Article2008

Thinking Again about Biological Mechanisms

117 citations0/0 files storedPhilosophy of Science

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Philosophy and History of Science Science Education and Pedagogy Philosophy, Science, and History

Abstract

The new research program to understand mechanisms in biology has developed rapidly in the last 10 years. Reconsideration of the characterization of mechanisms in biology in the light of this recent work is now in order. This article discusses the perspectival aspect of the characterization of mechanisms (and ways of mitigating rampant perspectivalism), refinements in claims about working entities and kinds of activities, challenges and responses to claims about regularity, productive continuity, and the organizational aspects of a mechanism, and issues about representations of mechanisms in schemas and sketches.

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 117 citations exist upstream.

References

2000Thinking about Mechanisms 1985Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World 2020Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World 2007Explaining the Brain 1993Discovering complexity: decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research 2005Explanation: a mechanist alternative 1994Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement 2007Explaining the brain : mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience

Cited by

2011Modelling Molecular Mechanisms: A Framework of Scientific Reasoning to Construct Molecular-Level Explanations for Cellular Behaviour 2014A Field Guide to Mechanisms: Part I 2015Can mechanistic explanation be reconciled with scale-free constitution and dynamics?2013What was Hodgkin and Huxley’s Achievement?2012Mechanistic explanation without the ontic conception 2013In Defence of Activities 2011Is the philosophy of mechanism philosophy enough?2014A Field Guide to Mechanisms: Part II

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.