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13From Arabidopsis and Antirrhinum to Arabia and Antioch (review)Evolution & Development 15 158-159. 2013.From Arabidopsis and Antirrhinum to Arabia and Antioch: a review of cells to civilizations: the principles of change that shape life Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life, Coen, E. 2012. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 312 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-14967-7
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11Explaining evolutionary innovations and novelties: Criteria of explanatory adequacy and epistemological prerequisitesPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 874-886. 2008.It is a common complaint that antireductionist arguments are primarily negative. Here I describe an alternative nonreductionist epistemology based on considerations taken from multidisciplinary research in biology. The core of this framework consists in seeing investigation as coordinated around sets of problems (problem agendas) that have associated criteria of explanatory adequacy. These ideas are developed in a case study, the explanation of evolutionary innovations and novelties, which demon…Read more
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13Developmental biologyThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015.Developmental biology is the science of explaining how a variety of interacting processes generate an organism’s heterogeneous shapes, size, and structural features that arise on the trajectory from embryo to adult, or more generally throughout a life cycle. It represents an exemplary area of contemporary experimental biology that focuses on phenomena that have puzzled natural philosophers and scientists for more than two millennia.
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72Conceptualizing Evolutionary Novelty: Moving Beyond Definitional DebatesJournal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 318 417-427. 2012.According to many biologists, explaining the evolution of morphological novelty and behavioral innovation are central endeavors in contemporary evolutionary biology. These endeavors are inherently multidisciplinary but also have involved a high degree of controversy. One key source of controversy is the definitional diversity associated with the concept of evolutionary novelty, which can lead to contradictory claims (a novel trait according to one definition is not a novel trait according to ano…Read more
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23Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives by P. Kyle Stanford (review)Review of Metaphysics 62 (1): 155-157. 2008.
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1A Review of Darwin in Galápagos: Footsteps to a New World by K. Thalia Grant and Gregory B. Estes, [2009]
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13Methodological pluralism about causation in the sciences (review)Social Choice and Welfare 53 (11): 1247. 2015.Book review of "Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice" by P. Illari and F. Russo,
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2Review of Ron Amundson, The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought: Roots of Evo-Devo (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (10). 2005.
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12. Ignorance and science: from strange juxtaposition to essential connection (review)Science in Focus. 2012.
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4Formal and material theories in philosophy of science: a methodological interpretationIn Henk W. de Regt (ed.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 175--185. 2011.John Norton’s argument that all formal theories of induction fail raises substantive questions about the philosophical analysis of scientific reasoning. What are the criteria of adequacy for philosophical theories of induction, explanation, or theory structure? Is more than one adequate theory possible? Using a generalized version of Norton’s argument, I demonstrate that the competition between formal and material theories in philosophy of science results from adhering to different criteria of a…Read more
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17Evolutionary developmental biology: philosophical issuesIn Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, Springer. pp. 265-283. 2015.Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo) is a loose conglomeration of research programs in the life sciences with two main axes: (a) the evolution of development, or inquiry into the pattern and processes of how ontogeny varies and changes over time; and, (b) the developmental basis of evolution, or inquiry into the causal impact of ontogenetic processes on evolutionary trajectories—both in terms of constraint and facilitation. Philosophical issues are found along both axes surrounding conc…Read more
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51Collaborative explanation, explanatory roles, and scientific explaining in practiceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 52 88-94. 2015.Scientific explanation is a perennial topic in philosophy of science, but the literature has fragmented into specialized discussions in different scientific disciplines. An increasing attention to scientific practice by philosophers is (in part) responsible for this fragmentation and has put pressure on criteria of adequacy for philosophical accounts of explanation, usually demanding some form of pluralism. This commentary examines the arguments offered by Fagan and Woody with respect to explana…Read more
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14Typology Reconfigured: From the Metaphysics of Essentialism to the Epistemology of RepresentationActa Biotheoretica 57 (1-2): 51-75. 2008.The goal of this paper is to encourage a reconfiguration of the discussion about typology in biology away from the metaphysics of essentialism and toward the epistemology of classifying natural phenomena for the purposes of empirical inquiry. First, I briefly review arguments concerning ‘typological thinking’, essentialism, species, and natural kinds, highlighting their predominantly metaphysical nature. Second, I use a distinction between the aims, strategies, and tactics of science to suggest …Read more
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35Larval ectoderm, organizational homology, and the origins of evolutionary noveltyJournal of Experimental Zoology (Mol Dev Evol) 306. 2006.Comprehending the origin of marine invertebrate larvae remains a key domain of research for evolutionary biologists, including the repeated origin of direct developmental modes in echinoids. In order to address the latter question, we surveyed existing evidence on relationships of homology between the ectoderm territories of two closely related sea urchin species in the genus Heliocidaris that differ in their developmental mode. Additionally, we explored a recently articulated idea about homolog…Read more
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11More worry and less love?Metascience 17 (1): 1-26. 2008.Review symposium of Alexander Rosenberg’s Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology [2006]. Worry carries with it a connotation of false concern, as in ‘your mother is always worried about you’. And yet some worrying, including that of your mother, turns out to be justified. Alexander Rosenberg’s new book is an extended argument intended to assuage false concerns about reductionism and molecular biology while encouraging a loving embrace of the two.
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13From philosophy to science (to natural philosophy): evolutionary developmental perspectivesThe Quarterly Review of Biology 83. 2008.This paper focuses on abstraction as a mode of reasoning that facilitates a productive relationship between philosophy and science. Using examples from evolutionary developmental biology, I argue that there are two areas where abstraction can be relevant to science: reasoning explication and problem clarification. The value of abstraction is characterized in terms of methodology (modeling or data gathering) and epistemology (explanatory evaluation or data interpretation).
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13Experiments, Intuitions and Images of Philosophy and ScienceAnalysis 73 (4): 785-797. 2013.According to Joshua Alexander, philosophers use intuitions routinely as a form of evidence to test philosophical theories but experimental philosophy demonstrates that these intuitions are unreliable and unrepresentative.1 According to Herman Cappelen, philosophers never use intuitions as evidence (despite the vacuous sentential leader ‘intuitively’) and experimental philosophy lacks a rationale for its much-touted existence.2 That two books are diametrically opposed on methodology in philosophy…Read more
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17Developmental evolution of novel structures – animalsIn R. Kliman (ed.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology. Volume 3, Academic Press. 2016.The origination of novel structures has long been an intriguing topic for biologists. Over the past few decades it has served as a central theme in evolutionary developmental biology. Yet, definitions of evolutionary innovation and novelty are frequently debated and there remains disagreement about what kinds of causal factors best explain the origin of qualitatively new variation in the history of life. Here we examine aspects of these debates, survey three empirical case studies, and reflect o…Read more
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15Reductionism in BiologyThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Reductionism encompasses a set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims about the relation of different scientific domains. The basic question of reduction is whether the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from one scientific domain (typically at higher levels of organization) can be deduced from or explained by the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from another domain of science (typically one about lower levels of organization). Reduction is germane t…Read more
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5Co-option and dissociation in larval origins and evolution: the sea urchin larval gutEvolution & Development 10. 2008.The origin of marine invertebrate larvae has been an area of controversy in developmental evolution for over a century. Here, we address the question of whether a pelagic “larval” or benthic “adult” morphology originated first in metazoan lineages by testing the hypothesis that particular gene co-option patterns will be associated with the origin of feeding, indirect developing larval forms. Empirical evidence bearing on this hypothesis is derivable from gene expression studies of the sea urchin…Read more
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207Multilevel Research Strategies and Biological SystemsPhilosophy of Science 81 (5): 811-828. 2014.Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical understandings of explanation, modeling, and represent…Read more
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13Philosophy and paleontology: getting to know each other (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2011.
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31The theory of punctuated equilibrium holds that long periods of morphological stasis in fossil lineages are interrupted by bursts of geologically rapid evolutionary change. Philip Kitcher’s long and distinguished career is not directly analogous to this pattern, but his philosophy exhibits stasis and change. He has both maintained a position or line of argument consistently and shifted significantly in his views. These evolutionary patterns are on display in the volume co-ed…Read more
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34Idealization in evolutionary developmental investigation: a tension between phenotypic plasticity and normal stagesPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365. 2010.Idealization is a reasoning strategy that biologists use to describe, model and explain that purposefully departs from features known to be present in nature. Similar to other strategies of scientific reasoning, idealization combines distinctive strengths alongside of latent weaknesses. The study of ontogeny in model organisms is usually executed by establishing a set of normal stages for embryonic development, which enables researchers in different laboratory contexts to have standardized compa…Read more
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26Functional homology and homology of function: Biological concepts and philosophical consequencesBiology and Philosophy 22 (5): 691-708. 2007.“Functional homology” appears regularly in different areas of biological research and yet it is apparently a contradiction in terms—homology concerns identity of structure regardless of form and function. I argue that despite this conceptual tension there is a legitimate conception of ‘homology of function’, which can be recovered by utilizing a distinction from pre-Darwinian physiology (use versus activity) to identify an appropriate meaning of ‘function’. This account is directly applicable to…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |