Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-qhdkw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-10T20:16:28.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Organism and Character Decomposition: Steps Towards an Integrative Theory of Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Manfred D. Laubichler  and
Günter P. Wagner
Manfred D. Laubichler*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Günter P. Wagner
Affiliation:
Yale University Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511
*
†Send requests for reprints to Manfred D. Laubichler, Program in History of Science, 129 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; e-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to overcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our opinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biological systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical representations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character identification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly formulated organism concept. Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biological process—such as adaptation by means of natural selection—depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that describe this process.

Type
Philosophy of Biology, Psychology, and Neuroscience
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S289 - S300
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

‡

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium “The Organism in Philosophical Focus” at the biannual meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association in Kansas City, October 1998. We would like to thank the participants in this symposium for their critical input. In addition we would like to thank Gerry Geison and Mike Mahoney for helpful discussions on the subject.

References

Brandon, R. (1995), Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Buss, L. W. (1987), The Evolution of Individuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Crow, J. F. and Kimura, M. (1970), An Introduction to Population Genetics Theory. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. (1977), Ontogeny and Phytogeny. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. and Lewontin, R. C. (1979), “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A critique of the Adaptationist Programme”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205: 581–598.Google Scholar
Griffiths, P. E. and Gray, R. D. (1994), “Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation”, Journal of Philosophy XCI: 277–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, J. H. (1992), Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with application to Biology, Control and Artificial Intelligence, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. L. (1980), “Individuality and Selection”, Annual Review of Ecolology and Systematics 1: 311–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laubichler, M. D. (1999), “A Semiotic Perspective on Biological Objects and Biological Functions”, Semiotica 127: 415–432.10.1515/semi.1999.127.1-4.415CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontion, R. C. (1978), “Adaptation”, Scientific American 239: 156–169.Google Scholar
Oyama, S. (1985), The Ontogeny of Information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, R. (1962), “Church's Thesis and its Relation to the Concept of Realizability in Biology and Physics”, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 24: 375–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffner, K. (1998), “Genes, Behavior, and Developmental Emergentism”, Philosophy of Science 65: 209–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuster, P. and Sigmund, K. (1983), “Replicator Dynamics”, Journal of Theoretical Biology 100: 533–538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stearns, S. (1992), The Evolution of Life Histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, G. P. (1996), “The Biological Role of Homologues: A Building Block Hypothesis”, N. Jb. Geol. Paläont. Abh. 195: 279–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, G. P. and Laubichler, M. D. (2000), “Character Identification in Evolutionary Biology: The Role of the Organism”, Theory in Biosciences, 110: 20–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, J. A. (1999), Biological Individuality: The Individuation and Persistence of Living Entities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. (2000), “Emergence as Non-Aggregativity and the Biases of Reductionism”, in P. J. Taylor and J. Haila (eds.), Natural Contradictions: Perspectives on Ecology and Change, Festschrift for Richard Levins, forthcoming.Google Scholar