Abstract
Marjorie Grene has played an extraordinary role in the philosophy of biology. As an academic outsider, working her way back into philosophy after fifteen years’ absence from the profession, she devoted a considerable amount of energy to what was then an unpopular non-discipline. At the time, most of the philosophers who wrote on biological topics were driven to take absurd postures because they accepted a general account of science deriving from the philosophy of physics. Against this orthodoxy, Grene’s was the voice of a dissenter.1 Further compounding the difficulty of gaining acceptance for her work was the fact that many of her early papers in philosophy of biology accorded unorthodox evolutionary theories greater importance than mainstream biologists and philosophers were, at the time at least, prepared to grant to them,2 as well as the fact that she worked within a (very roughly) Aristotelian tradition unfamiliar to the philosophers and biologists interested in what we now know as philosophy of biology.3 Given all of these handicaps, it is marvelous that her voice has been heard at all.
A preliminary version of this paper was read at the 20th Annual Philosophy Colloquium of the University of Cincinnati in 1982. I have benefitted greatly from the helpful discussion there as well as from the incisive criticisms(far too many of which I have ignored) of the following friends: M. Grene, E. F. Keller, L. Laudan, R. Laudan, E. Lloyd, J. Pitt, R. Richardson, and B. Wallace. The research for this paper was conducted in part with the support from a National Science Foundation Scholar’s Award (Grant Number SES-8309214). I am very grateful for this support. The paper is, of course, only a small token of my thanks to Marjorie Grene for her role in bringing me into philosophy of biology, for her work, and for the inspiration that she has been to me and to so many others.
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Burian, R.M. (1986). The “Internal Politics” of Biology and the Justification of Biological Theories. In: Donagan, A., Perovich, A.N., Wedin, M.V. (eds) Human Nature and Natural Knowledge. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 89. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5349-9_2
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