You Can’t Go Home Again – or Can You? ‘Replication’ Indeterminacy and ‘Location’ Incommensurability in Three Biological Re-Surveys

Reproducing empirical results and repeating experimental processes is fundamental to science, but is of grave concern to scientists. Revisiting the same location is necessary for tracking biological processes, yet I argue that ‘location’ and ‘replication’ contain a basic ambiguity. The analysis of the practical meanings of ‘replication’ and ‘location’ will strip of incommensurability from its common conflation with empirical equivalence, underdetermination and indeterminacy of reference. In particular, I argue that three biodiversity re-surveys, conducted by the research institutions of Harvard, Berkeley, and Hamaarag, all reveal incommensurability without indeterminacy in the smallest spatial scale, and indeterminacy without incommensurability in higher scales.