CFP: Synthese Special Issue: "Amalgamating Evidence in the Sciences"

Amalgamating evidence from heterogeneous sources and across levels of enquiry is becoming increasingly important in many pure and applied sciences. “Systems approaches” play major roles in a number of (social) sciences, e.g., biology, ecology, medicine, sociology, geography, climate science and economics. The amalgamation of different models, scales, and types of data continues to be central in these sciences.

This proposed special issue provides a forum for researchers from diverse scientific and philosophical perspectives to discuss evidence amalgamation, its methodologies, its history, its pitfalls and its potential. In particular, we encourage critical analysis of past and current practice highlighting inadequacies and advances.  

We are calling for contributions which address normative, historical and descriptive aspects of evidence amalgamation in the (social) sciences. Specific areas of interest include (but are not limited to):  

• Commonalities and differences of methodologies for amalgamation across different sciences.
• The roles of models and mechanisms in evidence amalgamation.
• Normative – epistemological and ethical – issues concerning the amalgamation of evidence.
• Basic issues in the philosophy of science relevant to evidence amalgamation such as: unification, justification, explanation, coherence, reductionism, incommensurability, inductive methods, and causal inference.
• Decision and policy-making with large heterogeneous bodies of evidence.
• Methodology of meta-analysis and systematic reviews.
• Foundational issues of data integration and fusion within and across disciplines.

Submissions

Contributions must be original and not submitted elsewhere. Each submission should include a separate title page containing the author(s) contact details, a brief abstract and list of five keywords. All papers will be subject to double-blind peer-review. 

Manuscripts should be submitted online through the Synthese's Electronic Editorial System (Editorial Manager): https://www.editorialmanager.com/synt 

Please choose the appropriate article type for your submission by selecting S.I.: Amalgamating Evidence in the Sciences from the relevant drop down menu. 

For further details on how to prepare the manuscripts, please follow the author guidelines available on the journal’s website: http://www.springer.com/philosophy/epistemology+and+philosophy+of+science/journal/11229?detailsPage=pltci_2998239 

The deadline for submissions is February 15th,  2017.

Editors

Samuel C. Fletcher (Minnesota/MCMP)

Juergen Landes (MCMP)

Roland Poellinger (MCMP)