
Nancy J NersessianHarvard University | Harvard · Department of Psychology
Nancy J Nersessian
AB, MS., PhD
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
July 2014 - present
August 1993 - June 2014
September 1987 - June 1993
Publications
Publications (182)
Scientific thinking is one of the most creative expressions of human cognition. This paper discusses my research contributions to the cognitive science of science. I have advanced the position that data on the cognitive practices of scientists drawn from extensive research into archival records of historical science or collected in extended ethnogr...
Scientists, either working alone or in groups, require rich cognitive, social, cultural, and material environments to accomplish their epistemic aims. There is research in the cognitive sciences that examines intelligent behavior as a function of the environment (“environmental perspectives”), which can be used to examine how scientists integrate “...
Ian Mitroff’s pioneering study of National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists working on the Apollo moon mission used innovative qualitative methods to advance understanding of the human side of science, offering a comprehensive and contextualized study of how scientists work together in pursuit of epistemic aims. To honor the 50th ann...
Scientific research is a highly complex and creative domain of human activity. In addition to its intrinsic value, understanding scientific thinking provides insight into the creative potential of human psychological capacities, as they are imbedded in rich social, material, and cultural environments. I discuss findings from my own investigations u...
A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods.
In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientis...
We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks, 1) to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science, and 2) to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical intere...
Building computational models of engineered exemplars, or prototypes, is a common practice in the bioengineering sciences. Computational models in this domain are often built in a patchwork fashion, drawing on data and bits of theory from many different domains, and in tandem with actual physical models, as the key objective is to engineer these pr...
We describe our efforts to address theoretical opportunities and methodological challenges that arose in the context of our ethnographic investigation of research labs in four different fields of bioengineering science. The multiyear study compared the common and specific features of four sites of interdisciplinary practice and aimed to analyze per...
The paper frames interdisciplinary research as creating complex, distributed cognitive-cultural systems. It introduces and elaborates on the method of cognitive ethnography as a primary means for investigating interdisciplinary cognitive and learning practices in situ. The analysis draws from findings of nearly 20 years of investigating such practi...
In this paper we aim to give an analysis and cognitive rationalization of a common practice or strategy of modeling in systems biology known as a middle-out modeling strategy. The strategy in the cases we look at is facilitated through the construction of what can be called mesoscopic models. Many models built in computational systems biology are m...
Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research gr...
Modern integrative systems biology defines itself by the complexity of the problems it takes on through computational modeling and simulation. However in integrative systems biology computers do not solve problems alone. Problem solving depends as ever on human cognitive resources. Current philosophical accounts hint at their importance, but it rem...
“The nature of the problems being formulated and addressed by systems biology creates interdependence among researchers in engineering, applied mathematics, computing, and biosciences. In this context, the prefix “trans” signifies that this enterprise seeps into, penetrates, specific prior practices of the mother fields and opens an emergent proble...
Much of the attention of philosophy of science, history of science, and psychology in the twentieth century has focused on the nature of conceptual change. Conceptual change in science has occupied pride of place in these disciplines, as either the subject of inquiry or the source of ideas about the nature of conceptual change in other domains. The...
By focusing on episodes from a case study of healthcare design practice investigated in situ, the aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the nature and use of evidence in design. Our account portrays a practice where sources other than scientific research findings were also considered. Based on observations and interviews from th...
We introduce “epistemic identities” as a concept helpful for understanding the dynamics of interdisciplinary science practice. After acknowledging the ambiguity of “identity” and examining divergent meanings, we argue that analysis of identity is necessary in order to account for social and personal dimensions of practice non-reductively, and to be...
In this chapter we present some of the central philosophical issues emerging from the increasingly expansive and sophisticated roles computational modeling is playing in the natural and social sciences. Many of these issues concern the adequacy of more traditional philosophical descriptions of scientific practice and accounts of justification for h...
Integrative systems biology is an emerging field that attempts to integrate computation, applied mathematics, engineering concepts and methods, and biological experimentation in order to model large-scale complex biochemical networks. The field is thus an important contemporary instance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving complex problems....
We begin our commentary by summarizing the commonalities and differences in cognitive phenomena across cultures, as found by the seven papers of this topic. We then assess the commonalities and differences in how our various authors have approached the study of cognitive diversity, and speculate on the need for, and potential of, cross-disciplinary...
This paper reports a study of a multi-disciplinary design team operating in a sophisticated socio-cognitive and material environment. Following an ethnographic approach we aimed at understanding the nature of the complex interactions within the team, and, specifically, the role of designers in interdisciplinary contexts as they engage with other ex...
A growing number of philosophers of science make use of qualitative empirical data, a development that may reconfigure the relations between philosophy and sociology of science and that is reminiscent of efforts to integrate history and philosophy of science. Therefore, the first part of this introduction to the volume Empirical Philosophy of Scien...
We identify and address a set of foundational questions relevant to the project of an empirical philosophy of science, the most basic of which is the nature of the empirical. We review the task of distinguishing empirical from non-empirical questions by providing examples from our analysis of cognitive and learning practices in biomedical engineeri...
New essays by leading philosophers and cognitive scientists that present recent findings and theoretical developments in the study of concepts.
The study of concepts has advanced dramatically in recent years, with exciting new findings and theoretical developments. Core concepts have been investigated in greater depth and new lines of inquiry have...
In this paper we take as our point of departure Kostas Gavroglu and Yorgos Goudaroulis’s insight that, in the process of describing and explaining novel phenomena, scientific concepts are taken “out of” their original theoretical context, acquire additional meaning, and become relatively autonomous. We first present their account of how concepts ar...
Disciplines are distinguished partly for historical reasons and reasons of administrative convenience (such as the organization of teaching and appointments) and partly because the theories which we construct to solve our problems have a tendency to grow into unified systems. But all this classification and distinction is a comparatively unimportan...
The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produc...
In this paper we draw upon rich ethnographic data of two systems biology labs to explore the roles of explanation and understanding in large-scale systems modeling. We illustrate practices that depart from the goal of dynamic mechanistic explanation for the sake of more limited modeling goals. These processes use abstract mathematical formulations...
Novel computational representations, such as simulation models of complex systems and video games for scientific discovery (Foldit, EteRNA etc.), are dramatically changing the way discoveries emerge in science and engineering. The cognitive roles played by such computational representations in discovery are not well understood. We present a theoret...
This paper presents an observational study of the activities of an interdisciplinary design team tasked with designing a healthcare facility in a developing country. The intent of the team was to implement «evidence-based design». Tracking the disciplinary interactions of the participants, we investigate emerging issues concerning integration of ev...
In this paper, we provide a novel analysis of the affordances and trade-offs of different strategies for integrating model-building and experimentation in integrative systems biology. Unimodal strategies rely on collaboration between experimenters and modelers in distinct laboratories. In a bimodal strategy modelers perform their own experiments. E...
We historically and conceptually situate distributed cognition by drawing attention to important similarities in assumptions and methods with those of American “functional psychology” as it emerged in contrast and complement to controlled laboratory study of the structural components and primitive “elements” of consciousness. Functional psychology...
I’ve studied the practices of scientists, both through historical research and, for the last 12 years, by studying research laboratories in the bioengineering sciences. I want to explore what the practices of scientists engaged in biosystem simulation modeling can tell us about explanation, understanding, and control. In the past, I have looked at...
We align with other challenges to the idea that emotion-free science, even in principle, is a productive scientific value. We emphasize that emotion can be seen to have important functional benefits for the research scientist and the wider science. Here we analyze the function of anthropomorphic expressions from practicing bioengineering scientists...
In this article, we provide a case study examining how integrative systems biologists build simulation models in the absence of a theoretical base. Lacking theoretical starting points, integrative systems biology researchers rely cognitively on the model-building process to disentangle and understand complex biochemical systems. They build simulati...
The importation of computational methods into biology is generating novel methodological strategies for managing complexity which philosophers are only just starting to explore and elaborate. This paper aims to enrich our understanding of methodology in integrative systems biology, which is developing novel epistemic and cognitive strategies for ma...
Integrative systems biology (ISB) is among the most innovative fields of contemporary science, bringing together scientists from a range of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to tackle biological complexity through computational and mathematical modeling. The result is a plethora of problem-solving techniques, theoretical perspectives, lab-structu...
Background
Increasingly, modern engineers are designing miniature devices that integrate complex activities, actions, processes, or operations involving many steps, persons, and equipment; a good example is a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip device. The design of such devices is cognitively demanding and requires the generation of multiple model represen...
In any effort to establish the parameters of a psychology of science we face preliminary questions that are not empirical in a strict sense, beginning with how to demarcate the core concepts in play (science, psychology). A related question is one we take up in this paper: What is the appropriate unit of analysis for a psychology of science? This q...
This article addresses “concept formation in the wild” through examining the relations between concept formation and physical and computational simulation modeling practices in two research laboratories in the bioengineering sciences. It argues that processes of concept formation and of building distributed cognitive systems are deeply entwined.
Culture appears to have a greater influence on software-engineering practice than originally envisioned. Many recent studies have reported that cultural factors greatly impact global software-engineering (GSE) practice. However, many of these studies characterize culture as a set of dimensions (e.g., Hofstede's), which significantly limits the mean...
The Jewish Museum in Berlin is the first major building of Daniel Libeskind [1,2]. The project for the museum has instigated a wealth of discussions in architectural circles and achieved a rare status of attracting the attention of scholars from other disciplines. Kurt W. Forster put the design for the Jewish Museum on a par with Piranesi's Carceri...
This presentation will discuss a multi-year NSF-sponsored translational research project that has been examining cognitive and learning practices in bio-engineering sciences research labs. The objective is both to understand the nature of the modeling practices in these areas and the challenges they create for learning. As part of the project we ha...
This article examines the extent to which specific features of interdisciplinary research are accurately reflected in selected bibliometric measures of scholarly publications over time. To test the validity of these measures, we compare knowledge of research processes and impact based on ethnographic studies of a well-established researcher’s labor...
We report on an ethnographic study of the work practice and discovery process in a systems biology lab, and outline a tabletop visualization that was developed based on this study, in collaboration with the researchers. The feedback from the researchers on the current prototype is presented, and ongoing revisions are outlined. We conclude with some...
The practice of outsourcing software testing tooffshore companies has grown significantly. Moreover, theoutsourced, offshored software testing (OOST) practice demands that test engineers at the vendor organization adopt their client's (or potential users') perspective to perform thetesting tasks effectively. However, vendor test engineers andclient...
This paper presents an analysis of emotional and affectively toned discourse in biomedical engineering researchers’ accounts
of their problem solving practices. Drawing from our interviews with scientists in two laboratories, we examine three classes
of expression: explicit, figurative and metaphorical, and attributions of emotion to objects and ar...
This article presents a translational model of curricular design in which findings from investigating learning in university BME research laboratories (in vivo sites) are translated into design principles for educational laboratories (in vitro sites). Using these principles, an undergraduate systems physiology lab class was redesigned and then eval...
This study examines the role of generic abstraction in architectural design, specifically how it facilitates exploration through formulation of a family of design schemes. We maintain that exploration in design, as it is in scientific discovery, is not solely based on serendipity, but that designers often strategically structure their explorations....
We illustrate the usefulness of positioning theory for analyzing identity formations and their relation to problem solving and innovation in research science contexts. We analyze discursive strategies in terms of rights and duties enabling forms of sense-making in two biomedical engineering laboratories engaged in cutting-edge research in a major u...
Interdisciplinary collaboration figures centrally in frontier research in many fields. Participants in inter- disciplinary projects face problems they would not encounter within their own disciplines. Among those are problems of mutual understanding, of finding a language to communicate both within projects and with the scientific community and soc...
Science as Psychology reveals the complexity and richness of rationality by demonstrating how social relationships, emotion, culture and identity, are implicated in the problem-solving practices of laboratory scientists. The authors gather and analyze interview and observational data from innovation-focused laboratories in the engineering sciences...
Devices and model-systems are what socio-cultural studies of science refer to as the “material culture” of the community, but they also function as what cognitive studies of science refer to as “cognitive artifacts” participating in the reasoning, representational, and problem-solving processes of a distributed system. The point is that within the...
Designing, building, and experimenting with physical simulation models are central problem-solving practices in the engineering sciences. Model-based simulation is an epistemic activity that includes exploration, generation and testing of hypotheses, explanation, and inference. This paper argues that to interpret and understand how these simulation...
We present an analysis of the work of human participants in addressing design problems by analogy. We describe a computer pro- gram, called Galatea, that simulates the visual input and output of four experimental participants. Since Galatea is an operational com- puter program, it makes specific commitments about the visual representations and reas...
Analogies are ubiquitous in science, both in theory and experiments. Based on an ethnographic study of a research lab in neural engineering, we focus on a case of conceptual innovation where the cross-breeding of two types of analogies led to a breakthrough. In vivo phenomena were recreated in two analogical forms: one, as an in vitro physical mode...
Concept formation and change—what I here call “conceptual innovation”—is one of the most creative dimensions of scientific
practice. Throughout the history of the sciences changes in representational structure have provided “revolutionary” understandings
of nature. As with other creative outcomes, conceptual revolutions are still widely perceived t...
Even though information visualization (InfoVis) research has matured in recent years, it is generally acknowledged that the field still lacks supporting, encompassing theories. In this paper, we argue that the distributed cognition framework can be used to substantiate the theoretical foundation of InfoVis. We highlight fundamental assumptions and...
An account that analyzes the dynamic reasoning processes implicated in a fundamental problem of creativity in science: how does genuine novelty emerge from existing representations?
How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of...
There has been a growing interest to develop technologies for laboratory environments. However, existing systems are under- deployed in real research labs. In order to create more successful technologies for the creative laboratory setting, we need a deeper understanding of the values of the researchers we are designing for and the unique roles of...
The notion of mutation is applicable to the generation of novel designs and solutions in engineering and science. This suggests that engineers and scientists have to work against the biases identified in counterfactual thinking. Therefore, imagination appears a lot less rational than claimed in the target article.
People do not realize how great was the influence of Lorentz on the development of modern physics. We cannot imagine how it would have gone had not Lorentz made so many greut contributions.
The physicist of the present generation regards the point of view achieved by Lorentz as the only possible one; at the time, however, it was a surprising and au...
Critiques of cognitive psychology and cognitive science principally target cognitivism, defined here as doctrinal commitment to computational processing over internal representations as a model of human intelligence. This paper reviews the principal points of critique, but argues that some prominent efforts within cognitive science currently exhibi...
The paper argues that the practice of thought experimenting enables scientists to follow through the implications of a way of representing nature by simulating an exemplary or representative situation that is feasible within that representation. What distinguishes thought experimenting front logical argument and other forms of propositional reasoni...
This paper examines the nature of model-based reasoning in the interplay between theory and experiment in the context of biomedical engineering research laboratories, where problem solving involves using physical models. These "model systems" are sites of experimentation where in vitro models are used to screen, control, and simulate specific aspec...
Current models of analogical reasoning assume that representations of source examples and target problems occur in an amodal format--that is, a representation whose construction and processing are independent of activity in the perceptual and motor cortices of the brain. We examined the possible use of kinesthetic information--perceptual structures...
Abstract Recent cognitive science frameworks depicting cognitive processing as 'distributed’ across persons and environments require new ways of conceptualizing representation. That is, if representation is to be retained as an explanatory concept, it must foreground the interactive participation of persons and of different representational formats...
A central challenge for science studies researchers in developing accounts of knowledge construction in science and engineering is to integrate the cognitive, social, cultural, and material dimensions of practice. Within science studies there is a perceived divide between cognitive practices, on the one hand, and cultural practices, on the other. A...
We present a computational model of case-based visual problem solving. The Galatea model and the two experimental participants modeled in it show that 1) visual knowledge is sufficient for transfer of some problem- solving procedures, 2) visual knowledge facilitates transfer even when non-visual knowledge might be available, and 3) the successful t...
Visual analogy is believed to be important in human problem solving. Yet, there are few computational models of visual analogy.
In this paper, we present a preliminary computational model of visual analogy in problem solving. The model is instantiated
in a computer program, called Galatea, which uses a language for representing and transferring vis...
Complex problem solving typically involves the generation of a procedure consisting of an ordered sequence of steps. Analogical reasoning is one strategy for solving complex problems, and visual reasoning is another. Visual analogies pertain to analogies based only on visual knowledge. In this paper, we describe the use of Galatea, a computa- tiona...
Cases where analogy has played a significant role in the formation of a new scientific concept are well-documented. Yet, how
is it that genuinely new representations can be constructed from existing representations? It is argued that the process of
‘generic modeling’ enables abstraction of features common to both the domain of the source of the ana...
This study examines the role of "conceptual diagrams" in architectural design, specifically how they facilitate conceptual elaboration in problem-solving processes. We single out a class of conceptual diagrams that we claim to be "double-referential," in that their structure corresponds to the generic structure of both the design conceptualization...
This article presents qualitative data and offers some innovative
theoretical approaches to frame the analysis of gender in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) settings. It begins with
a theoretical discussion of a discursive approach to gender that
captures how gender is lived "on the ground." The authors argue for a
less indi...
Over the last two years, we have been conducting NSF-funded research on learning in two biomedical engineering research laboratories. Our goal is to understand the mechanisms that support student learning in such innovation communities. We have identified five characteristics of what we call "agentive" learning environments, which seem to account f...
One of the defining characteristics of engineering is the use of models in problem solving. Graphic models or cartoon-like depictions of an identified body of interest are used to design, to simulate, to test hypotheses and to make predictions. While students are repeatedly exposed to free body diagrams, circuit schematics and other forms of pictor...
We have been studying cognition and learning in research laboratories in the field of biomedical engineering (Nersessian, Kurz-Milcke, Newstetter & Davies 2003; Newstetter, Kurz-Milcke & Nersessian, in press[a]). Through our combining of ethnography and cognitive-historical analysis in studying these settings we have been led to understand these la...
Research laboratories or what we are calling innovation communities, are potentially rich sites for understanding situated learning since their goal is to develop new knowledge and innovative practices. Here we report on a two year study of learning in a tissue engineering lab, an evolving community of practice in the historically recent field of b...