196 Pages
16 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
196 Pages
16 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
196 Pages
16 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book argues for the explanatory autonomy of the biological sciences. It does so by showing that scientific explanations in the biological sciences cannot be reduced to explanations in the fundamental sciences such as physics and chemistry and by demonstrating that biological explanations are advanced by models rather than laws of nature.
To maintain the explanatory autonomy of the... Read more
1. Introduction
2. Multiple Realization and Reductionism
3. Explanation in Biology: Context Dependence, Extra Information, and Pragmatics
4. Are Laws the Only Things That Matter?
5. Models That Matter: The Similarity View
6. A Holistic View of the Model-World Relationship
7. How Biological Models are Explanatory
8. Conclusion
Biography
Wei Fang is Associate Professor in the Research Centre for Philosophy of Science and Technology, Shanxi University, China. His research topics include scientific explanation, models and modeling, causal modeling, mechanisms, among others, and has published a number of papers in, among others, Philosophy of Science, Biology & Philosophy, and Synthese.
