Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Exemplarising the Origin of Genetics: A Path to Genetics (From Mendel to Bateson).Yafeng Shan - 2016 - Dissertation, University College London
    This thesis aims to propose and defend a new way of analysing and understanding the origin of genetics (from Mendel to Bateson). Traditionally philosophers used to analyse the history of genetics in terms of theories. However, I will argue that this theory-based approach is highly problematic. In Chapter 1, I shall critically review the theory-driven approach to analysisng the history of genetics and diagnose its problems. In Chapter 2, inspired by Kuhn’s concept “exemplar”, I shall make a new interpretation of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Inferential explanations in biology.Raoul Gervais & Erik Weber - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3):356-364.
    Among philosophers of science, there is now a widespread agreement that the DN model of explanation is poorly equipped to account for explanations in biology. Rather than identifying laws, so the consensus goes, researchers explain biological capacities by constructing a model of the underlying mechanism.We think that the dichotomy between DN explanations and mechanistic explanations is misleading. In this article, we argue that there are cases in which biological capacities are explained without constructing a model of the underlying mechanism. Although (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Functionalism, superduperfunctionalism, and physicalism: lessons from supervenience.Ronald Endicott - 2016 - Synthese 193 (7):2205-2235.
    Philosophers almost universally believe that concepts of supervenience fail to satisfy the standards for physicalism because they offer mere property correlations that are left unexplained. They are thus compatible with non-physicalist accounts of those relations. Moreover, many philosophers not only prefer some kind of functional-role theory as a physically acceptable account of mind-body and other inter-level relations, but they use it as a form of “superdupervenience” to explain supervenience in a physically acceptable way. But I reject a central part of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Reduction: the Cheshire cat problem and a return to roots.Kenneth F. Schaffner - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):377-402.
    In this paper, I propose two theses, and then examine what the consequences of those theses are for discussions of reduction and emergence. The first thesis is that what have traditionally been seen as robust, reductions of one theory or one branch of science by another more fundamental one are a largely a myth. Although there are such reductions in the physical sciences, they are quite rare, and depend on special requirements. In the biological sciences, these prima facie sweeping reductions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Systems biology and the integration of mechanistic explanation and mathematical explanation.Ingo Brigandt - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):477-492.
    The paper discusses how systems biology is working toward complex accounts that integrate explanation in terms of mechanisms and explanation by mathematical models—which some philosophers have viewed as rival models of explanation. Systems biology is an integrative approach, and it strongly relies on mathematical modeling. Philosophical accounts of mechanisms capture integrative in the sense of multilevel and multifield explanations, yet accounts of mechanistic explanation have failed to address how a mathematical model could contribute to such explanations. I discuss how mathematical (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • Evolutionary Developmental Biology and the Limits of Philosophical Accounts of Mechanistic Explanation.Ingo Brigandt - 2015 - In P.-A. Braillard & C. Malaterre (eds.), Explanation in Biology: An Enquiry into the Diversity of Explanatory Patterns in the Life Sciences. Springer. pp. 135-173.
    Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is considered a ‘mechanistic science,’ in that it causally explains morphological evolution in terms of changes in developmental mechanisms. Evo-devo is also an interdisciplinary and integrative approach, as its explanations use contributions from many fields and pertain to different levels of organismal organization. Philosophical accounts of mechanistic explanation are currently highly prominent, and have been particularly able to capture the integrative nature of multifield and multilevel explanations. However, I argue that evo-devo demonstrates the need for a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Using phenomenal concepts to explain away the intuition of contingency.Nicholas Shea - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (4):553-570.
    Humans can think about their conscious experiences using a special class of ?phenomenal? concepts. Psychophysical identity statements formulated using phenomenal concepts appear to be contingent. Kripke argued that this intuited contingency could not be explained away, in contrast to ordinary theoretical identities where it can. If the contingency is real, property dualism follows. Physicalists have attempted to answer this challenge by pointing to special features of phenomenal concepts that explain the intuition of contingency. However no physicalist account of their distinguishing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Problems for Natural Selection as a Mechanism.Joyce C. Havstad - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (3):512-523.
    Skipper and Millstein analyze natural selection and mechanism, concluding that natural selection is not a mechanism in the sense of the new mechanistic philosophy. Barros disagrees and provides his own account of natural selection as a mechanism. This discussion identifies a missing piece of Barros's account, attempts to fill in that piece, and reconsiders the revised account. Two principal objections are developed: one, the account does not characterize natural selection; two, the account is not mechanistic. Extensive and persistent variability causes (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • The Concept of Mechanism in Biology.Daniel J. Nicholson - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1):152-163.
    The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of biology, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   79 citations  
  • Explanation in Biology: Reduction, Pluralism, and Explanatory Aims.Ingo Brigandt - 2011 - Science & Education 22 (1):69-91.
    This essay analyzes and develops recent views about explanation in biology. Philosophers of biology have parted with the received deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation primarily by attempting to capture actual biological theorizing and practice. This includes an endorsement of different kinds of explanation (e.g., mathematical and causal-mechanistic), a joint study of discovery and explanation, and an abandonment of models of theory reduction in favor of accounts of explanatory reduction. Of particular current interest are philosophical accounts of complex explanations that appeal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Natural Kinds and Concepts: A Pragmatist and Methodologically Naturalistic Account.Ingo Brigandt - 2011 - In Jonathan Knowles & Henrik Rydenfelt (eds.), Pragmatism, Science and Naturalism. Peter Lang Publishing. pp. 171-196.
    In this chapter I lay out a notion of philosophical naturalism that aligns with pragmatism. It is developed and illustrated by a presentation of my views on natural kinds and my theory of concepts. Both accounts reflect a methodological naturalism and are defended not by way of metaphysical considerations, but in terms of their philosophical fruitfulness. A core theme is that the epistemic interests of scientists have to be taken into account by any naturalistic philosophy of science in general, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Philosophy of Molecular Biology.Ingo Brigandt - 2018 - eLS: Encyclopedia of Life Sciences.
    Ongoing empirical discoveries in molecular biology have generated novel conceptual challenges and perspectives. Philosophers of biology have reacted to these trends when investigating the practice of molecular biology and contributed to scientific debates on methodological and conceptual matters. This article reviews some major philosophical issues in molecular biology. First, philosophical accounts of mechanistic explanation yield a notion of explanation in the context of molecular biology that does not have to rely on laws of nature and comports well with molecular discovery. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Structure of Scientific Theories, Explanation, and Unification. A Causal–Structural Account.Bert Leuridan - 2014 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (4):717-771.
    What are scientific theories and how should they be represented? In this article, I propose a causal–structural account, according to which scientific theories are to be represented as sets of interrelated causal and credal nets. In contrast with other accounts of scientific theories (such as Sneedian structuralism, Kitcher’s unificationist view, and Darden’s theory of theoretical components), this leaves room for causality to play a substantial role. As a result, an interesting account of explanation is provided, which sheds light on explanatory (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Natural Selection and Causal Productivity.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein (eds.), Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics. Dordrecht: Springer.
    In the recent philosophical literature, two questions have arisen concerning the status of natural selection: (1) Is it a population-level phenomenon, or is it an organism-level phenomenon? (2) Is it a causal process, or is it a purely statistical summary of lower-level processes? In an earlier work (Millstein, Br J Philos Sci, 57(4):627–653, 2006), I argue that natural selection should be understood as a population-level causal process, rather than a purely statistical population-level summation of lower-level processes or as an organism-level (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Explanation in Biology: An Enquiry into the Diversity of Explanatory Patterns in the Life Sciences.P.-A. Braillard and C. Malaterre (ed.) - 2015 - Springer.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Toward a more natural historical attitude.Todd Grantham - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (1):1-21.
    Modeling his position on Arthur Fine’s Natural Ontological Attitude, Derek Turner proposed the Natural Historical Attitude. Although these positions share a family resemblance, Turner’s position differs from Fine’s in two important ways. First, Fine’s contextualism is more fine-grained. Second, Turner’s argument for metaphysical agnosticism seems to lead to the implausible conclusion that we should be agnostic about the mind-independence of ordinary objects – a position in tension with Fine’s “core position.” While this paper presents a textual analysis of Fine’s and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ethischer Diskurs zu Epigenetik und Genomeditierung: die Gefahr eines (epi-)genetischen Determinismus und naturwissenschaftlich strittiger Grundannahmen.Karla Karoline Sonne Kalinka Alex & Eva C. Winkler - 2021 - In Boris Fehse, Ferdinand Hucho, Sina Bartfeld, Stephan Clemens, Tobias Erb, Heiner Fangerau, Jürgen Hampel, Martin Korte, Lilian Marx-Stölting, Stefan Mundlos, Angela Osterheider, Anja Pichl, Jens Reich, Hannah Schickl, Silke Schicktanz, Jochen Taupitz, Jörn Walter, Eva Winkler & Martin Zenke (eds.), Fünfter Gentechnologiebericht: Sachstand und Perspektiven für Forschung und Anwendung. pp. 299-323.
    Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Tasks in cognitive science: mechanistic and nonmechanistic perspectives.Samuel D. Taylor - forthcoming - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-27.
    A tension exists between those who do—e.g. Meyer (The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71:959–985, 2020 ) and Chemero ( 2011 )—and those who do not—e.g. Kaplan and Craver (Philosophy of Science 78:601–627, 2011 ) Piccinini and Craver (Synthese 183:283–311, 2011 )—afford nonmechanistic explanations a role in cognitive science. Here, I argue that one’s perspective on this matter will cohere with one’s interpretation of the tasks of cognitive science; that is, of the actions for which cognitive scientists are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)From molecules to behavior and the clinic: Integration in chronobiology.William Bechtel - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):493-502.
    Chronobiology, especially the study of circadian rhythms, provides a model scientific field in which philosophers can study how investigators from a variety of disciplines working at different levels of organization are each contributing to a multi-level account of the responsible mechanism. I focus on how the framework of mechanistic explanation integrates research designed to decompose the mechanism with efforts directed at recomposition that relies especially on computation models. I also examine how recently the integration has extended beyond basic research to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Multilevel Research Strategies and Biological Systems.Maureen A. O’Malley, Ingo Brigandt, Alan C. Love, John W. Crawford, Jack A. Gilbert, Rob Knight, Sandra D. Mitchell & Forest Rohwer - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):811-828.
    Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical understandings of explanation, modeling, and representation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Integration in biology: Philosophical perspectives on the dynamics of interdisciplinarity.Ingo Brigandt - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):461-465.
    This introduction to the special section on integration in biology provides an overview of the different contributions. In addition to motivating the philosophical significance of analyzing integration and interdisciplinary research, I lay out common themes and novel insights found among the special section contributions, and indicate how they exhibit current trends in the philosophical study of integration. One upshot of the contributed papers is that there are different aspects to and kinds of integration, so that rather than attempting to offer (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • (1 other version)From molecules to behavior and the clinic: Integration in chronobiology.William Bechtel - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):493-502.
    Chronobiology, especially the study of circadian rhythms, provides a model scientific field in which philosophers can study how investigators from a variety of disciplines working at different levels of organization are each contributing to a multi-level account of the responsible mechanism. I focus on how the framework of mechanistic explanation integrates research designed to decompose the mechanism with efforts directed at recomposition that relies especially on computation models. I also examine how recently the integration has extended beyond basic research to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Mechanisms in cognitive psychology: What are the operations?William Bechtel - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):983-994.
    Cognitive psychologists, like biologists, frequently describe mechanisms when explaining phenomena. Unlike biologists, who can often trace material transformations to identify operations, psychologists face a more daunting task in identifying operations that transform information. Behavior provides little guidance as to the nature of the operations involved. While not itself revealing the operations, identification of brain areas involved in psychological mechanisms can help constrain attempts to characterize the operations. In current memory research, evidence that the same brain areas are involved in what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Mapping the continuum of research strategies.Matthew Baxendale - 2019 - Synthese 196 (11):4711-4733.
    Contemporary philosophy of science has seen a growing trend towards a focus on scientific practice over the epistemic outputs that such practices produce. This practice-oriented approach has yielded a clearer understanding of how reductive research strategies play a central role in contemporary scientific inquiry. In parallel, a growing body of work has sought to explore the role of non-reductive, or systems-level, research strategies. As a result, the relationship between reductive and non-reductive scientific practices is becoming of increased importance. In this (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Selection, growth and form. Turing’s two biological paths towards intelligent machinery.Hajo Greif, Adam P. Kubiak & Paweł Stacewicz - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 106 (C):126-135.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Lineage Explanations: Explaining How Biological Mechanisms Change.Brett Calcott - 2009 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1):51-78.
    This paper describes a pattern of explanation prevalent in the biological sciences that I call a ‘lineage explanation’. The aim of these explanations is to make plausible certain trajectories of change through phenotypic space. They do this by laying out a series of stages, where each stage shows how some mechanism worked, and the differences between each adjacent stage demonstrates how one mechanism, through minor modifications, could be changed into another. These explanations are important, for though it is widely accepted (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   53 citations  
  • Development and mechanistic explanation.Fabrizzio Mc Manus - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2):532-541.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Proliferation of subdisciplines in biology: the debacle of reductionism and new strategies of unification.María José Ferreira & Guillermo Folguera - 2014 - Scientiae Studia 12 (1):121-135.
    Durante las últimas décadas, la biología ha sido objeto de una considerable proliferación teórica y subdisciplinar, hecho que suscita la pregunta acerca de su unidad. Por ello, a partir del abandono del reduccionismo como estrategia unificadora, el interrogante filosófico es qué otras formas alternativas de relaciones subdisciplinares son posibles, y si dichas relaciones logran dar unidad a la biología. En el presente artículo, a partir de una breve consideración de algunos de los problemas que el programa reduccionista ha tenido en (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • EvoDevo as a Motley Aggregation: Local Integration and Conflicting Views of Genes During the 1980s.Yoshinari Yoshida & Hisashi Nakao - 2015 - Biological Theory 10 (2):156-166.
    Although there are many historical and philosophical analyses of evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo), its development in the 1980s, when many individual or collective attempts to synthesize evolution and development were made, has not been examined in detail. This article focuses on some interdisciplinary studies during the 1980s and argues that they had important characteristics that previous historical and philosophical work has not recognized. First, we clarify how each set of studies from the 1980s integrated the results or approaches from different (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • An Experiment-based Methodology for Classical Genetics and Molecular Biology.Hsiao-fan Yeh & Ruey-lin Chen - 2017 - Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 26:39-60.
    This paper proposes an experiment-based methodology for both classical genetics and molecular biology by integrating Lindley Darden’s mechanism-centered approach and C. Kenneth Waters’s phenomenon-centered approach. We argue that the methodology basing on experiments offers a satisfactory account of the development of the two biological disciplines. The methodology considers discovery of new mechanisms, investigation of new phenomena, and construction of new theories together, in which experiments play a central role. Experimentation connects the three type of conduct, which work as both ends (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Integrating data to acquire new knowledge: Three modes of integration in plant science.Sabina Leonelli - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):503-514.
    This paper discusses what it means and what it takes to integrate data in order to acquire new knowledge about biological entities and processes. Maureen O’Malley and Orkun Soyer have pointed to the scientific work involved in data integration as important and distinct from the work required by other forms of integration, such as methodological and explanatory integration, which have been more successful in captivating the attention of philosophers of science. Here I explore what data integration involves in more detail (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • Causal and Mechanistic Explanations in Ecology.Jani Raerinne - 2010 - Acta Biotheoretica 59 (3):251-271.
    How are scientific explanations possible in ecology, given that there do not appear to be many—if any—ecological laws? To answer this question, I present and defend an account of scientific causal explanation in which ecological generalizations are explanatory if they are invariant rather than lawlike. An invariant generalization continues to hold or be valid under a special change—called an intervention—that changes the value of its variables. According to this account, causes are difference-makers that can be intervened upon to manipulate or (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • (1 other version)Special Issue: Philosophical Considerations in the Teaching of Biology. Part I, Philosophy of Biology and Biological Explanation.Kostas Kampourakis (ed.) - 2013 - Springer (Science & Education).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Towards the Methodological Turn in the Philosophy of Science.Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein (eds.), Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics. Dordrecht: Springer.
    This chapter provides an introduction to the study of the philosophical notions of mechanisms and causality in biology and economics. This chapter sets the stage for this volume, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, in three ways. First, it gives a broad review of the recent changes and current state of the study of mechanisms and causality in the philosophy of science. Second, consistent with a recent trend in the philosophy of science to focus on scientific practices, it in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • A hapless mathematical contribution to biology: Chromosome inversions in Drosophila, 1937–1941.Eric Tannier - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (3):1-22.
    This is the story, told in the light of a new analysis of historical data, of a mathematical biology problem that was explored in the 1930s in Thomas Morgan’s laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. It is one of the early developments of evolutionary genetics and quantitative phylogeny, and deals with the identification and counting of chromosomal inversions in Drosophila species from comparisons of genetic maps. A re-analysis of the data produced in the 1930s using current mathematics and computational (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark