The Main Faces of Robustness

• Authors: Boniolo Giovanni , Andreoletti Mattia , Boem Federico , Ratti Emanuele
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In the last decade, robustness has been extensively mentioned and discussed in biology as well as in the philosophy of the life sciences. Nevertheless, from both fields, someone has affirmed that this debate has resulted in more semantic confusion than in semantic clearness. Starting from this claim, we wish to offer a sort of prima facie map of the different usages of the term. In this manner we would intend to predispose a sort of “semantic platform” which could be exploited by those who wish to discuss or simply use it. We do this by starting from a core distinction between the robustness of representations, which is a philosophy of science issue, and the representations of robustness, which instead pertains to science. We illustrate our proposal with examples from biology, physics and mathematics.

Keywords

EN

robustness; representation; robustness of representations; representations of robustness; scientific terminology

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Journal: Dialogue and Universalism
• Year: 2017
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 157-172

Contributors

author

Boniolo Giovanni

• Università di Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara, 64a, 44121Ferrara, Italy.

author

Andreoletti Mattia

• European Institute of Oncology (IEO), Milano, Italy.

author

Boem Federico

• University of Milano.

author

Ratti Emanuele

• University of Notre Dame, 130 Malloy Hall, 46556 Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.