Nicholaos Jones
University of Alabama at Huntsville, United States
Fall Term 2014
Network Diagrams in Systems Biological Practice

Nicholaos Jones is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His research focuses primarily on understanding when, and why, network diagrams amplify cognition in various systems biological practices: organizing and aggregating data; storing, retrieving, and searching information; generating hypotheses and predictions, explaining phenomena; and so on. Some recent publications include "Diagrams as Locality Aids for Explanation and Model Construction in Cell Biology" (with Olaf Wolkenhauer, Biology & Philosophy 2012) and "Bowtie Structures, Pathway Diagrams, and Topological Explanation" (forthcoming in Erkenntnis).

Nick also has published on the roles of idealizations in scientific explanation and confirmation, and he maintains a separate research program on Chinese Buddhist philosophy. When not philosophizing, he enjoys spending time with his wife and one-year-old son. He looks forward to exploring Pittsburgh with them and welcomes company in doing so.

2015

I had three publications in 2014-2015:

"Bowtie Structures, Pathway Diagrams, and Topological Explanation," Erkenntnis 79.5 (2014), 1135-1155.

"An Atheistic Argument from Ugliness" (with Scott Aikin), European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7.1 (2015).

"A Principles-based Model of Ethical Considerations in Military Decision Making (with Gregory Reed, Mikel Petty, and others), Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, in press.

2016

I had two new publications for 2015-2016:

"Inference to the More Robust Explanation," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, forthcoming

"Correlative Reasoning about Water in Mengzi 6A2," Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 15.2 (June 2016): 193-207

I also gave an invited talk to the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Mississippi State University in February 2016: "Strategies of Explanatory Abstraction in Molecular Systems Biology"

Finally, on 10 February, my family welcomed Aineias Jones into the world.

2017

Publications 2016-2017
“Network Analyses in Systems Biology: New Strategies for Dealing with Biological Complexity” (with Sara Green, Maria Serban, Raphael Scholl, Ingo Brigandt, and William Bechtel), Synthese, forthcoming.

“Inference to the More Robust Explanation,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.

“Constraint-Based Reasoning for Search and Explanation: Strategies for Understanding Variation and Patterns in Biology” (with Sara Green), dialectica 70.3 (September 2016): 343-374.

Presentations 2016-2017
“Mechanistic Grounds without Mechanistic Explanation,” Deep South Philosophy of Biology Workshop,” University of Alabama at Birmingham, March 2017.
“Strategies of Explanatory Abstraction in Molecular Systems Biology,” for Symposium on Integrating Explanatory Strategies Across the Life Sciences, Philosophy of Science Association Biennial Meeting, Atlanta, November 2016.