Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Theory is as Theory Does: Scientific Practice and Theory Structure in Biology

  • Thematic Issue Article: The Meaning of “Theory” in Biology
  • Published:
Biological Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

An Erratum to this article was published on 17 August 2012

Abstract

Using the context of controversies surrounding evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) and the possibility of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, I provide an account of theory structure as idealized theory presentations that are always incomplete (partial) and shaped by their conceptual content (material rather than formal organization). These two characteristics are salient because the goals that organize and regulate scientific practice, including the activity of using a theory, are heterogeneous. This means that the same theory can be structured differently, in part because theory presentations (as idealizations) intentionally depart from different features known to be present in a theory. Since there are diverse and potentially incompatible theory structures derived from heterogeneous goals found in scientific practices, a question arises about the absence of a unifying theory structure in the background. The notion of a “theory façade” offers a fruitful perspective on this potentially unsettling result.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.utwente.nl/gw/spsp/about/SPSP_purpose_051202.doc/.

  2. http://www.utwente.nl/gw/spsp/about/SPSP_purpose_051202.doc/.

  3. Explanatory goals are understood here as a subset of epistemological goals, the latter of which also includes aims such as classification, systematization, and conceptual clarification.

  4. Some other epistemic unit, such as a perspective, might achieve this coordination of models and phenomena or data models (see, e.g., Griesemer 2000).

  5. This is not to say that the semantic view of theories is wrong. Rather, there are features of theory structure that remain unaddressed in the traditional debate. A useful way to see the difference is via a distinction between informational and functional theories of scientific representation (Chakravartty 2010). The former utilize relations of similarity or isomorphism to capture representation, and the traditional theory structure debate fits here. Functional theories utilize cognitive activities (e.g., inference) that are enabled by representative devices (e.g., models). These two types of theories of scientific representation are complementary, rather than competing. My emphasis on scientific practice places me on the functional side of the divide with respect to theory structure.

  6. In rare cases, this framework is embedded in a more general conceptual structure for biological science (Scheiner 2010), albeit controversially.

  7. This notion of a core has also been assumed by philosophers: “[Philosophers] seem to agree on one thing: if you can characterize formal population genetics, then you have characterized the ‘guts’ or ‘core’ of evolutionary theory” (Lloyd 1988, p. 8).

  8. “A formalisation of a theory is an abstract representation of the theory expressed in a formal deductive framework for which there is a complete specification of: (1) what constitutes a well-formed-formula, and (2) all the permissible rules of inference.…it is important to emphasize one crucial similarity between the syntactic and semantic conceptions, …they are both conceptions of the formal structure of theories” (Thompson 2007, pp. 485, 500).

  9. “We cannot understand variation and adaptation unless we understand the cellular details…[this] may seem messy and non-mathematical, but the most general truths in science (including evolution) emerged in these qualitative ways. Messy fields full of details, like chemistry, geology, and medicine, have managed to derive powerful theoretical understandings of complex phenomena….In some cases, this was followed by mathematical codification and in other cases not” (Kirschner 2012).

  10. Note that this invocation of “mechanism” is distinct from mechanistic models found in experimental biology, such as CREs. The qualification (“mechanism for the evolution of form”) is shorthand for the combination of different principles, each of which is not best considered as a mechanistic model (e.g., heterotopy).

  11. The contested axis of form (structure/morphology) versus function (adaptation/physiology) has been with us a long time (Russell 1916/1982). These thematic emphases in biological reasoning coalesce around distinct explanatory goals and therefore structure evolutionary theory differently (Love 2011). This helps to explain ongoing difficulties in synthesizing disciplinary approaches in biology (Laubichler and Maienschein 2009).

  12. This includes disagreements about the reach of Carroll’s genetic theory of morphological evolution. For example: “[Understanding morphological evolution] necessarily includes many more factors than the evolution of gene regulation alone, notably the dynamics of epigenetic interactions, the chemicophysical properties of growing cell and tissue masses, and the influences of environmental parameters” (Müller 2007, p. 944).

  13. For example, and controversially, if “causal-mechanistic” explanation is superior to explanations citing different forces operating on populations (“population-level explanation”), then evolutionary theory must be restructured so that these developmental considerations take a more central or foundational position (Laubichler 2010).

  14. The degree to which debates over centrality are misguided depends on how the differing methodological and epistemological goals are perceived. If these are taken as legitimate, then there is a pseudo-conflict. If some set of goals is deemed illegitimate, then the debates are substantive (though centrality is not their animating impulse). My argument only depends on the possibility of the former interpretation. Carroll and Lynch may be questioning the legitimacy of differing methodological and epistemological goals. If so, standards for goals may need to be compared and reconciled harbors its own set of difficulties.

  15. Could the goal be to generate a unitary evolutionary theory? As noted, this stated aim often travels with other associated methodological commitments, such as mathematical formalization (e.g., Rice 2004; cf. Thompson 2007), which lead to eliminating standard elements of evolutionary biology (Love 2010). Thus, this epistemological goal is better described as finding an MIS that is as general as possible under particular methodological constraints.

  16. Another way this is expressed is as a “foundation”: “Theories would ideally support a large number of different models and frame a broad range of nominally different modeling contexts” (Krakauer et al. 2011, p. 271).

  17. Although it cannot be pursued here, another way to flesh out this analysis is that theories are organizationally complex just like organisms, and therefore admit of different (incompatible) decompositions into parts or multiple heuristic perspectives (Wimsatt 2007, Chap. 9). The analogue to the difficulty of identifying a unified evolutionary theory behind the MIS patchwork is the difficulty of identifying what counts as an individual.

References

  • Amundson R (2005) The changing role of the embryo in evolutionary thought: roots of evo-devo. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Beatty J (1986) The synthesis and the synthetic theory. In: Bechtel W (ed) Integrating scientific disciplines. Nijhoff, Dordrecht, pp 125–135

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bock WJ (2010) Multiple explanations in Darwinian evolutionary theory. Acta Biotheor 58:65–79

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brigandt I (2010) Scientific reasoning is material inference: combining confirmation, explanation, and discovery. Int Stud Philos Sci 24:31–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calcott B (2009) Lineage explanations: explaining how biological mechanisms change. Brit J Phil Sci 60:51–78

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caplan AL (1978) Testability, disreputability, and the structure of the modern synthetic theory of evolution. Erkenntnis 13:261–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carroll SB (2005a) Evolution at two levels: on genes and form. PLoS Biol 3:e245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carroll SB (2005b) Endless forms most beautiful: the new science of evo-devo. Norton, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll SB (2008) Evo-devo and an expanding evolutionary synthesis: a genetic theory of morphological evolution. Cell 134:25–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chakravartty A (2010) Informational versus functional theories of scientific representation. Synthese 172:197–213

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darden L (1986) Relations among fields in the evolutionary synthesis. In: Bechtel W (ed) Integrating scientific disciplines. Nijhoff, Dordrecht, pp 113–123

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Depew DJ, Weber BH (1996) Darwinism evolving: systems dynamics and the genealogy of natural selection. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Gayon J (1990) Critics and criticisms of the modern synthesis: the viewpoint of a philosopher. In: Hecht MK, Wallace B, Macintyre RJ (eds) Evolutionary biology, vol 24. Plenum, New York, pp 1–49

    Google Scholar 

  • Grant B (2010) Should evolutionary theory evolve? The Scientist 24:24–31

    Google Scholar 

  • Griesemer J (1984) Presentations and the status of theories. PSA 1:102–114

    Google Scholar 

  • Griesemer J (2000) Development, culture, and the units of inheritance. Phil Sci 67:S348–S368

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griesemer J (2011) Heuristic reductionism and the relative significance of epigenetic inheritance in evolution. In: Hallgrímmson B, Hall BK (eds) Epigenetics: linking genotype and phenotype in development and evolution. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp 14–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Halvorson H (2012) What scientific theories could not be. Phil Sci 79:183–206

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heffer A, Shultz JW, Pick L (2010) Surprising flexibility in a conserved Hox transcription factor over 550 million years of evolution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:18040–18045

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hesse M (1980) Revolutions and reconstructions in the philosophy of science. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

  • Jones MR (2005) Idealization and abstraction: a framework. In: Jones MR, Cartwright N (eds) Idealization XII: correcting the model. Idealization and abstraction in the sciences. Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, pp 173–217

    Google Scholar 

  • Kellert SH, Longino HE, Waters CK (2006) Introduction: the pluralist stance. In: Kellert SH, Longino HE, Waters CK (eds) Scientific pluralism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp vii–xxix

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirschner MW (2012) The road to facilitated variation. In: Love AC (ed) Conceptual change in biology: scientific and philosophical perspectives on evolution and development. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Krakauer DC, Collins JP, Erwin D, Flack JC, Fontana W, Laubichler MD, Prohaska SJ, West GB, Stadler PF (2011) The challenges and scope of theoretical biology. J Theor Biol 276:269–276

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laubichler M (2010) Evolutionary developmental biology offers a significant challenge to the neo-Darwinian paradigm. In: Ayala FJ, Arp R (eds) Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp 199–212

    Google Scholar 

  • Laubichler MD, Maienschein J (eds) (2009) Form and function in developmental evolution. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Levins R (1966) The strategy of model building in population biology. Am Sci 54:421–431

    Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd EA (1988) The structure and confirmation of evolutionary theory. Greenwood, Westport, CT

    Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd EA, Lewontin RC, Feldman MW (2008) The generational cycle of state spaces and adequate genetical representation. Phil Sci 75:140–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Love AC (2009) Typology reconfigured: from the metaphysics of essentialism to the epistemology of representation. Acta Biotheor 57:51–75

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Love AC (2010) Rethinking the structure of evolutionary theory for an extended synthesis. In: Pigliucci M, Müller GB (eds) Evolution: the extended synthesis. MIT, Cambridge, MA, pp 403–441

    Google Scholar 

  • Love AC (2011) Darwin’s functional reasoning and homology. In: Wheeler M (ed) 150 years of evolution: Darwin’s impact on contemporary thought and culture. SDSU, San Diego, pp 49–67

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch M (2007) The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:8597–8604

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lynch V, Wagner G (2011) Revisiting a classic example of transcription factor functional equivalence: are Eyeless and Pax6 functionally equivalent or divergent? J Exp Zool (Mol Dev Evol) 316B:93–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minelli A (2010) Evolutionary developmental biology does not offer a significant challenge to the neo-Darwinian paradigm. In: Ayala FJ, Arp R (eds) Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp 213–226

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrison M (2007) Where have all the theories gone? Phil Sci 74:195–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Müller GB (2007) Evo-devo: extending the evolutionary synthesis. Nat Rev Genet 8:943–949

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norton JD (2003) A material theory of induction. Phil Sci 70:647–670

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • NRC (National Research Council) (2008) The role of theory in advancing 21st-century biology: catalyzing transformative research. Committee on Defining and Advancing the Conceptual Basis of Biological Sciences in the 21st Century. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12026#toc. Accessed 18 May 2012

  • Pigliucci M (2007) Do we need an extended evolutionary synthesis? Evolution 61:2743–2749

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M, Müller GB (2010a) Elements of an extended evolutionary synthesis. In: Pigliucci M, Müller GB (eds) Evolution: the extended synthesis. MIT, Cambridge, MA, pp 3–17

    Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M, Müller GB (eds) (2010b) Evolution: the extended synthesis. MIT, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Rice SH (2004) Evolutionary theory: mathematical and conceptual foundations. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg A (1985) The structure of biological science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Russell ES (1916/1982) Form and function: a contribution to the history of animal morphology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  • Scheiner SM (2010) Toward a conceptual framework for biology. Quart Rev Biol 85:293–318

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapere D (1980) The meaning of the evolutionary synthesis. In: Mayr E, Provine WB (eds) The evolutionary synthesis: perspectives on the unification of biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 388–398

    Google Scholar 

  • Stern D, Orgogozo V (2009) Is genetic evolution predictable? Science 323:746–751

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suárez M (2004) An inferential conception of scientific representation. Phil Sci 71:767–779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suárez M (ed) (2009) Fictions in science: philosophical essays on modeling and idealization. Routledge, Taylor & Francis, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Suppe F (ed) (1977) The structure of scientific theories, 2nd edn. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL

    Google Scholar 

  • Suppe F (2000) Understanding scientific theories: an assessment of developments, 1969–1998. Phil Sci 67:S102–S115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson P (2007) Formalisations of evolutionary biology. In: Matthen M, Stephens C (eds) Philosophy of biology. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 485–523

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wasserman GD (1981) On the nature of the theory of evolution. Phil Sci 48:416–437

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waters CK (2007) The nature and context of exploratory experimentation. Hist Philos Life Sci 29:275–284

    Google Scholar 

  • Weisberg M (2006) Forty years of “The Strategy”: Levins on model building and idealization. Biol Philos 21:623–645

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weisberg M (2007) Three kinds of idealization. J Philos 104:639–659

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson M (2006) Wandering significance: an essay on conceptual behavior. Oxford University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt WC (1980) Reductionistic research strategies and their biases in the units of selection controversy. In: Nickles T (ed) Scientific discovery: case studies. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp 213–259

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt WC (1981) Robustness, reliability, and overdetermination. In: Brewer MB, Collins BE (eds) Scientific inquiry and the social sciences. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp 124–163

    Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt WC (1987) False models as means to truer theories. In: Nitecki MH, Hoffman A (eds) Neutral models in biology. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 23–55

    Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt WC (2007) Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: piecewise approximations to reality. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao Y, Potter SS (2002) Functional comparison of the Hoxa4, Hoxa10, and Hoxa11 homeoboxes. Dev Biol 244:21–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Werner Callebaut, Massimo Pigliucci, and Kim Sterelny for the invitation to participate in “The Meaning of ‘Theory’ in Biology” workshop at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (July 2011), where an early version of this material was presented. I benefited enormously from the feedback of the workshop participants, especially detailed comments on a draft of the manuscript from Massimo Pigliucci and Kim Sterelny. Many of their incisive comments helped improve the arguments although this does not imply their endorsement (not least because many of their cogent objections have not been fully addressed). I also am grateful to Jim Griesemer and Lisa Lloyd who provided me with critical feedback on a different version of this material.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Alan C. Love

Authors
  1. Alan C. Love
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alan C. Love.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Love, A.C. Theory is as Theory Does: Scientific Practice and Theory Structure in Biology. Biol Theory 7, 325–337 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0046-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0046-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation