Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century biology: the importance of historical context

Allen, Garland E.

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2005.03.003

Cited by 90 publications

(49 citation statements)

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“…In the other direction, it may be too permissive, and generate false positives: a large swathe of organismal features (both morphological and behavioural) bear counterfactual dependence relations to extra-organismal, environmental stimuli, as evidenced by the well-known phenomenon of phenotypic plasticity (West-Eberhard 2003;Fusco & Minelli 2010). 9 4 For a good overview of the philosophical distinctions between "machines" and "mechanisms", their historical interplay within the history of science, and what"s "new" about the new mechanism movement, see Allen (2005) and Nicholson (2012). 5 There are mechanists who go beyond the explanatory claim and hold that biological causation itself just is mechanism-mediated influence, but this is an extreme view that I don"t have time to consider here.…”

Section: Organismal Ontology and Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Philosophy of Biology

Austin

2017

Analysis

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Section: Organismal Ontology and Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Philosophy of Biology

Austin

2017

Analysis

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“…I suspect that a central reason has its origins in a muddling of the various senses of "mechanism" floating around in the literature (Allen 2005;Nicholson 2012). Indeed, the contemporary dialectic against organisms qua ontologically composed of mechanisms appears to often be focused on objections to organisms qua machines (Woese 2004;Dupré & O"Malley 2007;Dupré 2013;Jaeger & Monk 2015).…”

Section: A Few Final Thoughtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ontology of organisms: Mechanistic modules or patterned processes?

Austin

2016

Biol Philos

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Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our best conceptualisation of the biological realm with metaphysical rigour, must we depose our mechanistic ontology for failing to properly "carve at the joints" of organisms? In this paper, I challenge the legitimacy of that claim: not only can the theoretical benefits offered by a process ontology be had without it, they cannot be sufficiently grounded without the metaphysical underpinning of the very mechanisms which processes purport to replace. The biological realm, I argue, remains one best understood as under the governance of mechanistic principles.There"s no doubt that one of the most trending topics in the philosophy of science is the so-called "new mechanism" movement. In the philosophy of biology in particular, the movement is truly a metaphysics en vogue: it represents a conceptual schema which appears to more than adequately capture the framework within which a wide variety of empirical data is commonly interpreted, and within which the experimental practitioners of that field carry out their work. According to the new mechanists, the biological realm is a mechanical realm, and its denizens -organisms -are machines par excellence. And although it"s undeniably the case that biology is a science of mechanisms in one sense or another, the pertinent question at hand is whether and to what extent the particulars of this now popular ontology properly carve at the same joints that our best contemporary biological models do.If we"re going to answer that question, a plausible place to do so is within the conceptual remit of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), a research programme whose fruit has been the reliable delineation of the various ontogenically and evolutionarily salient modular sub-systems which compose the meta-systems we recognise as organisms. What we want to know then is whether the ontology of evodevo is an ontology of mechanisms -that is, whether our best model of the composition of organisms is one capable of being constructed mechanistically. One would think that, given the past successes of a broadly mechanistic characterisation of the biological realm, this is a question that is likely to cause very few any pause -but there has rather recently arisen a dissenting voice claiming that the ontology of organisms evo-devo presents us with is not -and indeed, cannot be -one of "entities and activities", but is rather one consisting of activities alone.According to "process ontology", the familiar entities which our scientific theories describe a...

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“…Here, I do not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either in terms of scientific validity or historical coherence; nor do I return to the classic issue of the organism-mechanism tension which has particularly been studied in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century biology (Hein, 1972, Allen, 2005. It has been observed that we have numerous histories of genetics, but no history of organism (Laubichler, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The organism as ontological go-between: Hybridity, boundaries and degrees of reality in its conceptual history

Wolfe

2014

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in

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The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles -sometimes overt, sometimes masked -throughout the history of biology, and frequently in very normative ways, also shifting between the biological and the social. Indeed, it has often been presented as a key-concept in life science and the 'theorization' of Life, but conversely has also been the target of influential rejections: as just an instrument of transmission for the selfish gene, but also, historiographically, as part of an outdated 'vitalism'. Indeed, the organism, perhaps because it is experientially closer to the 'body' than to the 'molecule', is often the object of quasi-affective theoretical investments presenting it as essential, sometimes even as the pivot of a science or a particular approach to nature, while other approaches reject or attack it with equal force, assimilating it to a mysterious 'vitalist' ontology of extra-causal forces, or other pseudo-scientific doctrines. This paper does not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either in terms of scientific validity or historical coherence; nor does it return to the well-studied issue of the organism-mechanism tension in biology. Recent scholarship has begun to focus on the emergence and transformation of the concept of organism, but has not emphasized so much the way in which organism is a shifting, 'go-between' concept -invoked as 'natural' by some thinkers to justify their metaphysics, but then presented as value-laden by others, over and against the natural world. The organism as go-between concept is also a hybrid, a boundary concept or an epistemic limit case, all of which partly overlap with the idea of 'nomadic concepts'. Thereby the concept of organism continues to function in different contexts -as a heuristic, an explanatory challenge, 2 a model of order, of regulation, etc. -despite having frequently been pronounced irrelevant and reduced to molecules or genes. Yet this perpetuation is far removed from any 'metaphysics of organism', or organismic biology.

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Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century biology: the importance of historical context

Cited by 90 publications

References 11 publications

The Philosophy of Biology

The Philosophy of Biology

The ontology of organisms: Mechanistic modules or patterned processes?

The organism as ontological go-between: Hybridity, boundaries and degrees of reality in its conceptual history

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