Philosophical Perspectives on the Engineering Approach in Biology PDF Download
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Author: Sune Holm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351212222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
Philosophical Perspectives on the Engineering Approach in Biology provides a philosophical examination of what has been called the most powerful metaphor in biology: The machine metaphor. The chapters collected in this volume discuss the idea that living systems can be understood through the lens of engineering methods and machine metaphors from both historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives. In their contributions the authors examine questions about scientific explanation and methodology, the interrelationship between science and engineering, and the impact that the use of engineering metaphors in science may have for bioethics and science communication, such as the worry that its wide application reinforces public misconceptions of the nature of new biotechnology and biological life. The book also contains an introduction that describes the rise of the machine analogy and the many ways in which it plays a central role in fundamental debates about e.g. design, adaptation, and reductionism in the philosophy of biology. The book will be useful as a core reading for professionals as well as graduate and undergraduate students in courses of philosophy of science and for life scientists taking courses in philosophy of science and bioethics.
Author: Sune Holm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351212222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Get Book Here
Book Description
Philosophical Perspectives on the Engineering Approach in Biology provides a philosophical examination of what has been called the most powerful metaphor in biology: The machine metaphor. The chapters collected in this volume discuss the idea that living systems can be understood through the lens of engineering methods and machine metaphors from both historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives. In their contributions the authors examine questions about scientific explanation and methodology, the interrelationship between science and engineering, and the impact that the use of engineering metaphors in science may have for bioethics and science communication, such as the worry that its wide application reinforces public misconceptions of the nature of new biotechnology and biological life. The book also contains an introduction that describes the rise of the machine analogy and the many ways in which it plays a central role in fundamental debates about e.g. design, adaptation, and reductionism in the philosophy of biology. The book will be useful as a core reading for professionals as well as graduate and undergraduate students in courses of philosophy of science and for life scientists taking courses in philosophy of science and bioethics.
Author: Henk W. de Regt
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822971240
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
To most scientists, and to those interested in the sciences, understanding is the ultimate aim of scientific endeavor. In spite of this, understanding, and how it is achieved, has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. Scientific Understanding seeks to reverse this trend by providing original and in-depth accounts of the concept of understanding and its essential role in the scientific process. To this end, the chapters in this volume explore and develop three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice. Earlier philosophers, such as Carl Hempel, dismissed understanding as subjective and pragmatic. They believed that the essence of science was to be found in scientific theories and explanations. In Scientific Understanding, the contributors maintain that we must also consider the relation between explanations and the scientists who construct and use them. They focus on understanding as the cognitive state that is a goal of explanation and on the understanding of theories and models as a means to this end. The chapters in this book highlight the multifaceted nature of the process of scientific research. The contributors examine current uses of theory, models, simulations, and experiments to evaluate the degree to which these elements contribute to understanding. Their analyses pay due attention to the roles of intelligibility, tacit knowledge, and feelings of understanding. Furthermore, they investigate how understanding is obtained within diverse scientific disciplines and examine how the acquisition of understanding depends on specific contexts, the objects of study, and the stated aims of research.
Author: Jan Voosholz
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030718999
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
This book presents the latest research, conducted by leading philosophers and scientists from various fields, on the topic of top-down causation. The chapters combine to form a unique, interdisciplinary perspective, drawing upon George Ellis's extensive research and novel perspectives on topics including downwards causation, weak and strong emergence, mental causation, biological relativity, effective field theory and levels in nature. The collection also serves as a Festschrift in honour of George Ellis' 80th birthday. The extensive and interdisciplinary scope of this book makes it vital reading for anyone interested in the work of George Ellis and current research on the topics of causation and emergence.
Author: Andrew S. Reynolds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108945015
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
Covering a range of metaphors from a diverse field of sciences, from cell and molecular biology to evolution, ecology, and biomedicine, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences explores the positive and negative implications of the widespread use of metaphors in the biological and life sciences. From genetic codes, programs, and blueprints, to cell factories, survival of the fittest, the tree of life, selfish genes, and ecological niches, to genome editing with CRISPR's molecular scissors, metaphors are ubiquitous and vital components of the modern life sciences. But how exactly do metaphors help scientists to understand the objects they study? How can they mislead both scientists and laypeople alike? And what should we all understand about the implications of science's reliance on metaphorical speech and thought for objective knowledge and adequate public policy informed by science? This book will literally help you to better understand the metaphorical dimensions of science.
Author: Julian S. Huxley
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262045370
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
The groundbreaking first book by a major evolutionary biologist, published in 1912, that anticipated current thinking about organismal complexity. Julian Huxley’s The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, published in 1912, is a concise and groundbreaking work that is almost entirely unknown today. In it, Huxley analyzes the evolutionary advances in life’s organizational complexity, anticipating many of today’s ideas about changes in individuality. Huxley’s overarching system of concepts and his coherent logical principles were so far ahead of their time that they remain valid to this day. In part, this is because his explicitly Darwinian approach carefully distinguished between the integrated form and function of hierarchies within organisms and loosely defined, nonorganismal ecological communities. In The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, we meet a youthful Huxley who uses his commanding knowledge of natural history to develop a nonreductionist account of life’s complexity that aligns with seminal early insights by Darwin, Wallace, Weismann, and Wheeler. As volume editors Richard Gawne and Jacobus Boomsma point out, this work disappeared into oblivion despite its relevance for contemporary research on organismal complexity and major evolutionary transitions. This MIT Press edition gives Huxley’s book a second hearing, offering readers a unique vantage point on the discoveries of evolutionary biology past and present.
Author: Robert H Kretsinger
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9814635065
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
History and Philosophy of Biology summarizes the major philosophical ideas that have attended the development of science in general and of biology in particular. The book then explores how the techniques and the concepts of the physical sciences have impacted biology. A reductionist approach to biology — anatomy, physiology, genetics — complements the study of evolution by natural selection and an ecological perspective. The final section of the book explores several examples of the influence of science on society, and of society on science.Each of 46 chapters of History and Philosophy of Biology has been or could be the topic of a major tome. The book is unique in that it explores the web of interactions among issues of philosophy, techniques and concepts of the physical sciences, fields of biology, and the diverse relationships between society and science.The book should appeal to readers of Scientific American or the New York Review of Books even if they are not trained biologists. It is a good text, or additional reading, for an advanced undergraduate course treating history and/or philosophy of biology or of science in general.
Author: Kenneth S. Kendler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108485197
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 583
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Book Description
Leading experts in psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology integrate the scientific lenses relevant to understanding psychiatric disorders.
Author: Adam Safron
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2832536166
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Even before the deep learning revolution, the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) was already changing drastically in the 90s. Embodied intelligence, it was proposed, must play a crucial role in the design of intelligent machines. This new wave was inspired by what is today known as Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science or E-Cognition, which considers that cognitive activity does not reduce to the intellectual capacities of agents being able to represent their environments. E-cognition set AI and robotics in a new direction, in which intelligent machines are required to interact with the environment, and where this interaction does not reduce to explicit representations or prespecified algorithms. These ideas revolutionized the way we think about intelligent machines and cognition, but these theoretical advances are only partially reflected in modern approaches to AI and machine learning (ML). Despite deeply impressive achievements, AI/ML still struggles to recapitulate the kinds of intelligence we find in natural systems, whether we are considering individual insects (e.g. simultaneous localization and mapping), or swarm behaviour (e.g. forum sensing and ensemble inferences), and especially the kinds of flexibility and high-level reasoning characteristic of human cognition.
Author: David Ludwig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000413810
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
In bringing together a global community of philosophers, Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science develops novel perspectives on epistemology and philosophy of science by demonstrating how frameworks from academic philosophy (e.g. standpoint theory, social epistemology, feminist philosophy of science) and related fields (e.g. decolonial studies, transdisciplinarity, global history of science) can contribute to critical engagement with global dimensions of knowledge and science. Global challenges such as climate change, food production, and infectious diseases raise complex questions about scientific knowledge production and its interactions with local knowledge systems and social realities. As academic philosophy provides relatively little reflection on global negotiations of knowledge, many pressing scientific and societal issues remain disconnected from core debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. This book is an invitation to broaden agendas of academic philosophy by presenting epistemology and philosophy of science as globally engaged fields that address heterogeneous forms of knowledge production and their interactions with local livelihoods, practices, and worldviews. This integrative ambition makes the book equally relevant for philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars who are concerned with methodological and political challenges at the intersection of science and society.
Author: Bernd Giese
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319027832
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Synthetic Biology is already an object of intensive debate. However, to a great extent the discussion to date has been concerned with fundamental ethical, religious and philosophical questions. By contrast, based on an investigation of the field’s scientific and technological character, this book focuses on new functionalities provided by synthetic biology and explores the associated opportunities and risks. Following an introduction to the subject and a discussion of the most central paradigms and methodologies, the book provides an overview of the structure of this field of science and technology. It informs the reader about the current stage of development, as well as topical problems and potential opportunities in important fields of application. But not only the science itself is in focus. In order to investigate its broader impact, ecological as well as ethical implications will be considered, paving the way for a discussion of responsibilities in the context of a field at a transitional crossroads between basic and applied science. In closing, the requirements for a suitable regulatory framework are discussed. The book is intended as a source of information and orientation for researchers, students and practitioners in the natural sciences and technology assessment; for members of scientific and technological, governmental and funding institutions; and for members of the general public interested in essential information on the current status, prospects and implications of synthetic biology.
