Nancy J. Nersessian, "Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science" (MIT Press, 2022)
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What is the central premise of Nancy Nersessian’s book on interdisciplinary model‑making?
Welcome to the new books network.
Hello and welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdoor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. And I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talise, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Nancy Nercessian, Regents Professor of Cognitive Science Emerita at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her new book, Interdisciplinarity in the Making, is just out from the MIT Press. Based on examining physics and the practices of physicists. Philosophers of science often see models in science as representational intermediaries between scientific theories and the world.
But what do scientists do when they don't yet have the models or the theories? In her new book, Nurcession reveals the bootstrapping creation of models into biomedical engineering and two integrated systems biology labs. Based on her cognitive ethnographic investigations, She argues that models are cognitive artifacts that are central components in distributed cognitive cultural systems that include the scientists that create and use them. Nussession shows how the scientists build the epistemic infrastructure they need. Along with the novel modeling practices that their cognitive artifacts enable. In order to do the science that they do. Her investigations also led to developing award-winning curricula for science students.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Nancy Nercesion. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Hello Carrie. Thank you for inviting
me.
Um, I'm looking forward to our conversation uh about your new book, Interdisciplinarity in the Making. Uh, before we get to the content of the book, tell us a bit about yourself and your interests and how you came to write the book.
Well yeah, I I think uh it's important to have a little bit of background um for the book since it is uh an unusual research project. Um So I always had a passion for math and physics. Ever since I was introduced to those subjects as a child. Um I uh was encouraged by my teachers because I was really good at it and them and in the Boston public schools it was hard to find kids who were good at it and loved it. Um, so I'm sure that's why I got all that attention. And I remember, um, you know, because I remember the teacher, it was around fourth grade, um, the specific teacher, was talking about scientists and their work and they talked about Einstein. And relativity theory. I of course didn't understand what it was about, but at the same time the what they said and the way they said it really inspired me.
Who is this guy Einstein and what's he about? Um and so I think that set me on a trajectory for ultimately wanting to become a theoretical physicist. So when I went to the university, um I was uh starting out in physics, and I was finding that I was getting more and more frustrated as the years went on, that the classes really weren't addressing now what I would understand as the conceptual nature. Oh. the of of science, the conceptual dimension. What does it tell us about the world? And so I um was well I was frustrated, I was doing the mathematics, I was a really good student, but somehow it wasn't getting at what I wanted. I didn't care about calculating where the cannonball would fall. I wanted to know why it was falling in that direction.
So um I by sheer chance and sheer luck. I was forced to take a course in philosophy. Um I wanted I wanted to get uh you had a choice of degrees. You could get a BS or a BA and I decided to get a BA because I had taken things like Russian literature and German and all kinds of other stuff and I wanted credit for it. So I had to take this course in philosophy, and to me, philosophy was naval contemplation. Oh God, I gotta do this. And you had a choice of a graduate student or a professor, so two credit or three credit course, and I thought, Well, I'm gonna suffer through a professor.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central premise of Nancy Nersessian’s book on interdisciplinary model‑making?
0:01–9:22
2
How does Nersessian’s personal academic journey shape her view of models as cognitive artifacts?
9:22–19:05
3
What analytical framework does she use to study distributed cognition in research labs?
19:05–32:18
4
How did the in‑vitro neuro‑engineering lab create the “Mayart” model system and what did it reveal?
32:18–45:36
5
What challenges did the researchers face with burst activity and how did they overcome them?
45:36–57:06
6
How did the cognitive‑ethnographic work lead to an award‑winning interdisciplinary curriculum?
57:06–1:05:16
7
What epistemic virtues (flexibility, resilience, interactional expertise) emerged from the labs?
1:05:16–1:06:14
8
What are Nersessian’s current projects and future directions for interdisciplinary research?
1:06:14–1:06:15
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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