This paper analyzes the generation and function of hitherto ignored or misrepresented interfield theories , theories which bridge two fields of science. Interfield theories are likely to be generated when two fields share an interest in explaining different aspects of the same phenomenon and when background knowledge already exists relating the two fields. The interfield theory functions to provide a solution to a characteristic type of theoretical problem: how are the relations between fields to be explained? In solving this problem (...) the interfield theory may provide answers to questions which arise in one field but cannot be answered within it alone, may focus attention on domain items not previously considered important, and may predict new domain items for one or both fields. Implications of this analysis for the problems of reduction and the unity and progress of science are mentioned. (shrink)

The first U.S. nominee for the Nobel Prize, Jacques Loeb was trained in experimental physiology in Germany, joined the biology faculty of the new University of Chicago in 1892, later taught at the University of California at Berkeley and then moved to the Rockefeller Institute. Loeb's career provides the vehicle, in this book, for an examination of the foundations of biotechnology.

"In his third lecture Crick anticipates events and trends that have in fact come to pass in the past four decades, including the increasing use of computer technology and robotics in mind-brain research, explorations into right-side versus left-side uses of the brain, and controversies surrounding the existence of the soul."--BOOK JACKET.

I have not attempted to provide here an analysis of the methodology of molecular biology or molecular genetics which would demonstrate at what specific points a more reductionist aim would make sense as a research strategy. This, I believe, would require a much deeper analysis of scientific growth than philosophy of science has been able to provide thus far. What I have tried to show is that a straightforward reductionist strategy cannot be said to be follwed in important cases of (...) theory development in molecular biology, and that in at least one important case, the Jacob-Monod operon theory, the methodology followed was more biological than chemical. It should be noted in closing, however, that since biological systems are thought by molecular biologists to be nothing but chemical systems, in the long run detailed investigations of such systems will be in full accord with the dictates suggested by the general reduction model. (shrink)

Four current accounts of theory reduction are presented, first informally and then formally: (1) an account of direct theory reduction that is based on the contributions of Nagel, Woodger, and Quine, (2) an indirect reduction paradigm due to Kemeny and Oppenheim, (3) an "isomorphic model" schema traceable to Suppes, and (4) a theory of reduction that is based on the work of Popper, Feyerabend, and Kuhn. Reference is made, in an attempt to choose between these schemas, to the explanation of (...) physical optics by Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, and to the revisions of genetics necessitated by partial biochemical reductions of genetics. A more general reduction schema is proposed which: (1) yields as special cases the four reduction paradigms considered above, (2) seems to be in better accord with both the canons of logic and actual scientific practice, and (3) clarifies the problems of meaning variance and ontological reduction. (shrink)

In this paper the concept of supervenience is employed to explain the relationship between fitness as employed in the theory of natural selection and population biology and the physical, behavioral and ecological properties of organisms that are the subjects of lower level theories in the life sciences. The aim of this analysis is to account simultaneously for the fact that the theory of natural selection is a synthetic body of empirical claims, and for the fact that it continues to be (...) misconstrued, even by biologists, for a tautological system. The notion of supervenience is then employed to provide a new statement of the relation of Mendelian predicates to molecular ones in order to provide for the commensurability and potential reducibility of Mendelian to molecular genetics in a way that circumvents the theoretical complications which appear to stand in the way of such a reduction. (shrink)

A belief common among philosophers and biologists alike is that Mendelian genetics has been or is in the process of being reduced to molecular genetics, in the sense of formal theory reduction current in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to show that there are numerous empirical and conceptual difficulties which stand in the way of establishing a systematic inferential relation between Mendelian and molecular genetics. These difficulties, however, have little to do with the traditional objections which have (...) been raised to reduction. (shrink)

In a recent paper, William K. Goosens objects to the arguments I set out some time ago attacking the logical empiricist analysis of reduction as applied to genetics. In these works I did not argue against the claim that Mendelian genetics was being reduced to molecular biology. Nor did I conclude, as Goosens asserts, that in the case of genetics, “reduction is insignificant”. To the contrary, I repeatedly stated that, “given our pre-analytic intuitions about reduction,” the reduction of Mendelian to (...) molecular genetics “is a case of reduction, a paradigm case”. And in agreement with Kenneth Schaffner I argued that reduction “in some very important, pre-analytic sense has taken place and is taking place in genetics”. The target of my objections to reduction in genetics was not “reduction” in some pre-analytic sense. Nor was it the various explications which have appeared since. Rather it was the notion of theory reduction set out a generation ago by such logical empiricists as Ernest Nagel, The particular version of this analysis which I chose to attack was that presented by Schaffner ; for Schaffner's later views, see his. I chose Schaffner's explication to attack because I thought it was the best of its kind and because it was the only defense of the logical empiricist analysis at the time which used genetics as one of its chief examples. Contrary to Goosens' assumption, in criticizing Schaffner's explication, I did not thereby “endorse” it. (shrink)

Explores the development of the ideas of evolutionary biology, particularly as affected by the increasing understanding of genetics and of the chemical basis of inheritance.

This book provides a comprehensive guide to the conceptual methodological, and epistemological problems of biology, and treats in depth the major developments in molecular biology and evolutionary theory that have transformed both biology and its philosophy in recent decades. At the same time the work is a sustained argument for a particular philosophy of biology that unifies disparate issues and offers a framework for expectations about the future directions of the life sciences. The argument explores differences between autonomist and anti-autonomist (...) views of biology. The result is a vindication of reductionism, but one that is unexpectedly hollow. For it leaves the exponents of the autonomy of biology from physical science with as much as their view of biology really requires - and rather more than the reductionist might comfortably concede. Professor Rosenberg shows how the problems of the philosophy of biology are interconnected and how their solutions are interdependent, However, this book focuses more on the direct concerns of biologists, rather than the traditional agenda of philosophers' problems about biology. This departure from earlier books on the subject results both in greater understanding and relevance of the philosophy of science to biology as a whole. (shrink)

Compares classic and contemporary theories of genetics and evolution and explores the role of teleological thought in biology.

During the 1950s and 60s, evolutionary biologists began to attribute a greater and greater role to natural selection, and correspondingly less and less a role to alternative evolutionary agents. Empirical grounds cited in support of the change in attitude consisted primarily of selectionist reinterpretations of evolutionary changes originally attributed to other evolutionary agents. In order to distinguish the respects in which the increased emphasis on natural selection was justified and unjustified, two distinctions are relied on. These are, first, the distinction (...) between pursuing an hypothesis and accepting it, and second, the distinction between what is reasonable/rational as far as individual scientists are concerned vs. what is reasonable/rational as far as the scientific community is concerned. It was rational for at least some individual scientists to pursue exclusively selectionist accounts on the basis of the selectionist successes in question, although it was not rational for any of them to accept the hypothesis of the all-importance of natural selection on those meager grounds. Moreover, although it was reasonable for at least some individual evolutionary biologists to invoke the selectionist successes in question in pursuit of further selectionist accounts, it was not reasonable for the entire community of evolutionary biologists to pursue exclusively selectionist accounts on those grounds. (shrink)