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Reducing the dauer larva: molecular models of biological phenomena in Caenorhabditis elegans research

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Abstract

One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows one to appreciate that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of (1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and (2) only within a replicable experimental background. These identities—which are ubiquitous in biology and form the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle, Philosophy and neuroscience: a ruthlessly reductive account, 2003)—are criticised as merely “local” (Sullivan, Synthese 167:511–539, 2009) or “fragmentary” (Schaffner, Synthese, 151(3):377–402, 2006). However, in an instructive case, a biological model is preserved in molecular terms, demonstrating a complex phenomenon that has been successfully reduced.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Andrew Wayne, John Bickle, Ingo Brigandt, two anonymous referees for this journal and audiences at Guelph University and CSHPS 2010 Montreal for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Michal Arciszewski

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  1. Michal Arciszewski
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Correspondence to Michal Arciszewski.

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Arciszewski, M. Reducing the dauer larva: molecular models of biological phenomena in Caenorhabditis elegans research. Synthese 190, 4155–4179 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0254-8

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