, phenomenology and assessment of theory. Philosophers shape the
phenomena they investigate by iteratively repeating these three steps. Lowe and Muller
backed up their claims with results from their research in the philosophy of mathematics.
Additional information including abstracts of all talks can be found at http://www.
philosophie.uni-hd.de/dbj/phenomena08.html. A selection of the papers presented at the
conference will be published in a special issue of Synthese in 2010 (online first versions of
the articles are already available on the journals website).
The symposium was supported by the Emmy-Noether-Programm der Deutschen
Forschungsgemeinschaft and by Stiftung Universitat Heidelberg.

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