History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences最新文献

Two scientific perspectives on nerve signal propagation: how incompatible approaches jointly promote progress in explanatory understanding. 神经信号传播的两种科学视角：互不兼容的方法如何共同促进解释性理解的进步。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-21 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00644-4

Linda Holland, Henk W de Regt, Benjamin Drukarch

{"title":"Two scientific perspectives on nerve signal propagation: how incompatible approaches jointly promote progress in explanatory understanding.","authors":"Linda Holland, Henk W de Regt, Benjamin Drukarch","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00644-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-024-00644-4","url":null,"abstract":"We present a case study of two scientific perspectives on the phenomenon of nerve signal propagation, a bio-electric and a thermodynamic perspective, and compare this case with two accounts of scientific perspectivism: those of Michela Massimi and Juha Saatsi, respectively. We demonstrate that the interaction between the bio-electric perspective and the thermodynamic perspective can be captured in Saatsi's terms of progress in explanatory understanding. Using insights from our case study, we argue that both the epistemic and pragmatic dimensions of scientific understanding are important for increasing explanatory understanding of phenomena. The epistemic dimension of understanding is important for increasing the number of actually answered what-if-things-had-been-different questions about a phenomenon, the pragmatic dimension for pointing out the potentially answerable what-if questions that have been overlooked or purposefully neglected thus far. Exposing the limitations of the acquired understanding within a particular perspective can be achieved by criticizing the assumptions that have been adopted to make models of the perspective intelligible, but that are considered problematic from a rival perspective.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"43"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142683674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A strategy to what end? "The strategy of model building in population biology" in its programmatic context. 战略的目的是什么？计划背景下的 "群体生物学模型构建战略"。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-18 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00646-2

Zvi Hasnes-Beninson

{"title":"A strategy to what end? \"The strategy of model building in population biology\" in its programmatic context.","authors":"Zvi Hasnes-Beninson","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00646-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00646-2","url":null,"abstract":"\"The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology\" published by Richard Levins in 1966 has been cited over 2500 times. For a paper concerned with modeling approaches in population biology a surprisingly large part of the attention. The Strategy received comes from history and philosophy of biology, and specifically from accounts on model and model formulation. The Strategy is an unusual paper; it presents neither new data nor a new formal model; at times it reads like a manifesto for some modeling approach, without specifying which broader program that approach intends to support. When these peculiarities of The Strategy are even mentioned, the philosophical literature tends to explain them away by invoking Levins' Marxist commitments. In contrast, I argue that those peculiarities can be explained by examining the programmatic purpose of the paper; starting from his doctoral work, Levins was trying to establish a research program meant to account for the relations between fitness and environment in different terms than the prevalent lock-and-key view. My paper brings that program back to the discussion, explains its relation to competing approaches and examines Levins' approach to modeling in light of that context.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"42"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11573825/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142649650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Inventing with bacteriology: controversy over anti-cholera therapeutic serum and tensions between transnational science and local practice in Tokyo and Berlin (1890-1902). 细菌学的发明：抗霍乱治疗血清的争议以及东京和柏林的跨国科学与地方实践之间的紧张关系（1890-1902 年）。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-15 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00639-1

Shiori Nosaka

{"title":"Inventing with bacteriology: controversy over anti-cholera therapeutic serum and tensions between transnational science and local practice in Tokyo and Berlin (1890-1902).","authors":"Shiori Nosaka","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00639-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00639-1","url":null,"abstract":"The present article examines the material, epistemological, and social dimensions of late nineteenth-century anti-cholera serum controversies that unfolded in Tokyo and Berlin. It seeks to shed light on the conflicting values embedded in the construction of scientific evidence during the transnational exploration of bacteriology as an effective response to controlling epidemics. Driven by Japanese health authorities' initiatives, Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo participated in the elaboration of bacteriological research oriented toward therapeutic application during his stay in Berlin. This work coincided with the rise of a controversy over anti-cholera serum in relation to the animal experiments conducted by Richard Pfeiffer, a German bacteriologist. After presenting a series of animal experiments and certain clinical cases conducted in Germany, France, and Egypt in the context of the controversies, the article analyzes a therapeutic trial conducted by Kitasato in Japan during an 1895 cholera epidemic. His strategy, bringing new data to the transnational debate through an intensive investment of resources in the trial, provoked criticism from his Japanese and German colleagues. These critics questioned Kitasato's method and pointed out the low social value of this experimental serum therapy, performed in highly equipped conditions. Through this case study, the present article highlights: a) a strong tension between transnational research interactions among bacteriologists and local medical practices during public health campaigns against epidemics at the turn of the twentieth century; b) the importance of analyzing the interconnected effects of local, national and transnational frameworks of medical science when examining the increasingly intertwined relationships between laboratory science and clinical medicine.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"41"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142638735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Matteo Vagelli, Reconsidering historical epistemology: French and anglophone styles in history and philosophy of science, 2024. Springer. Matteo Vagelli, 重新考虑历史认识论：科学史与科学哲学中的法语和英语风格》，2024 年。Springer.

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-06 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00641-7

Matthew Perkins-McVey

引用次数: 0

The modern synthesis and "Progress" in evolution: a view from the journal literature. 进化论中的现代综合与 "进步"：从期刊文献看进化论。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-06 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00634-6

Charles H Pence

{"title":"The modern synthesis and \"Progress\" in evolution: a view from the journal literature.","authors":"Charles H Pence","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00634-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-024-00634-6","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of \"progress\" in evolutionary theory and its relationship to a putative notion of \"Progress\" in a global, normatively loaded sense of \"change for the better\" have been the subject of debate since Darwin admonished himself in a marginal note to avoid using the terms 'higher' and 'lower.' While an increase in some kind of complexity in the natural world might seem self-evident, efforts to explicate this trend meet notorious philosophical difficulties. Numerous historians pin the Modern Synthesis as a pivotal moment in this history; Michael Ruse even provocatively hypothesizes that Ernst Mayr and other \"architects\" of the Synthesis worked actively to eliminate Progress from evolutionary biology's scientific purview. I evaluate these claims here with a textual analysis of the journals Evolution and Proceedings of the Royal Society B (a corpus of 27,762 documents), using a dynamic topic modeling approach to track the fate of the term 'progress' across the Modern Synthesis. The claim that this term declines in importance for evolutionary theorizing over this period can, indeed, be supported; more tentative evidence is also provided that the discussion of 'progress' is largely absent from the British context, emphasizing the role of American paleontology in the rise and fall of 'progress' in 20th-century evolutionary biology.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"39"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142585351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Normative implications of postgenomic deterministic narratives: the case study of epigenetic harm. 后基因组决定论叙事的规范意义：表观遗传危害案例研究。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-06 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00636-4

Emma Moormann

{"title":"Normative implications of postgenomic deterministic narratives: the case study of epigenetic harm.","authors":"Emma Moormann","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00636-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-024-00636-4","url":null,"abstract":"What do we mean when we talk about epigenetic harm? This paper presents a multidimensional view of epigenetic harm. It is a plea to take a step back from discussions of epigenetic responsibility distributions prevalent in ELSA literature on epigenetics. Instead, it urges researchers to take a closer look at the normative role played by the concept of epigenetic harm. It starts out by showing that the ways in which the object of epigenetic responsibility has already been conceptualized are all related to 'epigenetic harm': something negative that happens in which epigenetic mechanisms play a role, or rather something that needs to be avoided. Epigenetic harm is then characterized as a bridging concept between relatively neutral findings on epigenetics on the one side, and potential ethical and societal implications of those findings, primarily in terms of responsibility ascriptions and distributions, on the other. The paper proposes that a sufficiently nuanced account of epigenetic harm should include at least three dimensions. The dimension of causation alone leads to an overly narrow understanding of harm, and a wrong understanding of this dimension might prompt researchers to support an excessively simplistic epigenetic determinism. It is argued that a multidimensional analysis of epigenetic harm is less vulnerable to this threat and more reflective of the various kinds of harm that may be experienced by the subjects of epigenetic alterations. The paper applies insights from disability studies and feminist philosophy to draw attention to two other dimensions of epigenetic harm, namely lived experiences and relationality. The paper concludes by exploring what a shift towards a multidimensional approach to epigenetic harm might mean for epigenetic research and responsibility ascriptions by formulating some concrete implications.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"38"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142585345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Seeking the first phylogenetic method-Edvard A. Vainio (1853-1929) and his troubled endeavour towards a natural lichen classification in the late nineteenth century Finland. 寻找第一种系统发育方法--爱德华-A-瓦伊尼奥（1853-1929 年）和他在十九世纪末芬兰为地衣自然分类所做的艰苦努力。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-06 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00635-5

Samuli Lehtonen

{"title":"Seeking the first phylogenetic method-Edvard A. Vainio (1853-1929) and his troubled endeavour towards a natural lichen classification in the late nineteenth century Finland.","authors":"Samuli Lehtonen","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00635-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00635-5","url":null,"abstract":"Edvard August Vainio was a world-renowned Finnish lichenologist. In Finland, however, he was a controversial person due to his strong pro-Finnish political views. Equally disputed was his opinion that systematics should be based on evolutionary theory and phylogenetic thinking. Vainio was familiar with the ideas of the early German phylogeneticists-especially those of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli - and, applying them, aimed to create an exact method for building a natural classification of lichens already at the end of the nineteenth century. In this respect, Vainio was a true pioneer, as no actual phylogenetic method had yet been developed. In the general spirit of the time, Vainio focused on finding the ancestors of species and other taxa by comparing primitive and derived features of homologous characters. However, Vainio already understood the concept of sister groups in 1880, the identification of which is the basis of all modern phylogenetic research. Nevertheless, the distinctive method developed by Vainio was not so much focused on the construction of a phylogenetic tree, but on revealing the origin of species through the differentiation and fixation of their polymorphic variation. Indeed, Vainio's species concept is surprisingly similar to the phylogenetic species concepts presented a hundred years later. Although in many ways progressive, Vainio's views did not influence the development of phylogenetics more widely, but his discussions are nevertheless a valuable source to understanding the early development of phylogenetic theory.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"37"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11541395/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142585349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Snait B. Gissis, Lamarckism and the emergence of 'scientific' social sciences in nineteenth-century Britain and France, Springer, 2024. Snait B. Gissis, Lamarckism and the emergence of 'scientific' social sciences in nineteenth-century Britain and France, Springer, 2024.

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-01 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00640-8

Tobias Cheung

引用次数: 0

The historical transformation of individual concepts into populational ones: an explanatory shift in the gestation of the modern synthesis. 个体概念向群体概念的历史性转变：现代综合酝酿过程中的解释性转变。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-11-01 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00638-2

Tiago Rama

{"title":"The historical transformation of individual concepts into populational ones: an explanatory shift in the gestation of the modern synthesis.","authors":"Tiago Rama","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00638-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-024-00638-2","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I will conduct three interrelated analyses. First, I will develop an analysis of various concepts in the history of biology that used to refer to individual-level phenomena but were then reinterpreted by the Modern Synthesis in terms of populations. Second, a similar situation can be found in contemporary evolutionary theory. While different approaches reflect on the causal role of developing organisms in evolution, proponents of the Modern Synthesis refrain from any substantial change by reinterpreting and explaining individual-level phenomena from a population perspective. Finally, I will approach these historical and contemporary debates by arguing for the statistical reading of natural selection, which holds that explanations by natural selection are statistical. My main conclusion is that the historical conceptual reinterpretations belong to a new explanatory strategy developed by the Modern Synthesis based on population thinking. Adopting the statistical point of view has three advantages for the issues discussed in this paper. First, understanding historical conceptual change as part of an explanatory shift fits with the emergence of population biology as a discipline that employs statistical methods. Second, concerning current debates in evolutionary biology, the statisticalist reading can validate the goal of both sides of the dispute. It ascribes an invaluable role to the population statistical explanation of the MS and also commends the study of developmental and organismal causes of adaptive evolution. Finally, the division of explanatory roles in evolutionary biology, embarrassed by statisticalism, can be related to the different interpretations that important biological concepts have undergone throughout history and contemporary biology, i.e., that the division of explanatory roles allows for a division of conceptual interpretations.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"35"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142562896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Postgenomic understandings of fatness and metabolism. 后基因组学对肥胖和新陈代谢的理解。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-10-30 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00630-w

Azita Chellappoo

引用次数: 0