Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences
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- Synopsis
- This book develops aphilosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make anexplanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them fromnon-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations areenables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequateand thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductiveexplanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, itemerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the lifesciences itself. Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set ofcriteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally,the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of anexplanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in theworld (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to thelogical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of themeta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author's analysis of reductiveexplanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in thephilosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the twoperspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in thephilosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reductionbecomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the conceptof a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results ofthese five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases herfinal chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation.
- Copyright:
- 2015
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9783319253107
- Publisher:
- Springer International Publishing, Cham
- Date of Addition:
- 05/19/17
- Copyrighted By:
- Springer
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Science
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.