History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences最新文献_第4页

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":"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":"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":"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

The evolution of ACEs: From coping behaviors to epigenetics as explanatory frameworks for the biology of adverse childhood experiences. ACE的演变：从应对行为到表观遗传学作为童年不良经历生物学的解释框架。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-10-29 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00629-3

Ruth Müller, Martha Kenney

{"title":"The evolution of ACEs: From coping behaviors to epigenetics as explanatory frameworks for the biology of adverse childhood experiences.","authors":"Ruth Müller, Martha Kenney","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00629-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00629-3","url":null,"abstract":"Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have become a topic of public and scientific attention. ACEs denote a range of negative experiences in early life, from sexual abuse to emotional neglect, that are thought to impact health over the life course. The term was coined in the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study, an epidemiological study that surveyed 17,421 adults about ACEs and correlated the responses with participants' current health records. Shortly after the study was published in 1998, the US CDC deemed ACEs an important public health target; however, it is only recently that ACEs feature prominently in scientific and public discourses. We contend that this rise in popularity is linked to the adoption of epigenetic explanations for how ACEs affect health. Based on a literature analysis, we trace the evolution of explanatory frameworks for ACEs-from coping behaviors to allostatic load to epigenetics-and analyze how each of these explanations not only reconsiders the mechanisms by which ACEs affect health, but also who should be held responsible for addressing ACEs and how. Epigenetics provides distinctly different discursive possibilities than previous frameworks: firstly, it offers one distinct molecular mechanism for how ACEs work, lending \"molecular credibility\" to epidemiological findings; secondly, it raises the possibility of reversing the negative effects of ACEs on the biological level. This epigenetic articulation makes ACEs attractive for new actors in science and society. Particularly, it facilitates novel interdisciplinary collaborations and attracts actors in health advocacy who are interested in non-deterministic readings of ACEs that counteract stigma and support positive health interventions and healing.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"33"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11522112/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142549211","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

Of rats and children: plague, malaria, and the early history of disease reservoirs (1898-1930). 老鼠与儿童：鼠疫、疟疾与疾病库的早期历史（1898-1930 年）》（Of rats and children: plague, malaria, and the early history of disease reservoirs (1898-1930)）。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-10-22 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00633-7

Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, Jordan Goodman

{"title":"Of rats and children: plague, malaria, and the early history of disease reservoirs (1898-1930).","authors":"Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, Jordan Goodman","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00633-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00633-7","url":null,"abstract":"This article's jumping-off point is the highly incisive but often-ignored claim by the French doctor, Louis-Jacques Tanon, in 1922 that rats acted as plague reservoirs in Paris; in other words, that they harboured the plague bacillus but were refractory to it. This claim partially reframed the fight against this disease in the French capital in the 1920s, which became more centred on surveilling the plague reservoir rather than on destroying rats. Drawing upon Tanon's hypothesis, this article explores the emergence, evolution, and several iterations of the idea of disease reservoirs in the early twentieth century. On the one hand, it describes the crafting of a range of ideas with which Tanon was directly or indirectly dialoguing, namely, that rats could present a stage called chronic plague, which was especially developed in India; and that human populations, especially children, acted as sources or reservoirs of malaria in Sierra Leone and Algeria. On the other hand, this article shows how Tanon created original reasoning by combining and reformulating some of these ideas and applying them to Paris. Thus, this article contributes to the early history of reasoning in terms of disease reservoirs, as well as presenting a more dynamic history of microbiology by showing how concepts crafted in the \"Rest\" found their place in Europe.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"32"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11496313/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142516775","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

Controlling systems and controlling legacies: Barbara McClintock’s 1961 conversation with two bacterial geneticists 控制系统和控制遗产：芭芭拉-麦克林托克 1961 年与两位细菌遗传学家的对话

IF 2 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-09-12 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00631-9

Qinyan Wu

{"title":"Controlling systems and controlling legacies: Barbara McClintock’s 1961 conversation with two bacterial geneticists","authors":"Qinyan Wu","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00631-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-024-00631-9","url":null,"abstract":"Barbara McClintock (1902–1992), the renowned American maize geneticist, received the 1983 Nobel Prize “for her discovery of mobile genetic elements,” becoming the seventh woman scientist to receive a Nobel Prize. However, Nathaniel Comfort points out that McClintock viewed her primary contribution as the elucidation of control systems, rather than the discovery of mobile elements. McClintock’s interest in control systems dates back to the 1940s, and this paper investigates her 1961 conversation with François Jacob and Jacques Monod, where she sought to shape the interpretation of her work by drawing parallels between maize control systems and a bacterial system they had recently discovered. Despite McClintock’s efforts, Jacob and Monod rejected her parallels and suggested that her contribution was limited to mobile elements. Through an examination of their published papers, I argue that Jacob and Monod’s rejection stemmed from their failure to fully comprehend maize control systems. Disciplinary discrepancy helps explain Jacob and Monod’s lack of comprehension: they were molecular geneticists working on bacteria, while McClintock was a classical geneticist studying maize. I further argue that gender played a role, as McClintock experienced the Matilda effect—the under-recognition of her contribution, reinforced by the reactions of two male geneticists, and ironically, by the award of the Nobel Prize. Control systems, stemming from McClintock’s reverence for organisms, embodied what Evelyn Fox Keller defines as “gender-neutral science.” This divergent view of science provides insight into why Jacob and Monod failed to grasp McClintock’s work in 1961.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"2 1","pages":"31"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142226304","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

Constraint-based reasoning in cell biology: on the explanatory role of context. 细胞生物学中基于限制的推理：关于上下文的解释作用。

IF 1.6 3区哲学

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Pub Date : 2024-08-28 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00628-4

Karl S Matlin, Sara Green

{"title":"Constraint-based reasoning in cell biology: on the explanatory role of context.","authors":"Karl S Matlin, Sara Green","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00628-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00628-4","url":null,"abstract":"Cell biologists, including those seeking molecular mechanistic explanations of cellular phenomena, frequently rely on experimental strategies focused on identifying the cellular context relevant to their investigations. We suggest that such practices can be understood as a guided decomposition strategy, where molecular explanations of phenomena are defined in relation to natural contextual (cell) boundaries. This \"top-down\" strategy contrasts with \"bottom-up\" reductionist approaches where well-defined molecular structures and activities are orphaned by their displacement from actual biological functions. We focus on the central role of microscopic imaging in cell biology to uncover possible constraints on the system. We show how identified constraints are used heuristically to limit possible mechanistic explanations to those that are biologically meaningful. Historical examples of this process described here include discovery of the mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria, molecular explanation of the first steps in protein secretion, and identification of molecular motors. We suggest that these instances are examples of a form of downward causation or, more specifically, constraining relations, where higher-level structures and variables delimit and enable lower-level system states. The guided decomposition strategy in our historical cases illustrates the irreducibility of experimentally identified constraints in explaining biological activities of cells. Rather than viewing decomposition and recomposition as separate epistemic activities, we contend that they need to be iteratively integrated to account for the ontological complexity of multi-level systems.","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 3","pages":"30"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142082723","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