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Real Patterns in Biological Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Daniel C. Burnston
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Abstract

In discussion of mechanisms, philosophers often debate about whether quantitative descriptions of generalizations or qualitative descriptions of operations are explanatorily fundamental. I argue that these debates have erred by conflating the explanatory roles of generalizations and patterns. Patterns are types of variations within or between quantities in a mechanism over time or across conditions. While these patterns must often be represented in addition to descriptions of operations in order to explain a phenomenon, they are not equivalent to generalizations because their explanatory role does not depend on any specific facts about their scope or domain of invariance.

Type
Explanation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 879 - 891
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Adele Abrahamsen, William Bechtel, and Benjamin Sheredos for extremely helpful discussion of this material. Research for this article was partially conducted with support from National Science Foundation grant 1127640.

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