商品簡介
Despite the transformation in biological practice and theory brought about bydiscoveries in molecular biology, until recently philosophy of biology continued to focus onevolutionary biology. When the Human Genome Project got underway in the late 1980s and early 1990s,philosophers of biology -- unlike historians and social scientists -- had little to add to thedebate. In this landmark collection of essays, Sahotra Sarkar broadens the scope of currentdiscussions of the philosophy of biology, viewing molecular biology as a unifying perspective onlife that complements that of evolutionary biology. His focus is on molecular biology, but theoverriding question behind these papers is what molecular biology contributes to all traditionalareas of biological research.Molecular biology -- described with some foresight in a 1938Rockefeller Foundation report as a branch of science in which "delicate modern techniques are beingused to investigate ever more minute details" -- and its modeling strategies apparently argue infavor of physical reductionism. Sarkar's first three chapters explore reductionism -- defending it,but cautioning that reduction to molecular interactions is not necessarily a reduction to genetics(and does not support the claims of either heriditarianism or environmentalism). The next sectionsof the book discuss function, exploring how functional explanations pose a problem for reductionism;the informational interpretation of biology and how it interacts with reductionism; and the tensionbetween the unifying framework of molecular biology and the received framework of evolutionarytheory. The concluding chapter is an essay in the emerging field of developmental evolution,exploring what molecular biology may contribute to the transformation of evolutionary theory asevolutionary theory takes into account morphogenetic development.
作者簡介
Sahotra Sarkar is Professor of Integrative Biology and Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.
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