•  15
    What You Can Do for Evolutionary Developmental Linguistics
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
    A growing number of linguistic attempts to explain how languages change use cultural-evolutionary models involving selection or drift. Developmental constraints and biases, which take center stage in evolutionary developmental biology or evo-devo, seem to be absent within this framework, even though linguistics is home to numerous notions of constraint. In this paper, we show how these evo-devo concepts could be applied to linguistic change and why they should. This requires some conceptual grou…Read more
  •  82
    Modeling the Biologically Possible: Evolvability as a Modal Concept
    In Tarja Knuuttila, Till Grüne-Yanoff, Rami Koskinen & Ylwa Wirling (eds.), Modeling the Possible. Perspectives from Philosophy of Science, Routledge. forthcoming.
    Biological modalities, i.e., biologically possible, impossible, or necessary states of affairs have not received much attention from philosophers. Yet, it is widely agreed that there are biological constraints on physically possible states of affairs, such that not everything that is physically possible is also biologically possible, even if everything that is biologically possible is also physically possible. Furthermore, biologists use concepts that appear to be modal in nature, such as the co…Read more
  •  60
    Causal selection is the task of picking out, from a field of known causally relevant factors, some factors as elements of an explanation. The Causal Parity Thesis in the philosophy of biology challenges the usual ways of making such selections among different causes operating in a developing organism. The main target of this thesis is usually gene centrism, the doctrine that genes play some special role in ontogeny, which is often described in terms of information-bearing or programming. This pa…Read more
  •  12
    Experimentation
    In Sahorta Sarkar & Anya Plutynski (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Blackwell. 2008.
    This chapter contains section titled: The Diversity of Experimental Practices in Biology Model Organisms Experimental Systems and the “New Experimentalism” in Biology The Nature of Evidence Objectivity and Realism Acknowledgment References Further Reading.
  •  7
    Introduction
    with Daniel Sirtes and Hans Bernhard Schmid
    In Hans Bernhard Schmid, Daniel Sirtes & Marcel Weber (eds.), Collective Epistemology, Ontos. pp. 1-10. 2011.
  •  11
    Redesigning the Fruit Fly: The Molecularization of Drosophila
    In Angela N. H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, M. Norton Wise, Barbara Herrnstein Smith & E. Roy Weintraub (eds.), Science without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives, Duke University Press. pp. 23-45. 2007.
  •  6
    In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.
  • Wissenschaftlicher Pluralismus und die Bio-Gerontologie
    In André Louis Blum, Nina Zschocke, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger & Vincent Barras (eds.), Diversität: Geschichte und Aktualität eines Konzepts, Königshausen Und Neumann. 2015.
  •  147
    I attempt to characterize the relationship of classical experimental embryology (CEE) and molecular developmental biology and compare it to the much-discussed case of classical genetics. These sciences are treated here as discovery practices rather than as definitive forms of knowledge. I first show that CEE had some causal knowledge and hence was able to answer specific why?-questions. A paradigm was provided by the case of eye induction, perhaps CEE’s greatest success. The case of the famous S…Read more
  •  559
    Coherent Causal Control: A New Distinction within Causation
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (4): 69. 2022.
    The recent literature on causality has seen the introduction of several distinctions within causality, which are thought to be important for understanding the widespread scientific practice of focusing causal explanations on a subset of the factors that are causally relevant for a phenomenon. Concepts used to draw such distinctions include, among others, stability, specificity, proportionality, or actual-difference making. In this contribution, I propose a new distinction that picks out an expla…Read more
  •  25
    Probabilities, Laws, and Structures (edited book)
    with Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Stephan Hartmann, and Michael Stöltzner
    Springer. 2012.
    This volume, the third in this Springer series, contains selected papers from the four workshops organized by the ESF Research Networking Programme "The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective" in 2010: Pluralism in the Foundations of Statistics Points of Contact between the Philosophy of Physics and the Philosophy of Biology The Debate on Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences Historical Debates about Logic, Probability and Statistics The volume is accordingly divided in four sect…Read more
  •  239
    Philosophy of Developmental Biology
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    The history of developmental biology is interwoven with debates as to whether mechanistic explanations of development are possible or whether alternative explanatory principles or even vital forces need to be assumed. In particular, the demonstrated ability of embryonic cells to tune their developmental fate precisely to their relative position and the overall size of the embryo was once thought to be inexplicable in mechanistic terms. Taking a causal perspective, this Element examines to what e…Read more
  •  295
    Darwinism as a Theory for Finite Beings
    In Vittorio G. Hösle & Christian F. Illies (eds.), Darwinism and Philosophy. pp. 275-297. 2005.
    Darwin famously held that his use of the term "chance" in evolutionary theory merely "serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the causes of each particular variation". Is this a tenable view today? Or should we revise our thinking about chance in evolution in light of the more advanced, quantitative models of Neo-Darwinian theory, which make substantial use of statistical reasoning and the concept of probability? Is determinism still a viable metaphysical doctrine about biological reality…Read more
  •  12
    Menschliches Leben
    Walter de Gruyter. 2009.
    Human existence and its temporal limits are central themes of western culture. In addition to discussing fundamental metaphysical questions and ethical questions, this book examines questions surrounding the possibility of radically extending one's life through new a anti-aging therapies. Does adding years to one's life make one happier?
  •  424
    Several authors have used the notion of causal specificity in order to defend non-parity about genetic causes (Waters 2007, Woodward 2010, Weber 2017, forthcoming). Non-parity in this context is the idea that DNA and some other biomolecules that are often described as information-bearers by biologists play a unique role in life processes, an idea that has been challenged by Developmental Systems Theory (e.g., Oyama 2000). Indeed, it has proven to be quite difficult to state clearly what the alle…Read more
  •  20
    Griffiths et al. have proposed a quantitative measure of causal specificity and used it to assess various attempts to single out genetic causes as being causally more specific than other cellular mechanisms, for example, alternative splicing. Focusing in particular on developmental processes, they have identified a number of important challenges for this project. In this discussion note, I would like to show how these challenges can be met.
  •  705
    On the Incompatibility of Dynamical Biological Mechanisms and Causal Graphs
    Philosophy of Science 83 (5): 959-971. 2016.
    I examine to what extent accounts of mechanisms based on formal interventionist theories of causality can adequately represent biological mechanisms with complex dynamics. Using a differential equation model for a circadian clock mechanism as an example, I first show that there exists an iterative solution that can be interpreted as a structural causal model. Thus, in principle, it is possible to integrate causal difference-making information with dynamical information. However, the differential…Read more
  •  125
    The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1): 19-49. 2009.
    Going back at least to Duhem, there is a tradition of thinking that crucial experiments are impossible in science. I analyse Duhem's arguments and show that they are based on the excessively strong assumption that only deductive reasoning is permissible in experimental science. This opens the possibility that some principle of inductive inference could provide a sufficient reason for preferring one among a group of hypotheses on the basis of an appropriately controlled experiment. To be sure, th…Read more
  •  1816
    This Ph.D. thesis provides a pilosophical account of the structure of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. The first, more historical part analyses how classical genetics came to be integrated into evolutionary thinking, highlighting in particular the importance of chromosomal mapping of Drosophila strains collected in the wild by Dobzansky, but also the work of Goldschmidt, Sumners, Timofeeff-Ressovsky and others. The second, more philosophical part attempts to answer the question w…Read more
  •  1243
    Thought Experiments in Biology
    with Guillaume Schlaepfer
    In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments, Routledge. pp. 243-256. 2017.
    Unlike in physics, the category of thought experiment is not very common in biology. At least there are no classic examples that are as important and as well-known as the most famous thought experiments in physics, such as Galileo’s, Maxwell’s or Einstein’s. The reasons for this are far from obvious; maybe it has to do with the fact that modern biology for the most part sees itself as a thoroughly empirical discipline that engages either in real natural history or in experimenting on real organi…Read more
  •  49
    Philosophy of Experimental Biology
    Cambridge University Press. 2004.
    Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in histori…Read more
  •  768
    How objective are biological functions?
    Synthese 194 (12): 4741-4755. 2017.
    John Searle has argued that functions owe their existence to the value that we put into life and survival. In this paper, I will provide a critique of Searle’s argument concerning the ontology of functions. I rely on a standard analysis of functional predicates as relating not only a biological entity, an activity that constitutes the function of this entity and a type of system but also a goal state. A functional attribution without specification of such a goal state has no truth-value. But if …Read more
  •  476
    Genes, Causation and Intentionality
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 27 (3/4): 399-411. 2005.
    I want to exhibit the deeper metaphysical reasons why some common ways of describing the causal role of genes in development and evolution are problematic. Specifically, I show why using the concept of information in an intentional sense in genetics is inappropriate, even given a naturalistic account of intentionality. Furthermore, I argue that descriptions that use notions such as programming, directing or orchestrating are problematic not for empirical reasons, but because they are not strictl…Read more
  •  136
    The aim and structure of ecological theory
    Philosophy of Science 66 (1): 71-93. 1999.
    I present an attempt at an explication of the ecological theory of interspecific competition, including its explanatory role in community ecology and evolutionary biology. The account given is based on the idea that law-like statements play an important role in scientific theories of this kind. I suggest that the principle of competitive exclusion is such a law, and that it is evolutionarily invariant. The principle's empirical status is defended and implications for the ongoing debates on the e…Read more
  •  42
    I examine some philosophical arguments as well as current empirical research in molecular neurobiology in order to throw some new light on the question of whether neurological processes are deterministic or indeterministic. I begin by showing that the idea of an autonomous biological indeterminism violates the principle of the supervenience of biological properties on physical properties. If supervenience is accepted, quantum mechanics is the only hope for the neuro-indeterminist. But this would…Read more
  •  812
    Which Kind of Causal Specificity Matters Biologically?
    Philosophy of Science 84 (3): 574-585. 2017.
    Griffiths et al. (2015) have proposed a quantitative measure of causal specificity and used it to assess various attempts to single out genetic causes as being causally more specific than other cellular mechanisms, for example, alternative splicing. Focusing in particular on developmental processes, they have identified a number of important challenges for this project. In this discussion note, I would like to show how these challenges can be met.