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2005

Brigandt, Ingo

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...

2005

Brigandt, Ingo

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...

2003

Brigandt, Ingo

Marc Ereshefsky argues that pluralism about species suggests that the species concept is not theoretically useful. It is to be abandoned in favor of several concrete species concepts that denote real categories. While accepting species pluralism, the present paper rejects eliminativism about the...

2003

Brigandt, Ingo

The present paper analyzes the use and understanding of the homology concept across different biological disciplines. It is argued that in its history, the homology concept underwent a sort of adaptive radiation. Once it migrated from comparative anatomy into new biological fields, the homology...

2003

Brigandt, Ingo

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)...

2003

Brigandt, Ingo

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...

2002

Brigandt, Ingo

Homology is a natural kind term and a precise account of what homologyis has to come out of theories about the role of homologues in evolution anddevelopment. Definitions of homology are discussed with respect to the questionas to whether they are able to give a non-circular account of...

2002

Brigandt, Ingo

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...

2002

Brigandt, Ingo

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,...

2002

Brigandt, Ingo

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...