Dr Agnes Bolinska
Dr Agnes Bolinska is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Philosophy, where she is also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellow.
Gaining scientific knowledge often requires integrating information from various sources, including theoretical frameworks, experimental techniques, and disciplinary perspectives. What makes integrative research effective and what are its limitations? Dr Bolinska’s research addresses these questions by examining historical and contemporary scientific practice, particularly in structural biology. She explores the role that different forms of representation play in enabling effective integration of information from theory and data, as well as how the reliability of different (possibly incommensurable) forms of evidence can be assessed. Dr Bolinska is also interested in methodological questions about how historical and philosophical perspectives on science can be most fruitfully integrated in the field of history and philosophy of science (HPS).
At Clare Hall, Dr Bolinska is beginning a new research project that examines the integration of Buddhist with scientific perspectives in the emerging field of contemplative science. This field has the potential to help people flourish, for instance, by linking meditation to decreases in depression and anxiety. However, it is also riddled with methodological challenges, stemming from differences between Buddhist and scientific approaches that present obstacles to integrating them. Can such differences be reconciled? What is lost and gained in the attempt to do so? By answering these questions, Dr Bolinska hopes to explore not only the foundations of contemplative science, but also to understand the limits of science itself.
Select publications
- Bolinska, A. (2024). ‘A monist proposal: Against integrative pluralism about protein structure’, Erkenntnis 89: 1711–33.
- Bolinska, A. (2023). ‘Epistemic expression in the determination of biomolecular structure’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 100: 107–115.
- Bolinska, A. & Martin, J. D. (2021). ‘The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history and philosophy of science’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 89: 63–73.
- Suárez, M. & Bolinska, A. (2021). Informative models: Idealization and abstraction. In: Cassini A., Redmond J. (eds) Models and Idealizations in Science. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 50. Springer, Cham.
- Bolinska, A. & Martin, J. D. (2020). ‘Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 80: 37–46.
- Bolinska, A. (2018). ‘Synthetic versus analytic approaches to protein and DNA structure determination’, Biology and Philosophy 33: 26.
- Bolinska, A. (2016). ‘Successful visual epistemic representation’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 56: 153–60.
- Bolinska, A. (2013). ‘Epistemic representation, informativeness and the aim of faithful representation’, Synthese 190: 219–34.
Select awards
- Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Carolina (2024–27)
- International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Essay Prize in the History and Philosophy of Science (with Martin, J. D.) (2019)