Brigandt, Ingo (Author)
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 to different levels of organismal organization and use contributions from different biological disciplines. The essay lays out one model that views explanatory integration across different disciplines as being structured by scientific problems. I emphasize the philosophical need to take the explanatory aims pursued by different groups of scientists into account, as explanatory aims determine whether different explanations are competing or complementary and govern the dynamics of scientific practice, including interdisciplinary research. I distinguish different kinds of pluralism that philosophers have endorsed in the context of explanation in biology, and draw several implications for science education, especially the need to teach science as an interdisciplinary and dynamic practice guided by scientific problems and explanatory aims.
...More
Article
Sahotra Sarkar;
(2015)
Nagel on Reduction
(/isis/citation/CBB557469066/)
Article
Stijn Conix;
(2019)
Radical pluralism, classificatory norms and the legitimacy of species classifications
(/isis/citation/CBB345206372/)
Article
M. Polo Camacho;
(2020)
What’s All the Fuss About? The Inheritance of Acquired Traits Is Compatible with the Central Dogma
(/isis/citation/CBB631370808/)
Article
F. Boem;
E. Ratti;
M. Andreoletti;
G. Boniolo;
(2016)
Why genes are like lemons
(/isis/citation/CBB006967276/)
Article
Sara Green;
Robert Batterman;
(2017)
Biology meets physics: Reductionism and multi-scale modeling of morphogenesis
(/isis/citation/CBB164750477/)
Article
Takacs, Peter;
Ruse, Michael;
(2013)
The Current Status of the Philosophy of Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB001252311/)
Article
Sandy C. Boucher;
(2021)
Biological Teleology, Reductionism, and Verbal Disputes
(/isis/citation/CBB536738665/)
Chapter
Schummer, Joachim;
(2003)
Chemical versus Biological Explanations: Interdisciplinarity and Reductionism in 19th Century Life Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB000600079/)
Article
Brian M. Donovan;
(2015)
Putting humanity back into the teaching of human biology
(/isis/citation/CBB348634415/)
Book
Kostas Kampourakis;
(2013)
The Philosophy of Biology: A Companion for Educators
(/isis/citation/CBB602190742/)
Article
Maienschein, Jane;
Wellner, Karen;
(2013)
Competing Views of Embryos for the Twenty-First Century: Textbooks and Society
(/isis/citation/CBB001252320/)
Article
Reydon, Thomas A. C.;
(2013)
Classifying Life, Reconstructing History and Teaching Diversity: Philosophical Issues in the Teaching of Biological Systematics and Biodiversity
(/isis/citation/CBB001252318/)
Book
Mitchell, Sandra;
(2009)
Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy
(/isis/citation/CBB001020062/)
Book
Bokulich, Alisa;
(2008)
Reexamining the Quantum-Classical Relation: Beyond Reductionism and Pluralism
(/isis/citation/CBB001032943/)
Article
Vincent Cuypers;
Thomas A. C. Reydon;
(2023)
An oak is an oak, or not? Understanding and dealing with confusion and disagreement in biological classification
(/isis/citation/CBB851306098/)
Article
Brandon A. Conley;
(2019)
Mayr and Tinbergen: disentangling and integrating
(/isis/citation/CBB308076732/)
Article
Erez Braun;
Shimon Marom;
(2015)
Universality, complexity and the praxis of biology: Two case studies
(/isis/citation/CBB948011358/)
Article
Ulrich Krohs;
(2015)
Can functionality in evolving networks be explained reductively?
(/isis/citation/CBB052973474/)
Article
Grant Ramsey;
(2016)
Can altruism be unified?
(/isis/citation/CBB195978476/)
Article
Lucas J. Matthews;
(2016)
On closing the gap between philosophical concepts and their usage in scientific practice: A lesson from the debate about natural selection as mechanism
(/isis/citation/CBB568060641/)
Be the first to comment!