The replication or reproducibility crisis in psychological science has renewed attention to philosophical aspects of its methodology. I provide herein a new, functional account of the role of replication in a scientific discipline: to undercut the underdetermination of scientific hypotheses from data, typically by hypotheses that connect data with phenomena. These include hypotheses that concern sampling error, experimental control, and operationalization. How a scientific hypothesis could be underdetermined in one of these ways depends on a scientific discipline’s epistemic goals, theoretical development, material constraints, institutional context, and their interconnections. I illustrate how these apply to the case of psychological science. I then contrast this “bottom-up” account with “top-down” accounts, which assume that the role of replication in a particular science, such as psychology, must follow from a uniform role that it plays in science generally. Aside from avoiding unaddressed problems with top-down accounts, my bottom-up account also better explains the variability of importance of replication of various types across different scientific disciplines.

心理科学中的复制或可再现性危机重新引起了人们对其方法论哲学方面的关注。我在这里提供了一个新的功能性说明，说明了复制在科学学科中的作用：通常通过将数据与现象联系起来的假设，来削弱数据对科学假设的不确定性。这些假设包括与采样误差，实验控制和可操作性有关的假设。如何以这些方式之一确定科学假设的方式取决于科学学科的认识目标，理论发展，物质约束，制度背景及其相互联系。我说明了这些如何应用于心理学。然后，我将此“自下而上”帐户与“自上而下”帐户进行对比，他们假设复制在特定科学（例如心理学）中的作用必须遵循其在科学中通常发挥的统一作用。除了避免自上而下的帐户无法解决的问题之外，我的自下而上的帐户还更好地解释了跨不同科学学科复制各种类型的重要性的可变性。