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Philosophy Of Biology biophilosophy Philosophy of biology (also called, rarely, biophilosophy) is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology (e.g., Aristotle, Descartes, and even Kant), philosophy of biology only emerged as an indepedent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Philosophers of science then began paying increasing attention to developments in biology, from the rise of Neodarwinism in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of Deoxyribonucleic acid in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering. Philosophy of biology today has become a very visible, well-organized discipline -- with its own journals, conferences, and professional organizations. Contemporary philosophers of biology have largely avoided traditional questions about the distinction between life and nonlife. Instead, they have examined the practices, theories, and concepts of biologists with a view toward better understanding biology as a scientific discipline (or group of scientific fields). A few of the questions philosophers of biology have attempted to answer, for example, include: - How is ecology related to medicine?
- What is a biological species?
- How is rationality possible, given our biological origins?
- How might our biological understandings of race, sexuality, and gender reflect social values?
- What is natural selection, and how does it operate in nature?
- Is evolution compatible with Christianity or other religious systems?
- How do medical doctors explain disease?
- And many others...
Reductionism, holism, & vitalism One particularly fruitful issue philosophers of biology have addressed concerns reductionism, holism, and vitalism. - Reductionism is the view that all higher-level processes are best explained in terms of lower-level processes. For example, reductionists claim that ecological interactions are best accounted for by looking -- not at predator-prey interactions -- but at interactions among molecules (genes, nutrients, etc.).
- Vitalism is the view, rejected by mainstream biologists in the 19th century, that there is a unique life-force (called the "vis viva") that gives living organisms their "life." Vitalists often claimed that the vis viva acts with purposes according to its pre-established "form." (On this, see teleology.)
- Holism is the view that some higher-level processes have emergent properties -- in other words, higher-level properties that are somehow more than the sum of their parts. For example, if we wanted to explain why one species of finch survived a draught while others died out, holists would argue that we have to look at the entire ecosystem as a whole. Decomposing an ecosystem into its parts destroys any hope we might have in explaining its overall behavior (in this case, the decrease in biodiversity). Holism is thus a rejection of reductionism.
Philosophers of biology have attempted to explain the rise and fall of reductionism, vitalism, and holism throughout the history of biology. For example, many philosophers claim that the ideas of Charles Darwin destroyed the last remainders of teleological views from biology. And yet biologists continue to use apparently teological language in their explanations of adaptations. According to Darwinism, organisms act "as if" they have purposes, specifically survival and reproduction, because organisms that don't act that way have been weeded out (see the selfish gene). So Darwinism hasn't expunged teological language altogether. How exactly teology, reductionism, and mechanism relate has proven to be especially tricky to sort out. Many important debates in philosophy of biology turn on precisely how one sees reductionism.
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