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2006
Introduction: Traditionally, studies in the philosophy of biology have been strongly centered on evolutionary biology and systematics. To be sure, during the last four decades the field of molecular biology has been subject to substantial philosophical discussion as well. Still, discussions of...
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[Review of the book Embryology, Epigenesis, and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously, by Jobert]
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Introduction: In the last few decades, the fields of genetics and molecular biology have been of substantial importance for the philosophy of biology. The same does not quite hold for developmental biology, despite some philosophical discussions of development. Jason Robert’s recent book...
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2005
Introduction: Neo-Darwinism coined a particular picture of evolution: the explanation of adaptation and speciation as the central goals of evolutionary theory, and natural selection as the only directing cause in evolution. Recently, evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) became an...
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Review: The Mind's Arrows: Bayes Nets and Graphical Causal Models in Psychology by Clark Glymour
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Introduction: Amongst people working in statistics, computer science, and philosophy, Bayes nets are a well- known tool to model causal structures. Besides other things this approach provides ways for obtaining causal relationships out of statistical data. The idea is that existing (conditional)...
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2003
Introduction: Even though Psillos’s latest book is called Causation and Explanation, it is actually a unified discussion of causation, laws, and explanation. Despite the fact that these three topics are interconnected, it is rare to have detailed treatment of all of them. Psillos does not really...
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2002
The title \"What Functions Explain\" reflects the way in which Peter McLaughlin addresses the topic of functional explanation. The aim of his discussion is not to assess which philosophical account of functional explanation is the right one or how the concept of functional explanation should best...
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2002
Introduction: Systematics has always been an important topic for philosophy of biology. Nonetheless, philosophical books dealing with this subject alone are very rare. Marc Ereshefsky, known for his contributions in the philosophy of taxonomy, now gives an encompassing treatment of systematics,...
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2002
Introduction: Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould are both dedicated Darwinians. Despite this, for the last few decades these two scientists have argued fiercely about how evolutionary history and mechanisms are to be viewed. The debate has been fought out before a general, rather than...