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A willow drawing from 1786: the earliest depiction of intraspecific trait variation in plants?Annals of Botany 127 (4): 411-412. 2021.Background and Aims The study of intraspecific trait variation (ITV) in plants has a long history, dating back to the fourth century BC. Its existence was widely acknowledged by the end of the 18th century, although systematic and experimental studies commenced only a century later. However, the historiography of ITV has many gaps, especially with regard to early observations and visual documents. This note identifies an early depiction of plant ITV. Methods The botanical works of Johann Wolfgan…Read more
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11Medical toolkit organisms and Covid-19History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (1): 1-4. 2021.The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified interest in animals with superior antiviral defences. I argue that the role of such animals in biomedical research contrasts with the role of disease models.
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20Scientific modelling with diagramsSynthese 198 (3): 2675-2694. 2019.Diagrams can serve as representational models in scientific research, yet important questions remain about how they do so. I address some of these questions with a historical case study, in which diagrams were modified extensively in order to elaborate an early hypothesis of protein synthesis. The diagrams’ modelling role relied mainly on two features: diagrams were modified according to syntactic rules, which temporarily replaced physico-chemical reasoning, and diagram-to-target inferences were…Read more
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26Evolution and information : an overviewIn Joyce R. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, . pp. 79-90. 2017.Postprint.
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25The Content of Animal SignalsIn Kristin Andrews & Jacob Beck (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, Routledge. pp. 324-332. 2017.Postprint.
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11Animal Communication Theory: Information and Influence (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2013.The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: • What is the nature of information? • What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? • Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? • What is the relation between animal signals and human l…Read more
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17The Philosophy of Communication and InformationIn L. Floridi (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information, Routledge. pp. 304-317. 2016.Postprint.
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59Physical models and embodied cognitionSynthese 197 (10): 4387-4405. 2018.Philosophers have recently paid more attention to the physical aspects of scientific models. The attention is motivated by the prospect that a model’s physical features strongly affect its use and that this suggests re-thinking modelling in terms of extended or distributed cognition. This paper investigates two ways in which physical features of scientific models affect their use and it asks whether modelling is an instance of extended cognition. I approach these topics with a historical case st…Read more
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91‘Genetic Coding’ Reconsidered : An Analysis of Actual UsageBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (3): 707-730. 2016.This article reconsiders the theoretical role of the genetic code. By drawing on published and unpublished sources from the 1950s, I analyse how the code metaphor was actually employed by the scientists who first promoted its use. The analysis shows that the term ‘code’ picked out mechanism sketches, consisting of more or less detailed descriptions of ordinary molecular components, processes, and structural properties of the mechanism of protein synthesis. The sketches provided how-possibly expl…Read more
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98Varieties of parityBiology and Philosophy 27 (6): 903-918. 2012.A central idea of developmental systems theory is ‘parity’ or ‘symmetry’ between genes and non-genetic factors of development. The precise content of this idea remains controversial, with different authors stressing different aspects and little explicit comparisons among the various interpretations. Here I characterise and assess several influential versions of parity.
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71On the 'transmission sense of information'Biology and Philosophy 28 (1): 141-144. 2013.Abstract In order to illuminate the role of information in biology, Bergstrom and Rosvall (Biol Philos 26:159–176, 2011a ; Biol Philos 26:195–200, 2011b ) propose a ‘transmission sense of information’ which builds on Shannon’s theory. At the core of the transmission sense is an appeal to the reduction in uncertainty in receivers and to etiological function. I explore several ways of cashing out uncertainty reduction as well as the consequences of appealing to function. Content Type Journal Art…Read more
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78What can natural selection explain?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (1): 61-66. 2010.One approach to assess the explanatory power of natural selection is to ask what type of facts it can explain. The standard list of explananda includes facts like trait frequencies or the survival of particular organisms. Here, I argue that this list is incomplete: natural selection can also explain a specific kind of individual-level fact that involves traits. The ability of selection to explain this sort of fact vindicates the explanatory commitments of empirical studies on microevolution. Tra…Read more
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81A consumer‐based teleosemantics for animal signalsPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 864-875. 2009.Ethological theory standardly attributes representational content to animal signals. In this article I first assess whether Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic theory accounts for the content of animal signals. I conclude that it does not, because many signals do not exhibit the required sort of cooperation between signal‐producing and signal‐consuming devices. It is then argued that Kim Sterelny’s proposal, while not requiring cooperation, sometimes yields the wrong content. Finally, I outline an alt…Read more
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129Dna, inference, and informationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1): 1-17. 2009.This paper assesses Sarkar's ([2003]) deflationary account of genetic information. On Sarkar's account, genes carry information about proteins because protein synthesis exemplifies what Sarkar calls a ‘formal information system’. Furthermore, genes are informationally privileged over non-genetic factors of development because only genes enter into arbitrary relations to their products (in virtue of the alleged arbitrariness of the genetic code). I argue that the deflationary theory does not capt…Read more
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92Genetic information as instructional contentPhilosophy of Science 72 (3): 425-443. 2005.The concept of genetic information is controversial because it attributes semantic properties to what seem to be ordinary biochemical entities. I argue that nucleic acids contain information in a semantic sense, but only about a limited range of effects. In contrast to other recent proposals, however, I analyze genetic information not in terms of a naturalized account of biological functions, but instead in terms of the way in which molecules determine their products during processes known as te…Read more
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93The arbitrariness of the genetic codeBiology and Philosophy 19 (2): 205-222. 2004.The genetic code has been regarded as arbitrary in the sense that the codon-amino acid assignments could be different than they actually are. This general idea has been spelled out differently by previous, often rather implicit accounts of arbitrariness. They have drawn on the frozen accident theory, on evolutionary contingency, on alternative causal pathways, and on the absence of direct stereochemical interactions between codons and amino acids. It has also been suggested that the arbitrarines…Read more
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71John Maynard Smith’s notion of animal signalsBiology and Philosophy 20 (5): 1011-1025. 2005.This paper explores John Maynard Smith’s conceptual work on animal signals. Maynard Smith defined animal signals as traits that (1) change another organism’s behaviour while benefiting the sender, that (2) are evolved for this function, and that (3) have their effects through the evolved response of the receiver. Like many ethologists, Maynard Smith assumed that animal signals convey semantic information. Yet his definition of animal signals remains silent on the nature of semantic information a…Read more
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122Review: Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences (review)Mind 116 (461): 238-240. 2007.
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84Acknowledgements Andrea Scarantino, Nicholas Shea, Mark Sprevak, and three anonymous referees provided incisive and constructive comments, for which I am very grateful. In 2012, earlier versions of this paper were delivered in Edinburgh, at the Joint Session in Stirling, and at a workshop on natural information in Aberdeen. I thank participants for their feedback.
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41Reply to Bence Nanay’s ‘Natural selection and the limited nature of environmental resources’Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (4): 420-421. 2010.
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41BRIAN GARVEY Philosophy of Biology (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1): 235-236. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)