Abstract
I want to discuss some problems about explanation in biology. The leading question about biological explanation has been the question whether, and if so how, it differs from explanation in other fields. Many claims and counterclaims are made by biologists as well as philosophers in this connection. I want to examine in particular the claim of Francisco Ayala that biology is irreducible to physics and chemistry because, and only because, of the teleological structure of evolutionary theory.1 But to reflect on Ayala’s claim I must have some notion of what makes a theory in general explanatory and also some notion of what makes an explanation teleological. While I can’t claim to have a pat answer on either of these puzzles (especially the former!), let me make some preparatory remarks about both before looking at the alleged teleology of evolutionary theory in relation to its explanatory force.
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Notes
Francisco Ayala, ‘Biology as an Autonomous Science’, Amer. Sci. 56 (1968) 207–221.
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958; The Tacit Dimension, Doubleday, New York, p. 196.
Marjorie Grene, The Knower and the Known, Univ. of Calif. Press, 1974, Ch. 9; cf. Chapter IX of this volume.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Genetics of the Evolutionary Process, Columbia University Press, New York, 1970, pp. 261–66. Ernst Mayr, Populations, Species and Evolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1970, pp. 126–127.
Cf. G. L. Stebbins and R. C. Lewontin, ‘Comparative Evolution at the Levels of Molecules, Organisms and Populations’, Proceedings 6th Berkeley Symposium on Mathematics, Statistics and Probability 5 (1971), 23–42.
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© 1974 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Grene, M. (1974). Explanation and Evolution. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) A Portrait of Twenty-five Years. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5345-1_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5345-1_12
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