•  309
    Chemical arbitrariness and the causal role of molecular adapters
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 78 101180. 2019.
    Jacques Monod (1971) argued that certain molecular processes rely critically on the property of chemical arbitrariness, which he claimed allows those processes to “transcend the laws of chemistry”. It seems natural, as some philosophers have done, to interpret this in modal terms: a biological relationship is chemically arbitrary if it is possible, within the constraints of chemical “law”, for that relationship to have been otherwise than it is. But while modality is certainly important for unde…Read more
  •  282
    Digital Literature Analysis for Empirical Philosophy of Science
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (4): 875-898. 2021.
    Empirical philosophers of science aim to base their philosophical theories on observations of scientific practice. But since there is far too much science to observe it all, how can we form and test hypotheses about science that are sufficiently rigorous and broad in scope, while avoiding the pitfalls of bias and subjectivity in our methods? Part of the answer, we claim, lies in the computational tools of the digital humanities, which allow us to analyze large volumes of scientific literature. H…Read more
  •  245
    Binding Specificity and Causal Selection in Drug Design
    Philosophy of Science 87 (1): 70-90. 2020.
    Binding specificity is a centrally important concept in molecular biology, yet it has received little philosophical attention. Here I aim to remedy this by analyzing binding specificity as a causal property. I focus on the concept’s role in drug design, where it is highly prized and hence directly studied. From a causal perspective, understanding why binding specificity is a valuable property of drugs contributes to an understanding of causal selection—of how and why scientists distinguish betwe…Read more
  •  94
    Getting the most out of Shannon information
    Biology and Philosophy 29 (3): 395-413. 2014.
    Shannon information is commonly assumed to be the wrong way in which to conceive of information in most biological contexts. Since the theory deals only in correlations between systems, the argument goes, it can apply to any and all causal interactions that affect a biological outcome. Since informational language is generally confined to only certain kinds of biological process, such as gene expression and hormone signalling, Shannon information is thought to be unable to account for this restr…Read more
  •  26
    Are bio-ontologies metaphysical theories?
    Synthese 199 (3-4): 11587-11608. 2021.
    Bio-ontologies are digital frameworks for handling biological and biomedical data. They consist of theoretical entities and relations with explicitly defined logical structures and precise definitions, whose purpose is to provide a shared language for representing information to be distributed and integrated across diverse scientific contexts. It is tempting to view bio-ontologies as clear and formal expressions of a scientific community’s ontological commitments about their domain of inquiry, a…Read more
  •  9
    From biological practice to scientific metaphysics (edited book)
    University of Minnesota Press. 2023.
    Exploring what a scientific metaphysics grounded in biological practices could look like and how it might impact the way we investigate the world around us, the contributors to From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics review and discuss long-held objections to metaphysics by natural scientists. They illuminate how, in order to learn about the world as it truly is, we must look not only at what scientists say but also what they do.
  •  3
    What Does Bernard Dream About When He Dreams About His Son?
    In James South & Kimberly Engels (eds.), Westworld and Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2018.
    In “Trompe L'Oeil”, the seventh episode of Westworld, Bernard Lowe discovers the plans for his own body. Bernard's are ready‐made by someone else and uploaded into his brain, apparently unrelated to any real events. Bernard has memories of his son Charlie, which he thought referred to a real boy with whom he had a real relationship, and whose real death is the cause of his inescapable grief. Bernard might respond that lifelong grief is an excessive response to the death of a fictional character.…Read more
  • Ideal observations : information and causation in biological practice
    In William C. Bausman, Janella K. Baxter & Oliver M. Lean (eds.), From biological practice to scientific metaphysics, University of Minnesota Press. 2023.
  • Numerous scholarly works focus solely on scientific metaphysics or biological practice, but few attempt to bridge the two subjects. This volume, the latest in the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, explores what a scientific metaphysics grounded in biological practices could look like and how it might impact the way we investigate the world around us. From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics examines how to reconcile the methods of biological practice with the metho…Read more