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Mapping the Future of Biology

Evolving Concepts and Theories

  • Book
  • © 2009

Overview

Editors:
  1. Anouk Barberousse

    1. Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris, Paris, France

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Michel Morange

    1. Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris, Paris, France

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. Thomas Pradeu

    1. Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris, Paris, France

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Includes some recently discovered phenomena, such as molecular noise
  • First time self reflections and exchanges of views on practice and theoretical attidues by important participants in rencent biological debates
  • Key reference work for biologists and philosophers of biology

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 266)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XI
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  2. Introduction

    • Anouk Barberousse, Michel Morange, Thomas Pradeu
    Pages 1-14

  3. Articulating Different Modes of Explanation: The Present Boundary in Biological Research

    • Michel Morange
    Pages 15-26

  4. Compromising Positions: The Minding\newline of Matter

    • Susan Oyama
    Pages 27-46

  5. Abstractions, Idealizations, and Evolutionary Biology

    • Peter Godfrey-Smith
    Pages 47-56

  6. The Adequacy of Model Systems for Evo-Devo: Modeling the Formation of Organisms/ Modeling the Formation of Society

    • Scott F. Gilbert
    Pages 57-68

  7. Niche Construction in Evolution, Ecosystems and Developmental Biology

    • John Odling-Smee
    Pages 69-92

  8. Novelty, Plasticity and Niche Construction: The Influence of Phenotypic Variation on Evolution

    • Kim Sterelny
    Pages 93-110

  9. The Evolution of Complexity

    • Mark A. Bedau
    Pages 111-130

  10. Self-Organization, Self-Assembly, and the Origin of Life

    • Evelyn Fox Keller
    Pages 131-140

  11. Self-Organization and Complexity in Evolutionary Theory, or, in this Life the Bread Always Falls Jammy Side Down

    • Michael Ruse
    Pages 141-154

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 155-173
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Keywords

About this book

Carving Nature at its Joints? In order to map the future of biology we need to understand where we are and how we got there. Present day biology is the realization of the famous metaphor of the organism as a bete ˆ machine elaborated by Descartes in Part V of the Discours,a realization far beyond what anyone in the seventeenth century could have im- ined. Until the middle of the nineteenth century that machine was an articulated collection of macroscopic parts, a system of gears and levers moving gasses, solids, and liquids, and causing some parts of the machine to move in response to the force produced by others. Then, in the nineteenth century, two divergent changes occurred in the level at which the living machine came to be investigated. First, with the rise of chemistry and the particulate view of the composition of matter, the forces on macroscopic machine came to be understood as the ma- festation of molecular events, and functional biology became a study of molecular interactions. That is, the machine ceased to be a clock or a water pump and became an articulated network of chemical reactions. Until the ?rst third of the twentieth century this chemical view of life, as re?ected in the development of classical b- chemistry treated the chemistry of biological molecules in much the same way as for any organic chemical reaction, with reaction rates and side products that were the consequence of statistical properties of the concentrations of reactants.

Reviews

From the reviews: “This book includes an interesting collection of papers written by a group of first-rate philosophers and biologists. … This book is a success as it contains worthy contributions. … very valuable for the serious student of biology.” (Davide Vecchi, Metapsychology Online Reviews, February, 2010) “This book attempts a challenging integration of recent theoretical concepts in the fields of ecological-evolutionary-development. … the appeal of this book will be mostly to biological philosophers and … systems scientists.” (A. J. J. Lynch, Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 17, June, 2010)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris, Paris, France

    Anouk Barberousse, Michel Morange, Thomas Pradeu

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