This document discusses citizen science and heuristic strategies for science research. It describes citizen science as public participation in collecting and analyzing scientific data to help address large-scale research questions. The document outlines three categories of citizen science projects and discusses how citizen science is growing in impact and methodology. It also examines John Dewey's views on experience, pragmatism, and empirical naturalism. The document proposes that citizen science experiences align with pragmatic heuristics and explores how Pierce's theories of abduction and diagrammatic reasoning relate to citizen science.

1. Can we play science?
Heuristic Strategies of
Science Research
João André Duarte
jduarte@museus.ul.pt

2. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Citizen Science
Project or Activity in which the public collects and/or analyses data to help
understand large scale research questions
Aims
Increase Scientific Knowledge
Gather meaningfull data for large-scale research questions
Increase Scientific literacy and develop problem-solving skills

3. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Citizen Science
Public Participation in Science Research
USA’ NSF – PPSR, 1992
Three categories:
Contributory projects
Collaborative projects
Co-created projects

4. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Citizen Science
Public Participation in Science Research
is growing
in numbers – “hundreds”
impact – published papers
methodology - Citizen Science Toolkit
(CAISE Inquiry Group Report, 2009)

5. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Web 2.0

6. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
The detour

7. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Experience

8. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Experience
John Dewey (1859 – 1952)
Instrumentalism
Uncertain agencies
Efficient instruments

9. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Experience
John Dewey (1859 – 1952)
Empirical Naturalism
“(…) experience, if scientific inquiry is justified, is no
infinitesimally thin layer or foreground of nature, but
that it penetrates into it, reaching down into its
depths, and in such a way that its grasp is capable of
expansion”.
(Dewey, 1958)

10. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Experience
John Dewey (1859 – 1952)
Empirical Naturalism
Is a Humanist Naturalism
Experience as the place ‘where paupers and
princes meet as equals’

11. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Experience
John Dewey (1859 – 1952)
Pragmatism
Negation modern dualism - separation
mind/physical -
Inferences – Practical consequences

12. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Solving Puzzles

13. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Solving Puzzles
to predict the structure of proteins with
human’s puzzle-solving intuitions
http://fold.it

14. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research

15. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research

16. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research

17. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research

18. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Abduction
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914)
“Hypothesis is where we find some
very curious circumstance, which
would be explained by the supposition
that it was a case of a certain general
rule, and thereupon adopt that
supposition.”
(Charles S. Peirce CP 2.624, Deduction, Induction,
Hypothesis, 1878)

19. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Habit of mind
“That which determines us, from given premises, to draw one inference rather than
another, is some habit of mind, whether it be constitutional or acquired. The habit
is good or otherwise, according as it produces true conclusions from true premises
or not; and an inference is regarded as valid or not, without reference to the truth
or falsity of its conclusion specially, but according as the habit which determines it is
such as to produce true conclusions in general or not.”
(Charles S. Peirce, CP 5.367, The fixation of belief, 1877)

20. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Diagrammatic reasoning
“With the exception of knowledge, in the present instant, of the contents of
consciousness in that instant (the existence of which knowledge is open to doubt)
all our thought and knowledge is by signs. A sign therefore is an object which is in
relation to its object on the one hand and to an interpretant on the other, in such a
way as to bring the interpretant into a relation to the object, corresponding to its
own relation to the object. I might say 'similar to its own' for a correspondence
consists in a similarity; but perhaps correspondence is narrower.”
(Peirce, 8.332, 1904, Letter to Lady Welby))

21. Can we play science? Heuristic Strategies of Science Research
Conclusions
• Citizen Science experience is compatible with Pragmatist
heuristics;
• Is Citizen Science close to Dewey’s pedagogy and social project?
• Is Peirce’s ‘logic of signs’ becoming more relevant?
• Inclusion of this perspective in a wider media philosophy?