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The Varieties of Molecular Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marco J. Nathan
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Abstract

Reductionists in biology claim that all biological events can be explained in terms of genes and macromolecules alone, while antireductionists argue that some biological events must be explained at a higher level. The literature, however, does not distinguish between different kinds of molecular explanation. The goal of this article is to identify and analyze three such kinds. The analysis of molecular explanations herein carries an important philosophical implication; in shunning crude reductionism and extreme versions of holism, we can combine the insights of thoughtful reductionists with sophisticated antireductionism. When this is done, the question of explanatory reductionism becomes less substantial than often supposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 233 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to express my gratitude to Laura Franklin-Hall, Alison Krueger, Anubav Vasudevan, Vicki Weafer, and, especially, Philip Kitcher for constructive comments on various versions of this article. In developing the ideas in this article, I benefited from a visiting position at the Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology and Pharmacology of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Milan in the summer of 2010: many thanks to Elena Cattaneo and her research team for their support. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the 2010 University of Pennsylvania Philosophy of Biology Workshop and at the 7th European Conference for Analytic Philosophy in Milan, Italy. The audiences at both venues provided helpful feedback. I am also thankful to two anonymous reviewers from Philosophy of Science for remarkably detailed commentaries and insightful suggestions and to Giulia Cugnasca for the illustration.

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