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389Philosophie der LebenswissenschaftenInformation Philosophie 4 14-27. 2013.This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.
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295Scientific kindsPhilosophical Studies 172 (4): 969-986. 2015.Richard Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory is becoming the received view of natural kinds in the philosophy of science. However, a problem with HPC Theory is that it neglects many kinds highlighted by scientific classifications while at the same time endorsing kinds rejected by science. In other words, there is a mismatch between HPC kinds and the kinds of science. An adequate account of natural kinds should accurately track the classifications of successful science. We offer an alternat…Read more
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236Ever since its inception, the theory of evolution has been reified into an “-ism”: Darwinism. While biologists today tend to shy away from the term in their research, the term is still actively used in the broader academic and societal contexts. What exactly is Darwinism, and how precisely are its various uses and abuses related to the scientific theory of evolution? Some call for limiting the meaning of the term “Darwinism” to its scientific context; others call for its abolition; yet others cl…Read more
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199How to fix kind membership: A problem for hpc theory and a solutionPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 724-736. 2009.Natural kinds are often contrasted with other kinds of scientific kinds, especially functional kinds, because of a presumed categorical difference in explanatory value: supposedly, natural kinds can ground explanations, while other kinds of kinds cannot. I argue against this view of natural kinds by examining a particular type of explanation—mechanistic explanation—and showing that functional kinds do the same work there as traditionally recognized natural kinds are supposed to do in “standard” …Read more
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172Species in three and four dimensionsSynthese 164 (2): 161-184. 2008.There is an interesting parallel between two debates in different domains of contemporary analytic philosophy. One is the endurantism– perdurantism, or three-dimensionalism vs. four-dimensionalism, debate in analytic metaphysics. The other is the debate on the species problem in philosophy of biology. In this paper I attempt to cross-fertilize these debates with the aim of exploiting some of the potential that the two debates have to advance each other. I address two issues. First, I explore wha…Read more
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140Discussion: Kuhn’s Evolutionary Analogy in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and “The Road since Structure”Philosophy of Science 77 (3): 468-476. 2010.Recently, Barbara Renzi argued that Kuhn's account of scientific change is undermined by mismatches in the analogy that Kuhn supposedly draws between scientific change and biological evolution. We argue that Renzi's criticism is inadequate to Kuhn's account of scientific change, as Kuhn does not draw any precise analogy between the mechanisms of scientific change and biological evolution nor aims to argue that the mechanisms of scientific change and biological evolution are similar in any import…Read more
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120Darwinism and Organizational Ecology: A Case of Incompleteness or Incompatibility?Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (3): 365-374. 2014.Recently, Dollimore criticized our claim that Organizational Ecology is not a Darwinian research program. She argued that Organizational Ecology is merely an incomplete Darwinian program and provided a suggestion as to how this incompleteness could be remedied. Here, we argue that Dollimore’s suggestion fails to remedy the principal problem that Organizational Ecology faces and that there are good reasons to think of the program as deeply incompatible with Darwinian thinking.
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100Natural Kinds in Philosophy and in the Life Sciences: Scholastic Twilight or New Dawn? (review)Biological Theory 7 (2): 89-99. 2013.This article, which is intended both as a position paper in the philosophical debate on natural kinds and as the guest editorial to this thematic issue, takes up the challenge posed by Ian Hacking in his paper, “Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight.” Whereas a straightforward interpretation of that paper suggests that according to Hacking the concept of natural kinds should be abandoned, both in the philosophy of science and in philosophy more generally, we suggest that an alternative a…Read more
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95Evolution at the Origins of Life?Life 14 (2). 2024.The role of evolutionary theory at the origin of life is an extensively debated topic. The origin and early development of life is usually separated into a prebiotic phase and a protocellular phase, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most likely, the Last Universal Common Ancestor was subject to Darwinian evolution, but the question remains to what extent Darwinian evolution applies to the prebiotic and protocellular phases. In this review, we reflect on the current status…Read more
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84Gene names as proper names of individuals: An assessmentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2): 409-432. 2009.According to a recent suggestion, the names of gene taxa should be conceived of as referring to individuals with concrete genes as their parts, just as the names of biological species are often understood as denoting individuals with organisms as their parts. Although prima facie this suggestion might advance the debate on gene concepts in a similar way as the species-are-individuals thesis advanced the debate on species concepts, I argue that the principal arguments in support of the gene-indiv…Read more
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84Do the Life Sciences Need Natural Kinds?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 167-190. 2009.Natural kinds have been a constant topic in philosophy throughout its history, but many issues pertaining to natural kinds still remain unresolved. This paper considers one of these issues: the epistemic role of natural kinds in scientific investigation. I begin by clarifying what is at stake for an individual scientific field when asking whether or not the field studies a natural kind. I use an example from life science, concerning how biologists explain the similar body shapes of fish and ceta…Read more
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81On the nature of the species problem and the four meanings of 'species'Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (1): 135-158. 2005.Present-day thought on the notion of species is troubled by a mistaken understanding of the nature of the issue: while the species problem is commonly understood as concerning the epistemology and ontology of one single scientific concept, I argue that in fact there are multiple distinct concepts at stake. An approach to the species problem is presented that interprets the term ‘species’ as the placeholder for four distinct scientific concepts, each having its own role in biological theory, and …Read more
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81Generalizations and kinds in natural science: the case of speciesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2): 230-255. 2006.Species in biology are traditionally perceived as kinds of organisms about which explanatory and predictive generalizations can be made, and biologists commonly use species in this manner. This perception of species is, however, in stark contrast with the currently accepted view that species are not kinds or classes at all, but individuals. In this paper I investigate the conditions under which the two views of species might be held simultaneously. Specifically, I ask whether upon acceptance of …Read more
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81Why organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research programPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (3): 408-439. 2009.Organizational ecology is commonly seen as a Darwinian research program that seeks to explain the diversity of organizational structures, properties and behaviors as the product of selection in past social environments in a similar manner as evolutionary biology seeks to explain the forms, properties and behaviors of organisms as consequences of selection in past natural environments. We argue that this explanatory strategy does not succeed because organizational ecology theory lacks an evolutio…Read more
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74How to Incorporate Non-Epistemic Values into a Theory of ClassificationEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 1-28. 2022.Non-epistemic values play important roles in classificatory practice, such that philosophical accounts of kinds and classification should be able to accommodate them. Available accounts fail to do so, however. Our aim is to fill this lacuna by showing how non-epistemic values feature in scientific classification, and how they can be incorporated into a philosophical theory of classification and kinds. To achieve this, we present a novel account of kinds and classification, discuss examples from …Read more
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70Why the (gene) counting argument fails in the massive modularity debate: The need for understanding gene concepts and genotype-phenotype relationshipsPhilosophical Psychology 25 (6): 873-892. 2012.A number of debates in philosophy of biology and psychology, as well as in their respective sciences, hinge on particular views about the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. One such view is that the genotype-phenotype relationship is relatively straightforward, in the sense that a genome contains the ?genes for? the various traits that an organism exhibits. This leads to the assumption that if a particular set of traits is posited to be present in an organism, there must be a corresp…Read more
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69How-possibly explanations as genuine explanations and helpful heuristics: A comment on ForberStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1): 302-310. 2012.
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64Artefact Kinds: Ontology and the Human-made World (edited book)Synthese Library. 2013.One way to address such questions about artifact kinds is to look for clues in the available literature on parallel questions that have been posed with respect to kinds in the natural domain. Philosophers have long been concerned with the ...
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60The more one reads about the topic of natural kinds, the more one is reminded of that famous scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which Deep Thought—after a mere 7.5 million years of doing calculations—reveals that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. Faced with bewildered reactions from the eager audience, Deep Thought explains: “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is” .In…Read more
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58The Population Ecology Programme in Organisation Studies: Problems Caused by Unwarranted Theory TransferPhilosophy of Management 6 (3): 39-51. 2008.Economics and social sciences in general have a long tradition of using theories, models, concepts, and so forth borrowed from the natural sciences to describe and explain the properties and behaviours of economic and social entities. However, unwarranted application of theoretical elements from the natural sciences in the economic/social domain can have adverse consequences for organisations, their employees and society in general. Focusing on biology and organisation studies, we discuss the ge…Read more
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57Fritz Allhoff: Philosophies of the Sciences: A Guide: Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2010; xi + 371 pp, ISBN: 978-1-4051-995-7 (Pb) (review)Acta Biotheoretica 59 (3-4): 319-325. 2011.Fritz Allhoff: Philosophies of the Sciences: A Guide Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 319-325 DOI 10.1007/s10441-011-9129-x Authors Thomas A. C. Reydon, Institute of Philosophy & Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science (ZEWW), Leibniz Universität Hannover, Im Moore 21, 30161 Hannover, Germany Journal Acta Biotheoretica Online ISSN 1572-8358 Print ISSN 0001-5342 Journal Volume Volume 59 Journal Issue Volume 59, Numbers 3-4
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52Quentin D. Wheeler and Rudolf Meier (eds.) (2000). Species concepts and phylogenetic theory: A debateActa Biotheoretica 50 (2): 137-140. 2002.
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52Discussion: Species are individuals—or are they?Philosophy of Science 70 (1): 49-56. 2003.Recently Coleman and Wiley presented a new defense of the species-are-individuals thesis, based on an analysis of the use of binomial species names by biologists. Here I point out some problems in their defense and I argue that although in some domains of biological science species are best understood as individuals, Coleman and Wiley fail to establish that this is true for the whole of biology.
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51On radical solutions in the philosophy of biology: What does “individuals thinking” actually solve?Synthese 198 (4): 3389-3411. 2019.The philosophy of biology is witnessing an increasing enthusiasm for what can be called “individuals thinking”. Individuals thinking is a perspective on the metaphysics of biological entities according to which conceiving of them as individuals rather than kinds enables us to expose ongoing metaphysical debates as focusing on the wrong question, and to achieve better accounts of the metaphysics of biological entities. In this paper, I examine two cases of individuals thinking, the claim that spe…Read more
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49MATTHEW H. SLATER Are Species Real? An Essay on the Metaphysics of SpeciesBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4): 1029-1033. 2015.
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46David N. Stamos (2003). The species problem: Biological species, ontology, and the metaphysics of biologyActa Biotheoretica 52 (3): 229-232. 2004.
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44Organizational Ecology: No Darwinian Evolution After All. A Rejoinder to LemosPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 40 (3): 504-512. 2010.In a recent article we argued that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program. John Lemos criticized our argumentation on various counts. Here we reply to some of Lemos’s criticisms
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44Wim J. Van der Steen (2000). Evolution as natural history: A philosophical analysisActa Biotheoretica 49 (3): 203-206. 2001.
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43Current Themes in Theoretical Biology : A Dutch Perspective (edited book)Springer. 2005.This book originated as a Festschrift to mark the publication of Volume 50 of the journal `Acta Biotheoretica' in 2002 and the journal's 70th anniversary in ...
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Universität HannoverInstitute of Philosophy
Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS)Professor
Leiden University
PhD, 2005
East Lansing, MI, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Metaphysics |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Philosophy of Biology |
Metaphysics |
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |