Showing papers on "Philosophy of biology published in 1988"

Technocratic optimism, H. T. Odum, and the partial transformation of ecological metaphor after World War II.

Abstract: I have not inquired as to whether you do or do not like the idea [of Technocracy]. The events that are going to occur ... within the very near future are not going to be respecters of human likes or dislikes. The problem of operating any existing complex of industrial equipment is not and cannot be solved by a democratic social organization.... [It] is a technical problem so far transcending any other technical problem man has yet solved that many individuals would probably never understand why most of the details must be one way and not another; yet the services of everyone .. . will be needed.'

A mechanism and its metaphysics: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science

Abstract: The claim that conceptual systems change is a platitude. That our conceptual systems are theory-laden is no less platitudinous. Given evolutionary theory, biologists are led to divide up the living world into genes, organisms, species, etc. in a particular way. No theory-neutral individuation of individuals or partitioning of these individuals into natural kinds is possible. Parallel observations should hold for philosophical theories about scientific theories. In this paper I summarize a theory of scientific change which I set out in considerable detail in a book that I shall publish in the near future. Just as few scientists were willing to entertain the view that species evolve in the absence of a mechanism capable of explaining this change, so philosophers should be just as reticent about accepting a parallel view of conceptual systems in science “evolving” in the absence of a mechanism to explain this evolution. In this paper I set out such a mechanism. One reason that this task has seemed so formidable in the past is that we have all construed conceptual systems inappropriately. If we are to understand the evolution of conceptual systems in science, we must interpret them as forming lineages related by descent. In my theory, the notion of a “family resemblance” is taken literally, not metaphorically. In my book, I set out data to show that the mechanism which I propose is actually operative. In this paper, such data is assumed.

Species, sets, and the derivative nature of Philosophy

Abstract: Concepts and methods originating in one discipline can distort the structure of another when they are applied to the latter. I exemplify this mostly with reference to systematic biology, especially problems which have arisen in relation to the nature of species. Thus the received views of classes, individuals (which term I suggest be replaced by “units” to avoid misunderstandings), and sets are all inapplicable, but each can be suitably modified. The concept of fuzzy set was developed to deal with species and I defend its applicability. Taxa at all levels are real and participate in biological processes. Analysis of cause and pattern provides the deep structure in which metabiology is grounded; violation of this principle has led to diverse errors in biology.

Natural philosophy: Traditional natural philosophy

Abstract: The natural philosophy of the Renaissance was far from being a homogeneous body of knowledge uniformly accepted and taught in the universities. As one might expect during a rebirth of learning, new views of nature and of man's place in nature took their place alongside those of classical antiquity then being rediscovered and explored for a wisdom long lost. Yet a surprising amount of energy was focused on what might be termed ‘traditional natural philosophy’, i.e., a philosophy of nature hallowed by tradition in the Latin West from the twelfth century onwards and constituting a major part of university studies. In essence this was an Aristotelian philosophy, for the texts that were commented on were those of the Lyceum, but it also contained a considerable accretion of Neoplatonic elements as well as the developments of Islamic, Jewish and Christian commentators. The diversity of sources from which it sprang and the variety of situations in which its teachings took root argue against its ever having been a monolithic system of thought. Indeed, the tradition it embodied was complex, hardly capable of being characterised in simple terms. More, its written expression was prolix, and few scholars have had the inclination or the stamina to read and analyse the many printed works and manuscripts in which its teachings are preserved. Yet it was a particularly fruitful tradition, for it provided the seed-bed from which many disciplines now respected as parts of ‘modern science’ emerged. The difficulty of studying it is matched only by its importance, which until recent years has not been fully appreciated by intellectual historians.

Survival of the fittest: Law of evolution or law of probability?

Abstract: In a recent issue of Biology and Philosophy, Kenneth Waters argues that the principle of ”survival of the fittest” should be eliminated from the theory of natural selection, because it is an untestable law of probability, and as such, has no place in evolutionary theory. His argument is impressive, but it does not do justice to the practice of biology. The principle of “survival of the fittest” should not be eliminated from the theory of natural selection because it is important to biological practice: it plays an essential role in explanation and discovery, and in unffying the theory of natural selection.

Philosophy of Science: From Justification to Explanation

Abstract: The paper investigates the implications of a nonaprioristic philosophy of science. It starts by developing a scheme of justification which draws its norms from the prevailing paradigm of rationality, which need not be universal or eternal. If the requirement for normativity is then abandoned we do not end up with a descriptive philosophy of science. The alternative to a prescriptive philosophy of science is a theoretical explanation of scientific decisions and acts. Explanation, rather than mere description, replaces justification; and the paradigm of rationality becomes a scientific paradigm. The implications of these results for the discovery-justification distinction are investigated. An explanatory philosophy of science deals with the generation, as well as with the selection of scientific conjectures; both contexts have an epistemic dimension.

The importance of being Ernst

Abstract: Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist. By Ernst Mayr. Harvard University Press: 1988. Pp.564. $35. To be published in Britain in June.

Evolution, explanation, and the fact/value distinction

Abstract: Though modern non-cognitivists in ethics characteristically believe that values are irreducible to facts, they nevertheless believe that values are determined by facts, viz., those specified in functionalist, explanatory theories of the evolutionary origin of morality. The present paper probes the consistency of this position. The conventionalist theories of Hume and Harman are examined, and are seen not to establish a tight determinative reduction of values to facts. This result is illustrated by reference to recent theories of the sociobiological mechanisms involved in moral evolution. Though explanatory theories have linguistic implications,exaggerated in Harman's linguistic form of social relativism, there is also failure to establish the semantic reductionism which non-cognitivists reject under the rubric of ethical naturalism. It is concluded that explanatory forms of naturalism, the best of which is a functionalist-utilitarian account, are compatible with the fact/value distinction.

The logic of discovery and Darwin's pre-Malthusian researches

Abstract: Traditional logical empiricist and more recent historicist positions on the logic of discovery are briefly reviewed and both are found wanting. None have examined the historical detail now available from recent research on Darwin, from which there is evidence for gradual transition in descriptive and explanatory concepts. This episode also shows that revolutionary research can be directed by borrowed metascientific objectives and heuristics from other disciplines. Darwin's own revolutionary research took place within an ontological context borrowed from non evolutionary predecessors with methodological objectives borrowed from and justified by their success in Newton's physics. The logic of discovery is not a special form of inference from observation to theory, but rather a theory of the rationality of research, including principles bearing upon the rational choice of problems, or epistemic objectives, and heuristic, or means to solving the problems. Such choices can be justified only locally in the context of a relatively stable background ontology and substantive epistemology, not globally for all science.

Theories, concepts and rationality in an evolutionary account of science

Abstract: The empirical one involves finding out exactly how scientific theories and conceptual systems originate and are transmitted. One needs to investigate the psychology of the creative process; the social structure of scientific communities; the economics and politics involved in the funding of research programmes; the dynamics of the publication process; the politics and logistics of experimental testing; and like matters. In this connection Hull has provided interesting data and insights, which I would not wish to challenge. He does not, however, go so far as to draw on the work of the Edinburgh school of sociology of science (Bloor 1976; Barnes 1977; Compare Knorr-Cetina 1981; also Pickering 1984); but that may be because he would not wish to endorse their anti-rationalist, relativist conclusions (for more on which, see below). I think Hull's notions of conceptual inclusive fitness and of the demic structure of science offer the prospect of fertile application and extensions in this area. His analysis of the balance between cooperation and competition among scientists puts many aspects of the scientific enterprise into illuminating focus especially the practices of mutual citation, priority disputes, and the ethical norms within the scientific community governing fraudulent, plagiarized or shoddy research. I think one of the most interesting implications of Hull's analysis, which he could have emphasized more, is that if science is best understood (descriptively or normatively) as a matter of conjecture and refutation, then the labour tends to be divided: one research group's conjecture tends to be the subject matter of a rival research group's attempts at refutation.

Genes, memes and demes

Abstract: David Hull's paper, A Mechanism and its Metaphysics, contains a very important elaboration on the growing ediface of his "scientific theory of sociocultural evolution": a specific link between his mechanism for conceptual evolution and the demic or social group structure of science. In the remarks that follow I discuss this development in order to acknowledge its importance to a philosophy of conceptual change and express what I take to be a tension emerging in Hull's work stemming from his reluctance to develop a conceptual genotype/phenotype distinction and his account of the place of the demic structure of science in his mechanistic account. In a number of publications Hull (1975, 1978, 1982a, 1983a, 1983b) has pursued the theme of an evolutionary account of scientific change. He has presented a number of convincing arguments against the too hasty dismissal of the evolutionary viewpoint on grounds of apparent failure of the analogy between biology and culture, e.g., that genes are material but "memes" are not, that biological inheritance is Mendelian but cultural inheritance is Lamarckian, that scientific change is progressive while biological evolution is not (see especially Hull 1982a). However, Hull's more central concern is to develop a general account of evolution sufficient to encompass social and conceptual as well as biological change. This strategy, if successful, would yield both a dynamic theory of conceptual change and an elaboration of the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory, two major goals of philosophy of biology. Moreover, while part of his means of doing so is to reason analogically from biology, the merit of the generalized theory achieved is meant to depend on its empirical explanatory content, including facts about conceptual change in science. Hull has sketched in several places, including the present work, one of his most compelling supports for the empirical status of his evolutionary perspective: an explanation of why lying is a more serious, less frequent crime in science than stealing. The explanation is important because it uses what Hull takes to be a mechanism driving conceptual transmission to make a prediction about scientific social group behavior. According to the theory, the goal of both science and scientists is to increase empirical knowledge. Hull claims that scientists collectively can best achieve this goal by acting in their own best individual interests, that is, to seek to have their peers, and in particular their closest competitors, accept their work as their work. The best show of this acceptance is for other scientists to use the work, that is to incorporate it into their own work. Stealing another's work amounts to using it without giving credit and, as Hull repeatedly stresses, scientists want credit. Stealing thus hurts the victim of the intellectual theft by not conferring credit, though the merits of the idea do not depend on the credit going to the originator. Lying, on the other hand, hurts anyone who incorporates the lies in their work. It's bad enough that the users of the lie have to grant some credit to the liar, leaving less credit for themselves, but if the lie is found out through