Structural explanation in Biology. Challenging the scope of mechanistic explanation
Supporting Agencies
- Esta investigación está financiada por dos proyectos de generación del conocimiento del ministerio español de Ciencia, Innovación y Univeridades: “Reassessing scientific objectivity” PID2020-115114GB-I00 (Universidad de Barcelona); “A philosophical exploration of lineages” PID-2022-137993NA-I00 (Universidad de Oviedo).
Abstract
Abstract: Philosophical analysis of scientific explanation in biology for the past 20 years has been dominated by the new mechanism account. The new mechanism provides a new framework to think about traditional concepts in the philosophy of science, and in particular, his model of scientific explanation as the description of a mechanism with its parts, activities and their causal connection has been very successful in capturing how explanation works mainly in experimental biology. However, the rise of systems biology and the development of complex mathematical dynamic models used in other theoretical branches challenges the new mechanisms and their explanatory model. Philippe Huneman claims that there are several explanations in biology that are mathematical, in which formal models do not play only a representational role but rather an explanatory role. In this paper I analyze different types of mathematical explanations in biology such as topological and equilibrium explanations and I show how they explain in a way which is very different from the new mechanism proposal. These explanations abstract away on many occasions from the microscopic details and explain in a non-causal mechanistic way.
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