•  3554
    Hans Drieschs argumente für den Vitalismus
    Philosophia Naturalis 36 (2): 263-293. 1999.
    Ich rekonstruiere und kritisiere Hans Drieschs Argumentation für die Behauptung, daß biologischen Prozessen nur eine substanzdualistische Ontologie der belebten Materie (Vitalismus) gerecht werden kann. Meine Diagnose lautet, daß Drieschs Argumentation zwar logisch schlüssig ist bzw. durch leichte Modifikationen in eine logisch gültige Form gebracht werden kann, aber von empirisch unbegründeten, metaphysischen Prämissen über die Möglichkeiten eines energieumwandelnden Mechanismus ausgeht.
  •  1818
    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
  •  1245
    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
  •  1120
    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
  •  1000
    Experimental modeling in biology involves the use of living organisms (not necessarily so-called "model organisms") in order to model or simulate biological processes. I argue here that experimental modeling is a bona fide form of scientific modeling that plays an epistemic role that is distinct from that of ordinary biological experiments. What distinguishes them from ordinary experiments is that they use what I call "in vivo representations" where one kind of causal process is used to stand in…Read more
  •  849
    Reference, Truth, and Biological Kinds
    In: J. Dutant, D. Fassio and A. Meylan (Eds.) Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel. 2014.
    This paper examines causal theories of reference with respect to how plausible an account they give of non-physical natural kind terms such as ‘gene’ as well as of the truth of the associated theoretical claims. I first show that reference fixism for ‘gene’ fails. By this, I mean the claim that the reference of ‘gene’ was stable over longer historical periods, for example, since the classical period of transmission genetics. Second, I show that the theory of partial reference does not do justice…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.
  •  769
    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
  •  724
    The Central Dogma as a Thesis of Causal Specificity
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (4): 595-610. 2006.
    I present a reconstruction of F.H.C. Crick's two 1957 hypotheses "Sequence Hypothesis" and "Central Dogma" in terms of a contemporary philosophical theory of causation. Analyzing in particular the experimental evidence that Crick cited, I argue that these hypotheses can be understood as claims about the actual difference-making cause in protein synthesis. As these hypotheses are only true if restricted to certain nucleic acids in certain organisms, I then examine the concept of causal specificit…Read more
  •  708
    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
  •  561
    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
  •  511
    Indeterminism in neurobiology
    Philosophy of Science 72 (5): 663-674. 2005.
    I examine different arguments that could be used to establish indeterminism of neurological processes. Even though scenarios where single events at the molecular level make the difference in the outcome of such processes are realistic, this falls short of establishing indeterminism, because it is not clear that these molecular events are subject to quantum mechanical uncertainty. Furthermore, attempts to argue for indeterminism autonomously (i.e., independently of quantum mechanics) fail, becaus…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
  •  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
  •  348
    It has been claimed that the intentional stance is necessary to individuate behavioral traits. This thesis, while clearly false, points to two interesting sets of problems concerning biological explanations of behavior: The first is a general in the philosophy of science: the theory-ladenness of observation. The second problem concerns the principles of trait individuation, which is a general problem in philosophy of biology. After discussing some alternatives, I show that one way of individuati…Read more
  •  305
    Life in a Physical World: The Place of the Life Sciences
    In Thomas Uebel, Stephan Hartmann, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Marcel Weber, Dennis Dieks & Friedrich Stadler (eds.), The Present Situation in the Philosophy of Science, Springer. pp. 155--168. 2010.
  •  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
  •  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
  •  226
    This article examines the role of experimental generalizations and physical laws in neuroscientific explanations, using Hodgkin and Huxley’s electrophysiological model from 1952 as a test case. I show that the fact that the model was partly fitted to experimental data did not affect its explanatory status, nor did the false mechanistic assumptions made by Hodgkin and Huxley. The model satisfies two important criteria of explanatory status: it contains invariant generalizations and it is modular …Read more
  •  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
  •  146
    Incommensurability and theory comparison in experimental biology
    Biology and Philosophy 17 (2): 155-169. 2002.
    Incommensurability of scientific theories, as conceived by Thomas Kuhnand Paul Feyerabend, is thought to be a major or even insurmountable obstacletothe empirical comparison of these theories. I examine this problem in light ofaconcrete case from the history of experimental biology, namely the oxidativephosphorylation controversy in biochemistry (ca. 1961-1977). After a briefhistorical exposition, I show that the two main competing theories which werethe subject of the ox-phos controversy instan…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
  •  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
  •  122
    Determinism, realism, and probability in evolutionary theory
    Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3). 2001.
    Recent discussion of the statistical character of evolutionary theory has centered around two positions: (1) Determinism combined with the claim that the statistical character is eliminable, a subjective interpretation of probability, and instrumentalism; (2) Indeterminism combined with the claim that the statistical character is ineliminable, a propensity interpretation of probability, and realism. I point out some internal problems in these positions and show that the relationship between dete…Read more
  •  95
    Fitness made physical: The supervenience of biological concepts revisited
    Philosophy of Science 63 (3): 411-431. 1996.
    The supervenience and multiple realizability of biological properties have been invoked to support a disunified picture of the biological sciences. I argue that supervenience does not capture the relation between fitness and an organism's physical properties. The actual relation is one of causal dependence and is, therefore, amenable to causal explanation. A case from optimality theory is presented and interpreted as a microreductive explanation of fitness difference. Such microreductions can ha…Read more
  •  88
    Collective Epistemology (edited book)
    Ontos. 2011.
    The aim of this volume is to examine this claim, and to place it in the wider context of recent epistemological debates about the role of sociality in knowledge acquisition.