NDLI: Revisiting generality in biology: systems biology and the quest for design principles

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Green, Sara
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Due to the variation, contingency and complexity of living systems, biology is often taken to be a science without fundamental theories, laws or general principles. I revisit this question in light of the quest for design principles in systems biology and show that different views can be reconciled if we distinguish between different types of generality. The philosophical literature has primarily focused on (the lack of) generality of specific models or explanations, or on the heuristic role of abstraction. This paper takes a different approach in emphasizing a theory-constituting role of general principles. Design principles signify general dependency-relations between structures and functions, given a set of formally defined constraints. I contend that design principles increase our understanding of living systems by relating specific models to general types. The categorization of types is based on a delineation of the scope of biological possibilities, which serves to identify and define the generic features of classes of systems. To characterize the basis for general principles through generic abstraction and reasoning about possibility spaces, I coin the term constraint-based generality. I show that constraint-based generality is distinct from other types of generality in biology, and argue that general principles play a unifying role that does not entail theory reduction.
Starting Page	629
Ending Page	652
Page Count	24
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01693867
Journal	Biology & Philosophy
Volume Number	30
Issue Number	5
e-ISSN	15728404
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2015-07-25
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Design principles Systems biology Unification Biological laws Constraints Generic abstraction Philosophy of Biology Evolutionary Biology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Agricultural and Biological Sciences History and Philosophy of Science

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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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