The applicability of Nagel's concept of theory reduction, and related concepts of reduction, to the reduction of genetics to molecular biology is examined using the lactose operon in Escherichia coli as an example. Geneticists have produced the complete nucleotide sequence of two of the genes which compose this operon. If any example of reduction in genetics should fit Nagel's analysis, the lactose operon should. Nevertheless, Nagel's formal conditions of theory reduction are inapplicable in this case. Instead, it is argued that (...) genetics has been partially reduced to molecular biology in the sense of token-token reduction. (shrink)

Tun und Können erläutert und diskutiert den Gründungstext der Modalontologie: das neunte Buch der Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Aristoteles' Thesen und Argumente werden zum ersten Mal in Gänze mit formalen analytischen Mitteln rekonstruiert und auf ihre Kohärenz und Gültigkeit geprüft. Erstmals verwendet der Autor dazu eine adverbiale Analyse von Ausdrücken des Könnens und des Vermögens als Prädikatmodifikatoren. Das Buch zeigt, dass Aristoteles' Theorie der Vermögen nicht nur eine konsistente, sondern auch eine leistungsfähige Analyse von Dispositionen und Dispositionsprädikaten bietet. -/- Die Neuausgabe (...) wurde vollständig durchgesehen und um weiterführende Anhänge ergänzt. -/- Der Inhalt: Können, Tun und Möglichkeit. Eine Einführung • Die kausale Dimension von Vermögen • Die ontologische Dimension von Vermögen• Eine notwendige Bedingung für Vermögen • Hindernisse und Verwirklichung • Prioritätsfragen • Aristotle’s Theory of Dispositions • Das Problem des Neuen • Planners, Deciders, Performers. (shrink)

Despite his awareness that organisms are well suited to the habitats they are typically found in, Aristotle nowhere tries to explain this. It is unlikely that he thinks this “fit” (as I call it) between organisms and their habitats is simply a lucky coincidence, given how vehemently he rejects that as an explanation of the fit between organisms’ various body parts. But it is quite puzzling that Aristotle never explicitly addresses this, since it is a question that seemed so pressing (...) to later philosophers and biologists such as Darwin. In this paper I offer a solution to that puzzle. As I argue, the type of habitat an organism lives in is partly constitutive of its essence or nature. The reason Aristotle does not ask, for instance, why marsh-dweller birds live in marshes, is that it is simply constitutive of their nature that they do so. Given that habitat is built into a kind’s essence, the answer to such a question is obvious and the question would have seemed to him trivial. By attending to the details of his biological treatises, I show that Aristotle’s conception of a living being’s essence is much more nuanced than one can glean from his discussions in the Physics and Metaphysics alone. (shrink)