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Introduction

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Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL))

Abstract

In Chapter 1 I briefly introduce the philosophical project that I pursue in this book. My central goal is to provide an understanding of an important element of contemporary biological research practice, namely of reductive explanation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I assume that there are four types of reduction that one should keep apart: ontological reduction and three kinds of epistemic reduction, namely theory, methodological, and explanatory reduction (this difference is spelled out in Chap. 3).

  2. 2.

    Note that this understanding of the term ‘ontic’ deviates from how Craver and Strevens understand it. I do not claim, as they do, that explanations are entities in the world, rather than representations of entities in the world (more on this in Chap. 5, Sect. 2 and Chap. 6, Sect. 6).

References

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Kaiser, M.I. (2015). Introduction. In: Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25310-7_1

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