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Summary Philosophers across the 'high-level' sciences, e.g., all sciences except fundamental physics, have asked how the events and processes studied and explained in a particular science relate to those at 'lower levels.' This section addresses this broader topic in the philosophy of science via examples from biology in particular, considering whether biological phenomena--from ecology, evolution, physiology, and genetics--reduce to other sciences--either subfields of biology itself or those outside of it. Philosophers of biology usually understand reductionism in explanatory--rather than syntactic--terms.
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  1. Karl S. Matlin, Crossing the Boundaries of Life: Günter Blobel and the Origins of Molecular Cell Biology, University of Chicago Press, 2022. [REVIEW]Daniel Liu - 2023 - Journal of the History of Biology 56 (2):411-414.
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  2. Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt (Eds.): Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences: MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2021, 336 pp., $60.000 (paperback), ISBN 9780262045339. [REVIEW]Ingo Brigandt - 2023 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 54 (2):353-356.
  3. Reduction and Mechanism. [REVIEW]Caitlin Mace & Cory Wright - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (3):637-641.
    Reductionism is an old doctrine desperate for new direction. With nomologically constructed theories commanding less attention in the life sciences, concern for the twentieth-century tradition of a...
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  4. Causal Complexity, Conditional Independence, and Downward Causation.James Woodward - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (5):857-867.
    This article defends the notion of downward causation, relating it to a notion of conditional independence.
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  5. Reduction and Progress in Biology.Sun Kyeong Yu - 2007 - International Journal of the Humanities 5:133-139.
    The historical development of debates about reduction testifies to us that reductionism in biology must proceed by providing a precise and complete causal explanation for every biological phenomenon at the level of molecules. An intertheoretical reduction model was proposed in biology but proved unsuccessful due to its inability to accommodate and explain the success of molecular biology. Ever since the molecular structure of the gene was discovered, actual biological research has successfully generated explanations for complex biological facts in terms of (...)
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  6. A Theory of Evolution as a Process of Unfolding.Agustin Ostachuk - 2020 - Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16 (1):347-379.
    In this work I propose a theory of evolution as a process of unfolding. This theory is based on four logically concatenated principles. The principle of evolutionary order establishes that the more complex cannot be generated from the simpler. The principle of origin establishes that there must be a maximum complexity that originates the others by logical deduction. Finally, the principle of unfolding and the principle of actualization guarantee the development of the evolutionary process from the simplest to the most (...)
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  7. Two Dogmas of Biology.Leonore Fleming - 2017 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (2).
    The problem with reductionism in biology is not the reduction, but the implicit attitude of determinism that usually accompanies it. Methodological reductionism is supported by deterministic beliefs, but making such a connection is problematic when it is based on an idea of determinism as fixed predictability. Conflating determinism with predictability gives rise to inaccurate models that overlook the dynamic complexity of our world, as well as ignore our epistemic limitations when we try to model it. Furthermore, the assumption of a (...)
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  8. Unificatory Explanation.Marco J. Nathan - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (1).
    Philosophers have traditionally addressed the issue of scientific unification in terms of theoretical reduction. Reductive models, however, cannot explain the occurrence of unification in areas of science where successful reductions are hard to find. The goal of this essay is to analyse a concrete example of integration in biology—the developmental synthesis—and to generalize it into a model of scientific unification, according to which two fields are in the process of being unified when they become explanatorily relevant to each other. I (...)
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  9. Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems.[author unknown] - 1977 - Journal of the History of Biology 10 (2):370-371.
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  10. Presentation: Darwinism and Social Science: Is there Any Hope for the Reductionist?Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla - 2003 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 18 (3):255-257.
  11. The Non-reductive Molecular Basis of Life.C. A. H. Bigger & C. P. Bigger - 1983 - der 16. Weltkongress Für Philosophie 2:194-199.
    The biochemical study of the simplest living systems does not yield the mechanistic results promised by those who deny that life is an irreducible parameter. We show through the complex mechanisms concerned with the replication, repair, and defense of DNA that organisms are organized to maintain their integrity. Mutations and evolution are not always random effects of environmental causes, for the organism is to some extent able to control chance.
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  12. Marie I. Kaiser, Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences. Reviewed by.Bradford Lee McCall - 2016 - Philosophy in Review 36 (5):209-210.
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  13. Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences by Marie Kaiser, Springer, 2015. [REVIEW]Ingo Brigandt - 2016 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 201608.
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  14. A Vital Challenge to Materialism.Jesse M. Mulder - 2016 - Philosophy 91 (2):153-182.
    Life poses a threat to materialism. To understand the phenomena of animate nature, we make use of a teleological form of explanation that is peculiar to biology, of explanations in terms of what I call the ‘vital categories’ – and this holds even for accounts of underlying physico-chemical ‘mechanisms’. The materialist claims that this teleological form of explanation does not capture what is metaphysically fundamental, whereas her preferred physical form of explanation does. In this essay, I do three things. (1) (...)
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  15. Conservative Reduction of Biology.Christian Sachse - 2011 - Philosophia Naturalis 48 (1):33-65.
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  16. Conservative Reductionism.Michael Esfeld & Christian Sachse - 2011 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Christian Sachse.
    _Conservative Reductionism_ sets out a new theory of the relationship between physics and the special sciences within the framework of functionalism. It argues that it is wrong-headed to conceive an opposition between functional and physical properties and to build an anti-reductionist argument on multiple realization. By contrast, all properties that there are in the world, including the physical ones, are functional properties in the sense of being causal properties, and all true descriptions that the special sciences propose can in principle (...)
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  17. Levels of organization: a deflationary account.Markus I. Eronen - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (1):39-58.
    The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...)
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  18. Neural Mechanisms: On the Structure, Function, and Development of Theories in Neurobiology.Carl Frederick Craver - 1998 - Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh
    Reference to mechanisms is virtually ubiquitous in science and its philosophy. Yet, the concept of a mechanism remains largely unanalyzed; So too for its possible applications in thinking about scientific explanation, experimental practice, and theory structure. This dissertation investigates these issues in the context of contemporary neurobiology. ;The theories of neurobiology are hierarchically organized descriptions of mechanisms that explain functions. Mechanisms are the coordinated activities of entities by virtue of which that function is performed. Since the activities composing mechanisms are (...)
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  19. The Influence of Niels Bohr on Max Delbrück: Revisiting the Hopes Inspired by “Light and Life”.Daniel J. McKaughan - 2005 - Isis 96 (4):507-529.
    The impact of Niels Bohr’s 1932 “Light and Life” lecture on Max Delbrück’s lifelong search for a form of “complementarity” in biology is well documented and much discussed, but the precise nature of that influence remains subject to misunderstanding. The standard reading, which sees Delbrück’s transition from physics into biology as inspired by the hope that investigation of biological phenomena might lead to a breakthrough discovery of new laws of physics, is colored much more by Erwin Schrödinger’s What Is Life? (...)
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  20. Vitalism and Reductionism in Liebig's Physiological Thought.Timothy Lipman - 1967 - Isis 58:167-185.
  21. Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology. [REVIEW]D. Walsh - 2007 - Isis 98:886-887.
  22. Reflections on a Theory of Organisms: Holism in Biology by Walter M. Elsasser. [REVIEW]Richard Beyler - 2000 - Isis 91:196-196.
  23. Biology, physics and reductionism.F. Cizek - 1979 - Filosoficky Casopis 27 (4):488-503.
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  24. Reductionist and Antireductionist Stances in the Health Sciences.Raffaella Campaner - 2010 - In F. Stadler, D. Dieks, W. Gonzales, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel & M. Weber (eds.), The Present Situation in the Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 205–218.
    Reductionism and antireductionism are among the most largely and hotly debated topics in philosophy of biology today. In this section of the volume, aiming to convey the current situation in the philosophy of the natural and life sciences, these topics are specifically addressed in Mehmet Elgin’s paper, focusing on biochemistry. Elgin strongly supports reductionism, first by claiming that the now classical argument based on multiple realizability does not entail anti-reductionism and secondly highlighting how the version of methodological reductionism that biochemistry (...)
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  25. The conference on'Problems of Reduction in Biology'was held in Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy, from 9 to 16 September 1972. Francisco J. Ayala Department of Genetics University of California. [REVIEW]Expérimentale des Populations - 1974 - In Francisco Jose Ayala & Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems. University of California Press.
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  26. A geometric model of reduction and emergence.Peter Medawar - 1974 - In F. Ayala & T. Dobzhansky (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Biology. University of California Press. pp. 57--63.
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  27. Higher-level descriptions: why should we preserve them.Charbel Nino El-Hani & Antonio Marcos Pereira - 2000 - In P. B. Andersen, Claus Emmeche, N. O. Finnemann & P. V. Christiansen (eds.), Downward Causation. University of Aarhus Press.
  28. Emergent biological principles and the computational properties of the universe: Explaining it or explaining it away.P. C. W. Davies - 2004 - Complexity 10 (2):11-15.
  29. Of men, molecules, and (Ir)reducibility.G. Rickey Welch - 1989 - Bioessays 11 (6):187-190.
    The subject of (ir)reducibility in biochemistry has resurfaced recently in the literature. Along with it comes a renewed emphasis on the organizational complexity of the living state and, more broadly, concern over the unity of the sciences.
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  30. Integration in biology: Philosophical perspectives on the dynamics of interdisciplinarity.Ingo Brigandt - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):461-465.
    This introduction to the special section on integration in biology provides an overview of the different contributions. In addition to motivating the philosophical significance of analyzing integration and interdisciplinary research, I lay out common themes and novel insights found among the special section contributions, and indicate how they exhibit current trends in the philosophical study of integration. One upshot of the contributed papers is that there are different aspects to and kinds of integration, so that rather than attempting to offer (...)
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  31. Why Rosenberg and Kaplan's attempt to reconcile physicalism and antireductionism concerning biology is unsatisfactory.Slobodan Perović - 2008 - Theoria: Beograd 51 (1):7-18.
  32. Formalization and the Meaning of “Theory” in the Inexact Biological Sciences.James Griesemer - 2013 - Biological Theory 7 (4):298-310.
    Exact sciences are described as sciences whose theories are formalized. These are contrasted to inexact sciences, whose theories are not formalized. Formalization is described as a broader category than mathematization, involving any form/content distinction allowing forms, e.g., as represented in theoretical models, to be studied independently of the empirical content of a subject-matter domain. Exactness is a practice depending on the use of theories to control subject-matter domains and to align theoretical with empirical models and not merely a state of (...)
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  33. Toward a physical biology.Suzannah Rutherford - 2011 - Bioessays 33 (6):397-397.
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  34. Thermodynamics, Information, and Evolution: The Problem of Reductionism. [REVIEW]Francisco J. Ayala - 1989 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 11 (1):115 - 120.
  35. Quanta of Life: Atomic Physics and the Reincarnation of Phage.Lily E. Kay - 1992 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 14 (1):3 - 21.
    I will use the history of phage to focus on the issue of biological explanations; on the relationship between biology and physics; and on the historical problem of the disciplinary autonomy of biology, versus its reduction, which ultimately seeks to place it within the domain of the physical sciences. Paradoxically, the two physicists I focus on most, Neils Bohr and Max Delbrück, represent attempts to preserve the autonomy of biology, each in a very complex way. Once again the problematique here (...)
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  36. Reduction of Biological Properties by Means of Functional Sub-Types.Christian Sachse - 2005 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 27 (3/4):435 - 449.
    The general aim of this paper is to propose a reductionist strategy to higher-level property types. Starting from a common ground in the philosophy of science, I shall elaborate on possible realizer differences of higher-level property types. Because of the realizer types' causal heterogeneity, an introduction of functional sub-types of higher-level properties will be suggested. Each higher-level functional sub-type corresponds to one realizer type. This means that there is the theoretical possibility to reach some kind of type-identity and this opens (...)
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  37. Laws, Causation, and Explanation in the Special Sciences.Jaegwon Kim - 2005 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 27 (3/4):325 - 338.
    There is the general philosophical question concerning the relationship between physics, which is often taken to be our fundamental and all-encompassing science, on one hand and the special sciences, such as biology and psychology, each of which deals with phenomena in some specially restricted domain, on the other. This paper deals with a narrower question: Are there laws in the special sciences, laws like those we find, or expect to find, in basic physics? Three arguments that are intended to show (...)
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  38. Expanding the Framework of the Holism/Reductionism Debate in Neo-Darwinism: The Case of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Bernhard Rensch.Richard G. Delisle - 2008 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 30 (2):207 - 226.
    The holism/reductionism debate in evolutionary biology has often been analysed as involving two main phenomenological levels within neo-Darwinism: genetic and organismic. This analytical framework assumes that explanation in evolution is either found in the field of genetics or the field of organismic biology. It is argued here that this framework is far too restrictive to incorporate what at least some founding members of neo-Darwinism had in mind in their search for the ultimate cause of evolution. Dobzhansky's "super-holism" locates this drive (...)
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  39. Self-Organization, Emergent Properties and the Unity of the World.Gerhard Roth & Helmut Schwegler - 1990 - Philosophica 46.
  40. Quantum aspects of life: Relating evolutionary biology with theology via modern physics.Anna Ijjas - 2013 - Zygon 48 (1):60-76.
    In the present paper, I shall argue that quantum theory can contribute to reconciling evolutionary biology with the creation hypothesis. After giving a careful definition of the theological problem, I will, in a first step, formulate necessary conditions for the compatibility of evolutionary theory and the creation hypothesis. In a second step, I will show how quantum theory can contribute to fulfilling these conditions. More precisely, I claim that (1) quantum probabilities are best understood in terms of ontological indeterminism, but (...)
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  41. Molecular Genetics, Reductionism, and Disease Concepts in Psychiatry.Herbert W. Harris & Kenneth F. Schaffner - 1992 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (2):127-153.
    The study of mental illness by the methods of molecular genetics is still in its infancy, but the use of genetic markers in psychiatry may potentially lead to a Virchowian revolution in the conception of mental illness. Genetic markers may define novel clusters of patients having diverse clinical presentations but sharing a common genetic and mechanistic basis. Such clusters may differ radically from the conventional classification schemes of psychiatric illness. However, the reduction of even relatively simple Mendelian phenomena to molecular (...)
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  42. Relations in Biomedical Ontologies.Barry Smith, Werner Ceusters, Bert Klagges, Jacob Köhler, Anand Kuma, Jane Lomax, Chris Mungall, , Fabian Neuhaus, Alan Rector & Cornelius Rosse - 2005 - Genome Biology 6 (5):R46.
    To enhance the treatment of relations in biomedical ontologies we advance a methodology for providing consistent and unambiguous formal definitions of the relational expressions used in such ontologies in a way designed to assist developers and users in avoiding errors in coding and annotation. The resulting Relation Ontology can promote interoperability of ontologies and support new types of automated reasoning about the spatial and temporal dimensions of biological and medical phenomena.
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  43. A Non-Newtonian Newtonian Model of Evolution: The ZFEL View.Robert N. Brandon - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):702-715.
    Recently philosophers of biology have argued over whether or not Newtonian mechanics provides a useful analogy for thinking about evolutionary theory. For philosophers, the canonical presentation of this analogy is Sober's. Matthen and Ariew and Walsh, Lewins, and Ariew argue that this analogy is deeply wrong-headed. Here I argue that the analogy is indeed useful, however, not in the way it is usually interpreted. The Newtonian analogy depends on having the proper analogue of Newton's First Law. That analogue is what (...)
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  44. Reflections on Path Dependence and Irreversibility: Lessons from Evolutionary Biology.Eric Desjardins - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (5):724-738.
    This essay examines the claim “path dependence entails irreversibility” from the point of view of evolutionary biology. I argue that evolutionary irreversibility possesses many faces, sometimes conflicting with path dependence. I propose an account of path dependence that does not rely on irreversibility and explains why it more naturally coexists with the notion of (contingent) irreversibility developed by the Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo. However, I argue that we should not conceive of this relationship as necessary.
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  45. Biology and the Problem of Levels of Reality.Marjorie Grene - 1967 - New Scholasticism 41 (4):427-449.
  46. Studying populations without molecular biology: Aster models and a new argument against reductionism.Emily Grosholz - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2):246-251.
    During the past few decades, philosophers of biology have debated the issue of reductionism versus anti-reductionism, with both sides often claiming a ‘pluralist’ position. However, both sides also tend to focus on a single research paradigm, which analyzes living things in terms of certain macromolecular components. I offer a case study where biologists pursue other analytic pathways, in a tradition of quantitative genetics that originates with the initially purely mathematical theories of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall (...)
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  47. Emergence : between reductive and non reductive explanations : does it make sense?Alfredo Pérez Martínez - 2009 - In González Recio & José Luis (eds.), Philosophical Essays on Physics and Biology. G. Olms.
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  48. Drosophila Genetics: A Reductionist Research Program.Nils Roll-Hansen - 1978 - Journal of the History of Biology 11 (1):159 - 210.
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  49. Diffusion Theory in Biology: A Relic of Mechanistic Materialism. [REVIEW]Paul S. Agutter, P. Colm Malone & Denys N. Wheatley - 2000 - Journal of the History of Biology 33 (1):71 - 111.
    Diffusion theory explains in physical terms how materials move through a medium, e.g. water or a biological fluid. There are strong and widely acknowledged grounds for doubting the applicability of this theory in biology, although it continues to be accepted almost uncritically and taught as a basis of both biology and medicine. Our principal aim is to explore how this situation arose and has been allowed to continue seemingly unchallenged for more than 150 years. The main shortcomings of diffusion theory (...)
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  50. The Downs and Ups of Mechanistic Research: Circadian Rhythm Research as an Exemplar. [REVIEW]William Bechtel - 2010 - Erkenntnis 73 (3):313 - 328.
    In the context of mechanistic explanation, reductionistic research pursues a decomposition of complex systems into their component parts and operations. Using research on the mechanisms responsible for circadian rhythms, I consider both the gains that have been made by discovering genes and proteins that figure in these intracellular oscillators and also highlight the increasingly recognized need to understand higher-level integration, both between cells in the central oscillator and between the central and peripheral oscillators. This history illustrates a common need to (...)
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