From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics
eBook - PDF

From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics

  1. 331 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics

About this book

How analyzing scientific practices can alter debates on the relationship between science and reality

Numerous scholarly works focus solely on scientific metaphysics or biological practice, but few attempt to bridge the two subjects. This volume, the latest in the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, explores what a scientific metaphysics grounded in biological practices could look like and how it might impact the way we investigate the world around us.

 

From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics examines how to reconcile the methods of biological practice with the methods of metaphysical cosmology, notably regarding the origins of life. The contributors take up a wide range of traditional metaphysics and philosophy of science topics, including natural kinds, medicine, ecology, genetics, scientific pluralism, reductionism, operationalism, mechanisms, the nature of information, and more. Many of the chapters represent the first philosophical treatments of significant biological practices. 

 

From causality and complexity to niche constructions and inference, the contributors review and discuss long-held objections to metaphysics by natural scientists. They illuminate how, in order to learn about the world as it truly is, we must look not only at what scientists say but also what they do: for ontology cannot be read directly from scientific claims.

 

Contributors: Richard Creath, Arizona State U; Marc Ereshefsky, U of Calgary; Marie I. Kaiser, Bielefeld U; Thomas A. C. Reydon, Leibniz U Hannover and Michigan State U; Lauren N. Ross, U of California, Irvine; Rose Trappes, U of Exeter; Marcel Weber, U of Geneva; William C. Wimsatt, U of Chicago.

 

 

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

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Yes, you can access From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics by William C. Bausman,Janella K. Baxter,Oliver M. Lean in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Philosophy & Ethics in Science. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Introduction: Toward a Scientific Metaphysics Based on Biological Practice
  7. Chapter 1. Evolution and the Metabolism of Error: Biological Practice as Foundation for a Scientific Metaphysics
  8. Chapter 2. How to Infer Metaphysics from Scientific Practice as a Biologist Might
  9. Chapter 3. What Was Carnap Rejecting When He Rejected Metaphysics?
  10. Chapter 4. Ideal Observations: Information and Causation in Biological Practice
  11. Chapter 5. Individual-Level Mechanisms in Ecology and Evolution
  12. Chapter 6. Just How Messy Is the World?
  13. Chapter 7. The Reduction of Classical Experimental Embryology to Molecular Developmental Biology: A Tale of Three Sciences
  14. Chapter 8. Explanation in Contexts of Causal Complexity: Lessons from Psychiatric Genetics
  15. Chapter 9. The Grounded Functionality Account of Natural Kinds
  16. Contributors
  17. Index