In a recent development of what may be called biological philosophy of science, scholars have proposed that aligning notions of research environments with biological concepts of environment holds great promise for understanding the socio-material contexts in and through which science happens. Here, I explore the prospects and potential shortcomings of building sound research environment concepts by contrasting them with biological environment concepts. In doing so, I emphasize the importance of adhering to two central desiderata: the need to clarify what is being environed (i.e., what the counter relatum of an environment is) and what is doing the environing (i.e., what type of environmental partition is instantiated). Subsequently, I juxtapose two biological construals of environment—organismal environments and population environments—with possible articulations of what ‘research environments’ might stand for, and I maintain that each presents distinct epistemic upshots and limitations. More generally, I argue that there are two broad relations that could exist between biological and research environments: ontological parallels and ontic discordance. Finally, employing the visual metaphor of epistemic parallax, I conclude by conveying some lessons and cautionary notes arising from these comparisons and the importation of biological environment concepts into philosophy of science. While environment concepts may come with epistemic purchase, we should be careful when ontologizing them.

在所谓的科学生物学哲学的最新发展中，学者们提出，将研究环境的概念与环境的生物学概念相结合，对于理解科学发生的社会物质背景具有巨大的希望。在这里，我通过将其与生物环境概念进行对比，探讨了构建良好研究环境概念的前景和潜在缺点。在此过程中，我强调遵守两个中心要求的重要性：需要澄清什么是环境（即环境的反关系是什么）以及环境正在做什么（即什么类型的环境分区）实例化）。随后，我将环境的两种生物学解释（有机体环境和种群环境）与“研究环境”可能代表的含义并置，我认为每种解释都呈现出不同的认知结果和局限性。更一般地说，我认为生物学和研究环境之间可能存在两种广泛的关系：本体论的相似性和本体论的不一致。最后，我利用认知视差的视觉隐喻，传达了从这些比较以及将生物环境概念引入科学哲学中产生的一些教训和警示。虽然环境概念可能伴随着认知购买，但我们在对它们进行本体论时应该小心。