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16Themes of Consolidation in Eugene P. Odum’s Publicization of the Levels Concept in Ecology Textbooks, 1953–1975Perspectives on Science 31 (4): 437-464. 2023.Following its initial development in the 1920’s and 1930’s, by mid-century the concept of “levels of organization” began to disperse throughout the life science textbook literature. Among other early textbooks that first applied the levels concept, Eugene P. Odum’s usage of the notion in his textbook series Fundamentals of Ecology (and his later series Ecology) stands out due to the marked emphasis placed on the concept as a foundational, erotetically-oriented organizing principle. In this paper…Read more
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27Adaptive Design, Contingency, and Ontological Principles for Limited BeingsPhilosophy of Science 88 (5): 871-881. 2021.Transcendental arguments are not popular in contemporary philosophy of science. They are typically seen as antinaturalistic and incapable of providing explanatory force in accounting for natural phenomena. However, when viewed as providing intelligibility to complicated concepts used in scientific reasoning, a concrete and productive role is recoverable for transcendental reasoning in philosophy of science. In this article I argue that the resources, and possibly the need, for such a role are av…Read more
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50Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences (edited book)MIT Press. 2021.The subject of this edited volume is the idea of levels of organization: roughly, the idea that the natural world is segregated into part-whole relationships of increasing spatiotemporal scale and complexity. The book comprises a collection of essays that raise the idea of levels into its own topic of analysis. Owing to the wide prominence of the idea of levels, the scope of the volume is aimed at theoreticians, philosophers, and practicing researchers of all stripes in the life sciences. The vo…Read more
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13Book Reviews: James A. Shapiro: Evolution. A View from the 21st Century FT Press: Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2011, 272 pp., $ 31.49, ISBN 978-0-13-278093-3 Gerhard Schurz: Evolution in Natur und Kultur Spektrum: Heidelberg 2011, 436 + XII pp., € 39.95, ISBN 978-3-8274-2665-9 (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1): 235-245. 2013.
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80A New Look at ‘Levels of Organization’ in BiologyErkenntnis 86. 2021.Despite its pervasiveness, the concept of ‘levels of organization’ has received relatively little attention in its own right. I propose here an emerging approach that posits ‘levels’ as a fragmentary concept situated within an interest-relative matrix of operational usage within scientific practice. To this end I propose one important component of meaning, namely the epistemic goal motivating the term’s usage, which recovers a remarkably conserved and sufficiently unifying significance attributa…Read more
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22Conceptual heterogeneity and the legacy of organicism: thoughts on the life organic: Essay review of Erik Peterson, The life organic: the theoretical biology club and the roots of epigenetics, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016, 328 pp., $45.00History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (2): 24. 2019.
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53Why is There No Successful Whole Brain Simulation (Yet)?Biological Theory 14 (2): 122-130. 2019.With the advent of powerful parallel computers, efforts have commenced to simulate complete mammalian brains. However, so far none of these efforts has produced outcomes close to explaining even the behavioral complexities of animals. In this article, we suggest four challenges that ground this shortcoming. First, we discuss the connection between hypothesis testing and simulations. Typically, efforts to simulate complete mammalian brains lack a clear hypothesis. Second, we treat complications r…Read more
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78The significance of levels of organization for scientific research: A heuristic approachStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 68 34-41. 2018.The concept of 'levels of organization' has come under fire recently as being useless for scientific and philosophical purposes. In this paper, we show that 'levels' is actually a remarkably resilient and constructive conceptual tool that can be, and in fact is, used for a variety of purposes. To this effect, we articulate an account of the importance of the levels concept seen in light of its status as a major organizing concept of biology. We argue that the usefulness of ‘levels’ is best seen …Read more
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96Levels of Organization in BiologyStanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyLevels of organization are structures in nature, usually defined by part-whole relationships, with things at higher levels being composed of things at the next lower level. Typical levels of organization that one finds in the literature include the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, organismal, group, population, community, ecosystem, landscape, and biosphere levels. References to levels of organization and related hierarchical depictions of nature are prominent in the life sciences and…Read more
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111In Defense of Levels: Layer Cakes and Guilt by AssociationBiological Theory 12 (3). 2017.Despite the ubiquity of “levels of organization” in the scientific literature, a nascent “levels skepticism” now claims that the concept of levels is an inherently flawed, misleading, or otherwise inadequate notion for understanding how life scientists produce knowledge about the natural world. However, levels skeptics rely on the maligned “layer-cake” account of levels stemming from Oppenheim and Putnam’s defense of the unity of science for their critical commentary. Recourse to layer-cake leve…Read more
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9Book Reviews (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1): 235-245. 2013.
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123Interventionism and Supervenience: A New Problem and Provisional SolutionInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (2): 185-202. 2014.The causal exclusion argument suggests that mental causes are excluded in favour of the underlying physical causes that do all the causal work. Recently, a debate has emerged concerning the possibility of avoiding this conclusion by adopting Woodward's interventionist theory of causation. Both proponents and opponents of the interventionist solution crucially rely on the notion of supervenience when formulating their positions. In this article, we consider the relation between interventionism an…Read more
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40The role of models in the process of epistemic integration: the case of the Reichardt motion detectorHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 36 (1): 90-113. 2014.Recent work on epistemic integration in the life sciences has emphasized the importance of integration in thinking about explanatory practice in science, particularly for articulating a robust alternative to reductionism and anti-reductionism. This paper analyzes the role of models in balancing the relative contributions of lower- and higher-level epistemic resources involved in this process. Integration between multiple disciplines proceeds by constructing a problem agenda (Love 2008), a set of…Read more
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Ruhr-Universität BochumNon tenure-track faculty
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |