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12Developmental biologyThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2020.Developmental biology is the science that investigates 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. Philosophers of biology have shown interest in developmenta…Read more
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12Methodological 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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12Developmental 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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12Philosophy and paleontology: getting to know each other (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2011.
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12Explaining the Ontogeny of Form: Philosophical IssuesIn Sahorta Sarkar & Anya Plutynski (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains section titled: The Old Problem (Agenda) of the Ontogeny of Form Explaining the Ontogeny of Form Epistemological Issues: Representation Epistemological Issues: Explanation Epistemological Issues: Methodology Unexplored Issues and Summary Acknowledgment References.
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12Organizing interdisciplinary research on purposeBioScience 72 (4). 2022.The star-nosed mole is aptly named. Its distinctive snout consists of 22 tendrils ringing a pair of nostrils and, from some angles, the entire setup resembles a misshapen star. The tendrils are fleshy and look a bit like fingers, and, like fingers, they have a certain dexterity. But why? Why does the mole have such a singular appendage as opposed to something more ordinary? What is the function or purpose of this bizarre structure? From the dedicated work of Ken Catania, of Vanderbilt Universit…Read more
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12Darwin’s functional reasoning and homologyIn M. Wheeler (ed.), 150 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Impact on Contemporary Thought & Culture, Sdsu Press. 2011.Scientists exhibit different styles in their reasoning about the natural world (e.g., experimental, historical, or statistical). These styles have been characterized, categorized, and combined in many ways throughout the history of science.
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12Characterizing scientific failure: putting the replication crisis in contextEMBO Reports 20. 2019.The ongoing debate about a “replication crisis” has put scientific failure in the spotlight, not only in psychological research and the social sciences but also in the life sciences. However, despite this increased salience of failure in research, the concept itself has so far received little attention in the literature (for an exception, see Ref. 1). The lack of a systematic perspective on scientific failure—a daily experience for researchers—hampers our understanding of this complex phenomenon…Read more
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12Developing a rhetorical account of explanation (review)Choice 52 (8): 4168. 2015.Book review of "The Nature of Scientific Thinking: on Interpretation, Explanation and Understanding" by J. Faye. The nature of scientific explanation is a central topic of interest to philosophers but the literature has metamorphosed from a coherent body of key papers and examples into narrow and specialized discussions in different scientific disciplines.
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11. Ignorance and science: from strange juxtaposition to essential connection (review)Science in Focus. 2012.
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11Darwin’s ‘imaginary illustrations’: creatively teaching evolutionary concepts and the nature of scienceThe American Biology Teacher 72. 2010.An overlooked feature of Darwin’s work is his use of “imaginary illustrations” to show that natural selection is competent to produce adaptive, evolutionary change. When set in the context of Darwin’s methodology, these thought
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10Revolutionary evo-devo? (review)Journal of the History of Biology 40. 2007.Essay review of David Arnold, "The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856" (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), xiv + 298 pp., illus.
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9Correction to: Teleonomy: Revisiting a Proposed Conceptual Replacement for TeleologyBiological Theory 1-1. forthcoming.
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9Co-option of stress mechanisms in the origin of evolutionary noveltiesEvolution 76 394-413. 2022.It is widely accepted that stressful conditions can facilitate evolutionary change. The mechanisms elucidated thus far accomplish this with a generic increase in heritable variation that facilitates more rapid adaptive evolution, often via plastic modifications of existing characters. Through scrutiny of different meanings of stress in biological research, and an explicit recognition that stressors must be characterized relative to their effect on capacities for maintaining functional integrity,…Read more
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8Fostering inquiry in nonlaboratory settingsJournal of College Science Teaching 34 39-43. 2004.Inquiry is an important learning strategy, even for students who cannot or do not perform actual experiments. The authors describe two activities, other than experimentation, that they used in introductory biology learning groups to emphasize inquiry abilities. They also provide recommendations for creating additional inquiry activities.
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7Gene expression patterns in a novel animal appendage: The sea urchin pluteus armEvolution & Development 9. 2007.The larval arms of echinoid plutei are used for locomotion and feeding. They are composed of internal calcite skeletal rods covered by an ectoderm layer bearing a ciliary band. Skeletogenesis includes an autonomous molecular differentiation program in primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs), initiated when PMCs leave the vegetal plate for the blastocoel, and a patterning of the differentiated skeletal units that requires molecular cues from the overlaying ectoderm. The arms represent a larval feature th…Read more
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7John Tyler Bonner: Remembering a scientific pioneerJournal of Experimental Evolution (Mol Dev Evol) 332 365-370. 2019.Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent research…Read more
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6Beyond the MemeUniversity of Minnesota Press. 2019.Contributors: Sabina Leonelli Nancy J. Nersessian Michel Janssen Jacob G. Foster James A. Evans Mark A. Bedau Marshall Abrams Gilbert B. Tostevin Salikoko S. Mufwene Massimo Maiocchi Joseph D. Martin Paul E. Smaldino Claes Andersson Anton Törnberg Petter Törnberg Beyond the Meme assembles interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. The volume demonstrates how …Read more
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6How cancer spreads: reconceptualizing a diseaseIn Giovanni Boniolo & Marco J. Nathan (eds.), Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Research and Practice, Routledge. pp. 100-121. 2016.Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Theory and Practice aims at a systematic investigation of a number of foundational issues in the field of molecular medicine. The volume is organized around four broad modules focusing, respectively, on the following key aspects: What are the nature, scope, and limits of molecular medicine? How does it provide explanations? How does it represent and model phenomena of interest? How does it infer new knowledge from data and experiments? The…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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5Explaining cultural evolution: an interdisciplinary endeavorIn A. C. Love and W. C. Wimsatt (ed.), Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science.. 2019.
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Evolution evolving? Reflections on big questionsJournal of Experimental Evolution 332 315-320. 2019.John Bonner managed a long and productive career that balanced specialized inquiry into cellular slime molds with general investigations of big questions in evolutionary biology, such as the origins of multicellular development and the evolution of complexity. This commentary engages with his final paper (“The evolution of evolution”), which argues that the evolutionary process has changed through the history of life. In particular, Bonner emphasizes the possibility that natural selection plays …Read more
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Situating evolutionary developmental biology in evolutionary theoryIn S. M. Scheiner and D. P. Mindell (ed.), The Theory of Evolution: Principles, Concepts, and Assumptions. pp. 144-169. 2020.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |