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In one of his most famous papers, Ernst (mayr1961) claims that the modes of explanation of molecular biology and evolutionary biology are completely different, because the former refers to proximate causes, whereas the latter resorts to ultimate causes. At the celebration of his 100th birthday, only a few months before his death, he asserted that molecular biology of the second half of the 20th century,...
For an observer totally unfamiliar with the biological sciences, the present picture of these disciplines would be highly contrasted. On the one side, he would see an accumulation of new data provided by genome sequencing programs and the structural determination of macromolecules. Whereas the interpretation of the former is difficult – but opens to a very fruitful comparison between organisms -,...
The primal Word, bringer of order and meaning to chaos, introduces a comparison of Divine Logos with what I call Biologos. Both involve notions of direction, guiding agency, creative purpose, and meaning—roughly, intentionality. In addition, saying the “same thing” in several languages implies meanings that are independent of their linguistic vehicles, suggesting another characteristic of Logos and...
Many philosophers agree that idealization and abstraction are key aspects of science, especially scientific work based on the construction and assessment of models. And while much of the initial philosophical work in this area was concerned with physics, it has become clear that biology, especially evolutionary biology, is another area in which these phenomena play a very significant role. But despite...
The writer Jorge Luis Borges tells us of a wondrous Chinese encyclopedia whose classification of animals begins with the dichotomous branch: Those animals belonging to the emperor, and those animals that don’t (see Foucault 1970). In the social scheme of scientific organisms, a similar wisdom prevails. There are those privileged imperial organisms called model systems, and then there are all the other...
In a volume devoted to re-examining our capacity to explain recent developments in the life sciences, the concept of niche construction should be able to make a useful contribution. If it cannot, there is likely to be something wrong with the concept; but I think it can.
It has long been recognised that phenotypic novelty poses a prima facie problem for evolutionary theory. For there is a problem in reconciling an incremental conception of evolutionary change with the evolution of qualitatively new structures, especially complex new structures (Nitecki 1990). While it is easy to see how an existing trait could be elaborated incrementally, it is much harder to see...
The evolution of the biosphere exhibits a trend of increasing complexity of the most complex organisms. Even though we are uncertain about the proper way to measure complexity, it is hard to deny that the earliest prokaryotic cells were simpler than the eukaryotic cells that arose from them, and these were simpler than the multicellular life forms that evolved from them, and so on. But it is controversial...
Interest in the role of “self-organization” in biological evolution and development has grown sharply over the last couple of decades, but confusion and uncertainty over the meaning of the term remains widespread. Usage has varied greatly since the term was first introduced in 1790, and a very crude taxonomy might arrange its various meanings according to three different contexts, in three different...
I am an ardent Darwinian. I believe that life evolved and that the all-important mechanism was natural selection (Ruse 2006b). More organisms are born than can survive and reproduce, this leads to a struggle for existence, and only some succeed in passing on their bloodlines to future generations. Those that do succeed tend to have features different from the losers, it is these differences that make...
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