Peer-Reviewed Publications
“Environmental Constraints and Development of Solutions: The Evolution of Arizona State University’s Prison Biology Education Program”
Hart, Steven G., Emily A. Webb, Kelle Dhein, Amalia M. Handler, Cassandra M. Barrett, and Tsafrir S. Mor (2024). In STEM Education in US Prisons. Brill Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004688643_007
Motivated by the notion that education is a basic human right that should not be denied even to the incarcerated and inspired by research demonstrating how educational opportunities to inmates carry short and long-term societal dividends, Arizona State University students and faculty launched the Prison Biology Education Program (PBEP) in 2014. The core of PBEP is a biology course taught in an Arizona state prison. Its aim is to introduce the inmate-students to some of the major avenues of biological research, its conceptual fabric, its experimental basis, prevailing theories and outstanding controversies, while offering inmate-students an intellectually constructive classroom environment and providing them opportunities to become curators of their own learning through research projects. A secondary aim of PBEP is to provide socially-motivated university graduate and upper-division undergraduate students with an opportunity to engage with an interdisciplinary group in curriculum design and teaching using a collaborative model. In this chapter, we will present our program’s cumulative experience in two distinctly different prison units – supermax (custody level 5) and close (custody level 3) yards. Specific challenges associated with these particular teaching environments will be discussed in conjunction with innovative solutions that we developed intermixing traditional lecturing, modern active-learning, and hands-on activities as our program evolved. We will also outline our methods for conducting class laboratory experiments, a cornerstone of traditional biological education, in classrooms with unique security considerations.
“In Defense of Instinct Concepts”
Dhein. (Forthcoming). In Life and Mind: Theoretical and Applied Issues in Contemporary Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences. Springer.
In the 20th century, the distinction between instinct and learning motivated international debates that reshaped the disciplinary landscape of animal behavior studies. When the dust settled, a new consensus emerged: the development of behavioral traits involves complex interactions between organism, genetic inheritance, and experience with the environment. This insight has spurred some philosophers and scientists to eschew instinct versus learning dichotomies—and instinct concepts in particular—on epistemic grounds. In this paper, I reassess influential 20th century arguments against instinct concepts and instinct vs. learning dichotomies to show that these arguments have limited scope. Then, I use historical case studies to demonstrate the combinatorial flexibility of instinct and learning concepts. Although instinct and learning are often framed as mutually exclusive opposites, scientists continue to combine them in causal physiological accounts of behavior. I conclude by suggesting that instinct concepts help scientists achieve their epistemic aims because of the way they facilitate abductive inferences.
“Response to Wehner et al. (2023)”
Dhein. (Forthcoming). Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science.
Wehner et al. (2023) object to the connections I draw between their research and Lorenzian instinct in my paper on the history of the cognitive map debate in insects. Here, I respond to their critiques.
Bursten, Julia R.S. and Kelle Dhein. (2023). Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.12
Recent accounts of multiscale modeling investigate ontic and epistemic constraints imposed by relations between component models at varying relative scales (macro, meso, micro). These accounts often focus especially on the role of the meso, or intermediate, relative scale in a multiscale model. We aid this effort by highlighting a novel role for mesoscale models: functioning as a focal point, and explanation, for disagreement between researchers who otherwise share theoretical commitments. We present a case study in multiscale modeling of insect behavior to illustrate, arguing that the cognitive map debate in neuroethology research is best understood as a mesoscale disagreement.
Dhein. (2023). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2022.12.008
Though well established in mammals, the cognitive map hypothesis has engendered a decades-long, ongoing debate in insect navigation studies involving many of the field's most prominent researchers. In this paper, I situate the debate within the broader context of 20th century animal behavior research and argue that the debate persists because competing research groups are guided by different constellations of epistemic aims, theoretical commitments, preferred animal subjects, and investigative practices. The expanded history of the cognitive map provided in this paper shows that more is at stake in the cognitive map debate than the truth value of propositions characterizing insect cognition. What is at stake is the future direction of an extraordinarily productive tradition of insect navigation research stretching back to Karl von Frisch. Disciplinary labels like ethology, comparative psychology, and behaviorism became less relevant at the turn of the 21st century, but as I show, the different ways of knowing animals associated with these disciplines continue to motivate debates about animal cognition. This examination of scientific disagreement surrounding the cognitive map hypothesis also has significant consequences for philosophers' use of cognitive map research as a case study.
“From Karl von Frisch to Neuroethology: A Methodological Perspective on the Frischean Tradition’s Expansion into Neuroethology”
Dhein. (2022). Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Special Issue on Historicizing Ethology https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202200003
This paper examines a tradition of eusocial insect research stemming from the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch. As I show in this paper, one of the most enduring features of the Frischean tradition has been an experimental methodology developed by Frisch in the early 1910s. By tracing this methodology's use through Frisch's student, Martin Lindauer, and two of Lindauer's students, Rüdiger Wehner and Randolf Menzel, this paper illuminates a surprising aspect of ethology's development during the last half of the 20th century. Namely, it sheds light on how the Frischean tradition, a tradition that had a complicated relationship with ethology since the discipline's formation in the 1930s, produced scientists who became leading figures in neuroethology, the most prominent contemporary field of behavioral research to retain the label of “ethology.” Some of the features that distinguished Frisch's training method from the program of classical ethology and the work of his contemporaries later helped his academic descendants adapt the method to the neuroethological program.
Dhein. (2021). Journal of the History of Biology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09660-7
In 1973, the discipline of ethology came into its own when three of its most prominent practitioners—Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch— jointly received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Historians have shown how Lorenz and Tinbergen were central to the practical and theoretical innovations that came to define ethology as a distinct form of animal behavior research in the 20th century. Von Frisch is rarely mentioned in such histories. In this paper, I ask, “What is von Frisch’s relationship to the discipline of ethology?” To answer that question, I examine Tinbergen’s relationship to von Frisch’s grey card experiments between Tinbergen’s time as a student at the University of Leiden in the mid 1920s and Tinbergen’s 1951 publication of The Study of Instinct. In doing so, I highlight previously neglected affinities between von Frisch’s early career research and the program of classical ethology, and I show how von Frisch’s research meant different things at different times to Tinbergen and others working in the ethological tradition.
“What Makes Neurophysiology Meaningful? Semantic Content in Insect Navigation Research”
Dhein. (2020). Biology & Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09768-w
In the course of investigating the living world, biologists regularly attribute semantic content to the phenomena they study. In this paper, I examine the case of a contemporary research program studying the navigation behaviors of ants and develop an account of the norms governing researchers’ ascriptions of semantic content in their research practices. The account holds that researchers assign semantic content to behaviors that reliably achieve a difficult goal-directed function, and it also suggests a productive role for attributions of semantic content in the process of animal behavior research.
Book Reviews
“Review of The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are, by Alan Jasanoff”
Dhein, K. 2019. The Quarterly Review of Biology 94 (1): 104.
Popular Publications
A short article about why the philosophical problem of meaning is so unsettling published in Big Think.
I was invited to tell a personal story at the 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting. It was later picked up by Global Health NOW, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Newsletter.
A mid 20th century American ethos pervades George Gaylord Simpson’s philosophy of evolution.
Web-Based Encyclopedia Publications
“Christian Peeters and Bert Hölldobler's Experiments on Reproduction in Indian Jumping Ants (1991–1994)”
Dhein, K. 2017. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
Between 1991 and 1994, Christian Peeters and Bert Hölldobler studied the reproductive behaviors of the Indian jumping ant (Harpegnathos saltator), a species native to southern India. They conducted experiments as part of a larger investigation into conflict and reproductive behavior among ants. Peeters and Hölldobler discovered that Indian jumping ant colonies contained both sexually reproductive workers and egg-laying queens. In most other species of ant, the queens are the only sexually reproductive individuals. After conducting their experiments, Peeters and Hölldobler argued that queens and sexually reproductive workers cooperated in the Indian jumping ant species to establish and preserve new colonies.
“‘Altruism and the Origin of the Worker Caste’ from The Ants (1990), by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson”
Dhein, K. 2017. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
In "Altruism and the Origin of the Worker Caste," Bert Hölldobler and Edward Osborne Wilson explore the evolutionary origins of worker ants. "Altruism and the Origin of the Worker Caste" is the fourth chapter of Hölldobler and Wilson's book, The Ants, which was published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990. In "Altruism and the Origin of the Worker Caste," Hölldobler and Wilson evaluate various explanations for how a non-reproductive caste of ant evolved. Their investigation into the evolutionary origins of worker ants synthesized research on the reproductive practices of ants to provide an analysis of how sterile groups of organisms persist in a population.
“Berthold Karl Hölldobler (1936–)”
Dhein, K. 2017. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
Berthold Karl Hölldobler studied social insects like ants in Europe and the US during the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He focused on the social behavior of ants, the evolutionary origins of social insects, and the way ants use chemicals to communicate with each other. Hölldobler's research reached popular audiences through his co-authored Pulitzer Prize winning book The Ants and through an award winning nature documentary called Ameisen: Die heimliche Weltmacht (Ants: Nature's Secret Power). Hölldobler researched reproductive practices in specific ant species and helped explain how reproductive practices influence, and are influenced by, social behaviors.
“Ameisen: Die heimliche Weltmacht (Ants: Nature’s Secret Power (2004).”
Dhein, K. 2017. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
Ameisen: Die heimliche Weltmacht (Ants: Nature's Secret Power) is a nature documentary about ants. Wolfgang Thaler wrote, filmed, and directed the film, which focuses on the work of ant researcher Bert Hölldobler. The 2004 film was produced by Adi Mayer Film for Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting), a public service broadcaster headquartered in Vienna, Austria. Ants: Nature's Secret Power (Ants) surveys the adaptive and reproductive behaviors of a variety of ant species in both laboratory and natural settings. Thaler's film communicated the reproductive practices of ants to a popular audience in an accessible manner, familiarizing the public with rarely seen aspects of ants.
"‘Testing the Kin Selection Theory: Who Controls the Investments?’ from The Ants (1990), by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson”
Dhein K. 2017. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
In "Testing the Kin Selection Theory: Who Controls the Investments?" Bert Hölldobler and Edward Osborne Wilson discussed the predictive power of kin selection theory, a theory about the evolution of social behaviors. As part of Hölldobler and Wilson's 1990 book titled The Ants, Hölldobler and Wilson compared predictions about the reproductive practices of ants to data about the reproductive practices of ants. They showed that the data generally supported the expected behaviors proposed by kin selection theory. Later in their careers, both Hölldobler and Wilson argued that kin selection theory provided an insufficient explanation for the evolution of social behavior. Hölldobler and Wilsons' efforts were emblematic of a larger trend among ant researchers and sociobiologists to explain the evolution of social behavior by focusing on the reproductive dynamics of social organisms.
