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Article ID: CBB002665433

Predictive Hypotheses Are Ineffectual in Resolving Complex Biochemical Systems (2018)

Fry, Michael (Author)

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Volume: 40
Issue: 2
Pages: 25

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0192-3

DOI: 10.1007/s40656-018-0192-3

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Systems biology Genes Forecasting; prediction Biochemistry Explanation; hypotheses; theories Philosophy of science 21st century

Scientific hypotheses may either predict particular unknown facts or accommodate previously-known data. Although affirmed predictions are intuitively more rewarding than accommodations of established facts, opinions divide whether predictive hypotheses are also epistemically superior to accommodation hypotheses. This paper examines the contribution of predictive hypotheses to discoveries of several bio-molecular systems. Having all the necessary elements of the system known beforehand, an abstract predictive hypothesis of semiconservative mode of DNA replication was successfully affirmed. However, in defining the genetic code whose biochemical basis was unclear, hypotheses were only partially effective and supplementary experimentation was required for its conclusive definition. Markedly, hypotheses were entirely inept in predicting workings of complex systems that included unknown elements. Thus, hypotheses did not predict the existence and function of mRNA, the multiple unidentified components of the protein biosynthesis machinery, or the manifold unknown constituents of the ubiquitin–proteasome system of protein breakdown. Consequently, because of their inability to envision unknown entities, predictive hypotheses did not contribute to the elucidation of complex systems. As data-based accommodation theories remained the sole instrument to explain complex bio-molecular systems, the philosophical question of alleged advantage of predictive over accommodative hypotheses became inconsequential.

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