Explanation in Biology

Braillard, Pierre-Alain; Malaterre, Christophe

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9822-8

Cited by 26 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 310 publications

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“…Recognition of different explanatory aims and practices can lead to greater acceptance of complementary methods and perspectives. Examining the variety of research practices in the life sciences, philosophers of science have recently reached what looks like a consensus on explanatory pluralism (Braillard & Malaterre, ; Mitchell, ). In the context of systems biology, it has been argued that the quests for mechanistic explanations and design principles are complementary in the sense that the former explain how particular systems work, and the latter provide a categorization of types of systems behaviours that are applicable to a wider range of causal systems (Green & Wolkenhauer, ).…”

Section: Reduction Imperialism and Suggestions For Practical Integrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems science and the art of interdisciplinary integration

Green

Andersen

2019

Syst Res Behav Sci

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Systems sciences address issues that cross‐cut any single discipline and benefit from the synergy of combining several approaches. But interdisciplinary integration can be challenging to achieve in practice. Scientists with different disciplinary backgrounds often have different views on what count as good data, good evidence, a good model, or a good explanation. Accordingly, several scholars have reported on challenges encountered in interdisciplinary settings. This chapter outlines how some of the challenges play out in systems biology where disciplinary ideals and domainspecific practices sometime collide. We focus on tensions arising due to differences in epistemic standards between modellers with a background in physics or systems engineering, on one hand, and experimenters with a background in molecular biology on the other. We propose that part of the problem of interdisciplinary integration can be understood as the result of unfounded “disciplinary imperialism” on both sides, in which standards from one discipline are uncritically applied to new domains without recognition of other valid or complementary perspectives. Addressing and explicating the disciplinary background for the different views can help facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in science and improve science education.

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Section: Reduction Imperialism and Suggestions For Practical Integrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems science and the art of interdisciplinary integration

Green

Andersen

2019

Syst Res Behav Sci

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“…A prerequisite for discussing mechanism-oriented biological models is adopting a definition for "mechanism." Over the past two decades, within the philosophy of science literature, mechanism has emerged as a framework for thinking about fundamental issues in biology [1,2]. Braillard and Malaterre recently defined a biological mechanism [3]:…”

Section: Background Framing the Context: Mechanisms As Explanations Omentioning

confidence: 99%

The Spectrum of Mechanism-Oriented Models and Methods for Explanations of Biological Phenomena

et al. 2018

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Developing and improving mechanism-oriented computational models to better explain biological phenomena is a dynamic and expanding frontier. As the complexity of targeted phenomena has increased, so too has the diversity in methods and terminologies, often at the expense of clarity, which can make reproduction challenging, even problematic. To encourage improved semantic and methodological clarity, we describe the spectrum of Mechanism-oriented Models being used to develop explanations of biological phenomena. We cluster explanations of phenomena into three broad groups. We then expand them into seven workflow-related model types having distinguishable features. We name each type and illustrate with examples drawn from the literature. These model types may contribute to the foundation of an ontology of mechanism-based biomedical simulation research. We show that the different model types manifest and exert their scientific usefulness by enhancing and extending different forms and degrees of explanation. The process starts with knowledge about the phenomenon and continues with explanatory and mathematical descriptions. Those descriptions are transformed into software and used to perform experimental explorations by running and examining simulation output. The credibility of inferences is thus linked to having easy access to the scientific and technical provenance from each workflow stage.

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“…Philosophy of biology has proven to be particularly ripe for pluralist positions, for various reasons. Some argue that the complexity of the subject matter implies that no single overarching theory will ever be sufficient to explain everything within the discipline (Mitchell 2003), others that the historical contingency of natural selection (Beatty 1993), the sheer diversity of questions being asked, or the competing scientific traditions within biology preclude any kind of unifying schemes (Morange 2015). These issues seem to be compounded in biological research relating to behaviour, where the B Christophe Malaterre malaterre.christophe@uqam.ca 1 Département de Philosophie and Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), 455 Boulevard René-Lévesque Est, Montréal, QC H3C 3P8, Canada complexity of the phenomena and the diversity of disciplines which can contribute to explanations give rise to much interesting research (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These issues dovetail with many other forms of pluralism which are concerned with epistemic issues, such as anti-reductionist positions (Fodor 1974), as well as interactions within multi-disciplinary research domains (Longino 2002;Kellert 2008;Repko 2012). Many of these positions also relate to explanatory pluralism, which highlights the variety of explanations that science produces (Mitchell 2002;Kellert, Longino, and Waters 2006a;Mitchell 2009;Kendler 2012;Longino 2013;Ruphy 2013;Braillard and Malaterre 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A roadmap to explanatory pluralism: introduction to the topical collection The Biology of Behaviour

Muszynski

Malaterre

2020

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Pluralism is widely appealed to in many areas of philosophy of science, though what is meant by 'pluralism' may profoundly vary. Because explanations of behaviour have been a favoured target for pluralistic theses, the sciences of behaviour offer a rich context in which to further investigate pluralism. This is what the topical collection The Biology of Behaviour: Explanatory pluralism across the life sciences is about. In the present introduction, we briefly review major strands of pluralist theses and their motivations. We highlight three distinct types of pluralisms-type pluralism, fragmentation pluralism and insular pluralism-and introduce the articles of the topical collection.

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Explanation in Biology

Cited by 26 publications

References 310 publications

Systems science and the art of interdisciplinary integration

Systems science and the art of interdisciplinary integration

The Spectrum of Mechanism-Oriented Models and Methods for Explanations of Biological Phenomena

A roadmap to explanatory pluralism: introduction to the topical collection The Biology of Behaviour

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