The structural heterogeneity of concepts in scientific practice

This study investigates the structural nature of concept-constitutive information in scientific concepts. Instead of the traditional semantic approach, I adopt a cognitive approach that characterizes scientific concepts as information-complexes, and I advance the structural heterogeneity thesis. According to this thesis, a scientific concept can be structurally heterogeneous, comprising summary information, information about individual cases, and causal-explanatory information, each of which figures in most, if not all, of the cognitive processes underlying scientific practice. By rejecting the view that scientific concepts are always well-defined, I argue that they are continuous with ordinary concepts. Further, I show that structural heterogeneity sheds new light on understanding the phenomenon of “productive research without an agreed-upon definition,” which existing accounts of conceptual flexibility have failed to capture.