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Constant Factors and Hedgeless Hedges: On Heuristics and Biases in Biological Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jason Scott Robert
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Abstract

How does a complex organism develop from a relatively simple, homogeneous mass? The usual answer is: through the (context-dependent) execution of species-specific genetic instructions specifying the development of that organism. Commentators are sometimes skeptical of this usual answer, but of course not all commentators, and not always for the same reasons. Here I attempt to lay bare the logical structure of the usual answer through an extended analysis of the heuristics and methodological principles at play in the exploration and explanation of development—and also to show a critical ambiguity that renders the usual answer suspect.

Type
Genes, Development, and Evolution
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 70 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2003 , pp. 975 - 988
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am grateful to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the CIHR Institute of Genetics, for financial support of this research. I would also like to thank Richmond Campbell, Gillian Gass, Sahotra Sarkar, and members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary for helpful critical comments on earlier versions of this article. The themes touched on here are explored in more detail in my book, Embryology, Epigenesis, and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press; a longer version of this article will appear as Chapter 1.

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