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  1. Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research.William Bechtel & Robert C. Richardson - 2010 - Princeton.
    An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent (...)
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  • Thinking about mechanisms.Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden & Carl F. Craver - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-25.
    The concept of mechanism is analyzed in terms of entities and activities, organized such that they are productive of regular changes. Examples show how mechanisms work in neurobiology and molecular biology. Thinking in terms of mechanisms provides a new framework for addressing many traditional philosophical issues: causality, laws, explanation, reduction, and scientific change.
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  • What is life? & mind and matter: the physical aspect of the living cell.Erwin Schrödinger - 1974 - Cambridge University Press.
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  • Mechanisms and the nature of causation.Stuart S. Glennan - 1996 - Erkenntnis 44 (1):49--71.
    In this paper I offer an analysis of causation based upon a theory of mechanisms-complex systems whose internal parts interact to produce a system's external behavior. I argue that all but the fundamental laws of physics can be explained by reference to mechanisms. Mechanisms provide an epistemologically unproblematic way to explain the necessity which is often taken to distinguish laws from other generalizations. This account of necessity leads to a theory of causation according to which events are causally related when (...)
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  • Theory change in science: strategies from Mendelian genetics.Lindley Darden - 1991 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This innovative book focuses on the development of the gene theory as a case study in scientific creativity.
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  • How Scientists Explain Disease.Paul Thagard - 1999 - Princeton University Press.
    "This is a wonderful book! In "How Scientists Explain Disease," Paul Thagard offers us a delightful essay combining science, its history, philosophy, and sociology.
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  • Interfield theories.Lindley Darden & Nancy Maull - 1977 - Philosophy of Science 44 (1):43-64.
    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 (...)
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  • (1 other version)Reasoning in Biological Discoveries: Essays on Mechanisms, Interfield Relations, and Anomaly Resolution.Lindley Darden - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Reasoning in Biological Discoveries brings together a series of essays, which focus on one of the most heavily debated topics of scientific discovery. Collected together and richly illustrated, Darden's essays represent a groundbreaking foray into one of the major problems facing scientists and philosophers of science. Divided into three sections, the essays focus on broad themes, notably historical and philosophical issues at play in discussions of biological mechanism; and the problem of developing and refining reasoning strategies, including interfield relations and (...)
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  • Role functions, mechanisms, and hierarchy.Carl F. Craver - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (1):53-74.
    Many areas of science develop by discovering mechanisms and role functions. Cummins' (1975) analysis of role functions-according to which an item's role function is a capacity of that item that appears in an analytic explanation of the capacity of some containing system-captures one important sense of "function" in the biological sciences and elsewhere. Here I synthesize Cummins' account with recent work on mechanisms and causal/mechanical explanation. The synthesis produces an analysis of specifically mechanistic role functions, one that uses the characteristic (...)
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  • Complexity and Organization.William C. Wimsatt - 1972 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1972:67-86.
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  • Discovering mechanisms in neurobiology: The case of spatial memory.Carl F. Craver & Lindley Darden - 2001 - In Peter McLaughlin, Peter Machamer & Rick Grush (eds.), Theory and Method in the Neurosciences. Pittsburgh University Press. pp. 112--137.
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  • A History of Molecular Biology.Michel Morange & Matthew Cobb - 1999 - Journal of the History of Biology 32 (3):568-570.
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  • (1 other version)Reasoning in biological discoveries.Lindley Darden - manuscript
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  • Strategies in the interfield discovery of the mechanism of protein synthesis.Lindley Darden & Carl Craver - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (1):1-28.
    In the 1950s and 1960s, an interfield interaction between molecular biologists and biochemists integrated important discoveries about the mechanism of protein synthesis. This extended discovery episode reveals two general reasoning strategies for eliminating gaps in descriptions of the productive continuity of mechanisms: schema instantiation and forward chaining/backtracking. Schema instantiation involves filling roles in an overall framework for the mechanism. Forward chaining and backtracking eliminate gaps using knowledge about types of entities and their activities. Attention to mechanisms highlights salient features of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Strategies for discovering mechanisms: Schema instantiation, modular subassembly, forward/backward chaining.Lindley Darden - 2002 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3):S354-S365.
    Discovery proceeds in stages of construction, evaluation, and revision. Each of these stages is constrained by what is known or conjectured about what is being discovered. A new characterization of mechanism aids in specifying what is to be discovered when a mechanism is sought. Guidance in discovering mechanisms may be provided by the reasoning strategies of schema instantiation, modular subassembly, and forward/backward chaining. Examples are found in mechanisms in molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, and evolutionary biology.
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  • (1 other version)Strategies for Discovering Mechanisms: Schema Instantiation, Modular Subassembly, Forward/Backward Chaining.Lindley Darden - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S354-S365.
    Discovery proceeds in stages of construction, evaluation, and revision. Each of these stages is constrained by what is known or conjectured about what is being discovered. A new characterization of mechanism aids in specifying what is to be discovered when a mechanism is sought. Guidance in discovering mechanisms may be provided by the reasoning strategies of schema instantiation, modular subassembly, and forward/backward chaining. Examples are found in mechanisms in molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, and evolutionary biology.
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  • Selection and the extent of explanatory unification.Robert A. Skipper - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):209.
    According to Philip Kitcher, scientific unification is achieved via the derivation of numerous scientific statements from economies of argument schemata. I demonstrate that the unification of selection phenomena across domains in which it is claimed to occur--evolutionary biology, immunology and, speculatively, neurobiology--is unattainable on Kitcher's view. I then introduce an alternative method for rendering the desired unification based on the concept of a mechanism schema. I conclude that the gain in unification provided by the alternative account suggests that Kitcher's view (...)
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  • Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in a Test Tube.[author unknown] - 1999 - Journal of the History of Biology 32 (3):563-565.
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  • (1 other version)The Concept of the Positron.V. F. Lenzen - 1963 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 21 (2):198-199.
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  • The semantic challenge to computational neuroscience.Rick Grush - 2001 - In Peter McLaughlin, Peter Machamer & Rick Grush (eds.), Theory and Method in the Neurosciences. Pittsburgh University Press. pp. 155--172.
    I examine one of the conceptual cornerstones of the field known as computational neuroscience, especially as articulated in Churchland et al. (1990), an article that is arguably the locus classicus of this term and its meaning. The authors of that article try, but I claim ultimately fail, to mark off the enterprise of computational neuroscience as an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the cognitive, information-processing functions of the brain. The failure is a result of the fact that the authors provide no (...)
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  • The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology.[author unknown] - 1980 - Journal of the History of Biology 13 (1):141-158.
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  • The Concept of the Positron: A Philosophical Analysis.Norwood Russell Hanson - 1963 - Cambridge University Press.
    Originally published in 1963, The Concept of the Positron forms a detailed analysis of quantum theory. Whilst it is not as well known as Professor Hanson's previous book, Patterns of Discovery, the text has many interesting aspects. In many ways it goes further than Hanson's earlier work in approaching the problems of theory competition and the rationality of science, topics that have since become central to the philosophy of science. It is also notable for a rigorous and forthright defence of (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Prion Challenge to the `Central Dogma' of Molecular Biology, 1965–1991.Martha E. Keyes - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 30 (2):181-218.
    Since the 1930s, scientists studying the neurological disease scrapie had assumed that the infectious agent was a virus. By the mid 1960s, however, several unconventional properties had arisen that were difficult to reconcile with the standard viral model. Evidence for nucleic acid within the pathogen was lacking, and some researchers considered the possibility that the infectious agent consisted solely of protein. In 1982, Stanley Prusiner coined the term `prion' to emphasize the agent's proteinaceous nature. This infectious protein hypothesis was denounced (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Prion Challenge to the `Central Dogma' of Molecular Biology, 1965–1991.Martha E. Keyes - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 30 (1):1-19.
    Since the 1930s, scientists studying the neurological disease scrapie had assumed that the infectious agent was a virus. By the mid 1960s, however, several unconventional properties had arisen that were difficult to reconcile with the standard viral model. Evidence for nucleic acid within the pathogen was lacking, and some researchers considered the possibility that the infectious agent consisted solely of protein. In 1982, Stanley Prusiner coined the term `prion' to emphasize the agent's proteinaceous nature. This infectious protein hypothesis was denounced (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Concept of the Positron.V. F. Lenzen - 1964 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 25 (1):132-133.
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  • Theory and Method in the Neurosciences.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (4):584-588.
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  • Anomaly-driven theory redesign: computational philosophy of science experiments.Lindley Darden - 1998 - In Terrell Ward Bynum & James Moor (eds.), The Digital Phoenix: How Computers are Changing Philosophy. Cambridge: Blackwell. pp. 62--78.
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  • Approaches to Information-Theoretic Analysis of Neural Activity.Jonathan D. Victor - 2006 - Biological Theory 1 (3):302-316.
    Understanding how neurons represent, process, and manipulate information is one of the main goals of neuroscience. These issues are fundamentally abstract, and information theory plays a key role in formalizing and addressing them. However, application of information theory to experimental data is fraught with many challenges. Meeting these challenges has led to a variety of innovative analytical techniques, with complementary domains of applicability, assumptions, and goals.
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  • (2 other versions)Hans Krebs: The Formation of a Scientific Life, 1900-1933.Frederic L. Holmes - 1993 - Journal of the History of Biology 26 (2):369-373.
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  • (2 other versions)The Prion Challenge to the `Central Dogma' of Molecular Biology, 1965–1991.Martha E. Keyes - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 30 (2):181-218.
    Since the 1930s, scientists studying the neurological disease scrapie had assumed that the infectious agent was a virus. By the mid 1960s, however, several unconventional properties had arisen that were difficult to reconcile with the standard viral model. Evidence for nucleic acid within the pathogen was lacking, and some researchers considered the possibility that the infectious agent consisted solely of protein. In 1982, Stanley Prusiner coined the term `prion' to emphasize the agent's proteinaceous nature. This infectious protein hypothesis was denounced (...)
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  • The Concept of the Positron: A Philosophical Analysis. [REVIEW]J. C. Orr - 1964 - Philosophical Quarterly 14 (55):181.
    Originally published in 1963, The Concept of the Positron forms a detailed analysis of quantum theory. Whilst it is not as well known as Professor Hanson's previous book, Patterns of Discovery, the text has many interesting aspects. In many ways it goes further than Hanson's earlier work in approaching the problems of theory competition and the rationality of science, topics that have since become central to the philosophy of science. It is also notable for a rigorous and forthright defence of (...)
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