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  3. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology

This major series publishes the very best work in the philosophy of biology. Interdisciplinary in character, the series extends across the broadest range of topics: evolutionary theory, population genetics, molecular biology, ecology, human biology, systematics, and more. A special welcome is given to contributions treating significant advances in biological theory and practice, such as those that emerge from the Human Genome Project. At the same time, due emphasis is given to the historical context of the subject, and there is an important place for projects that support philosophical claims with historical case studies.

  • General Editors: Michael Ruse, Florida State University
  • Advisory Boards: Michael Donoghue, Yale University, Connecticut, Jean Gayon, Université de Paris I, Jonathan Hodge, University of Leeds, Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University, Jesús Mosterín, Instituto de Filosofía, Madrid, Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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34 results in Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology

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Making Sense of Heritability
  • Neven Sesardic
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 October 2005
  • In this book, Neven Sesardic defends the view that it is both possible and useful to measure the separate contributions of heredity and environment to the explanation of human psychological differences. He critically examines the view - very widely accepted by scientists, social scientists and philosophers of science - that heritability estimates have no causal implications and are devoid of any interest. In a series of clearly written chapters he introduces the reader to the problems and subjects the arguments to close philosophical scrutiny. His conclusion is that anti-heritability arguments are based on conceptual confusions and misunderstandings of behavioural genetics. His book is a fresh and compelling intervention in a very contentious debate.

The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency
  • William Andrew Rottschaefer
  • Published online:
    19 September 2009
    Print publication:
    28 November 1997
  • This important book brings findings and theories in biology and psychology to bear on the fundamental question in ethics of what it means to behave morally. It explains how we acquire and put to work our capacities to act morally and how these capacities are reliable means to achieving true moral beliefs, proper moral motivations, and successful moral actions. By presenting a complete model of moral agency based on contemporary evolutionary theory, developmental biology and psychology, and social cognitive theory, the book offers a unique perspective. It will be read with profit by a broad swathe of philosophers, as well as psychologists and biologists.

Reasoning in Biological Discoveries
  • Essays on Mechanisms, Interfield Relations, and Anomaly Resolution
  • Lindley Darden
  • Published online:
    31 August 2009
    Print publication:
    26 June 2006
  • Reasoning in Biological Discoveries brings together a series of essays, which focus on one of the most heavily debated topics of scientific discovery. Collected together and richly illustrated, Darden's essays represent a groundbreaking foray into one of the major problems facing scientists and philosophers of science. Divided into three sections, the essays focus on broad themes, notably historical and philosophical issues at play in discussions of biological mechanism; and the problem of developing and refining reasoning strategies, including interfield relations and anomaly resolution. Darden summarizes the philosophy of discovery and elaborates on the role that mechanisms play in biological discovery. Throughout the book, she uses historical case studies to extract advisory reasoning strategies for discovery. Examples in genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology reveal the process of discovery in action.

What Functions Explain
  • Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems
  • Peter McLaughlin
  • Published online:
    12 August 2009
    Print publication:
    18 December 2000
  • This 2001 book offers an examination of functional explanation as it is used in biology and the social sciences, and focuses on the kinds of philosophical presuppositions that such explanations carry with them. It tackles such questions as: why are some things explained functionally while others are not? What do the functional explanations tell us about how these objects are conceptualized? What do we commit ourselves to when we give and take functional explanations in the life sciences and the social sciences? McLaughlin gives a critical review of the debate on functional explanation in the philosophy of science. He discusses the history of the philosophical question of teleology, and provides a comprehensive review of the post-war literature on functional explanation. What Functions Explain provides a sophisticated and detailed Aristotelian analysis of our concept of natural functions, and offers a positive contribution to the ongoing debate on the topic.

Genetic Analysis
  • A History of Genetic Thinking
  • Raphael Falk
  • Published online:
    07 August 2009
    Print publication:
    14 May 2009
  • There is a paradox lying at the heart of the study of heredity. To understand the ways in which features are passed down from one generation to the next, we have to dig deeper and deeper into the ultimate nature of things - from organisms, to genes, to molecules. And yet as we do this, increasingly we find we are out of focus with our subjects. What has any of this to do with the living, breathing organisms with which we started? Organisms are living. Molecules are not. How do we relate one to the other? In Genetic Analysis, one of the most important empirical scientists in the field in the twentieth century attempts, through a study of history and drawing on his own vast experience as a practitioner, to face this paradox head-on. His book offers a deep and innovative understanding of our ways of thinking about heredity.

The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy
  • Edited by Justin E. H. Smith
  • Published online:
    06 August 2009
    Print publication:
    22 May 2006
  • In this volume Smith examines the early modern science of generation, which included the study of animal conception, heredity, and fetal development. Analyzing how it influenced the contemporary treatment of traditional philosophical questions, it also demonstrates how philosophical pre-suppositions about mechanism, substance, and cause informed the interpretations offered by those conducting empirical research on animal reproduction. Composed of essays written by an international team of leading scholars, the book offers a fresh perspective on some of the basic problems in early modern philosophy. It also considers how these basic problems manifested themselves within an area of scientific inquiry that had not previously received much consideration by historians of philosophy.

Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes
  • William F. Harms
  • Published online:
    28 July 2009
    Print publication:
    26 April 2004
  • This book is intended to help transform epistemology - the traditional study of knowledge - into a rigorous discipline by removing conceptual roadblocks and developing formal tools required for a fully naturalized epistemology. The evolutionary approach which Harms favours begins with the common observation that if our senses and reasoning were not reliable, then natural selection would have eliminated them long ago. The challenge for some time has been how to transform these informal musings about evolutionary epistemology into a rigorous theoretical discipline capable of complementing current scientific studies of the evolution of cognition with a philosophically defensible account of meaning and justification.

Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology
  • Edited by Giovanni Boniolo, Gabriele De Anna
  • Published online:
    23 July 2009
    Print publication:
    03 July 2006
  • How can the discoveries made in the biological sciences play a role in a discussion on the foundation of ethics? This book responds to this question by examining how evolutionism can explain and justify the existence of ethical normativity and the emergence of particular moral systems. Written by a team of philosophers and scientists, the essays collected in this volume deal with the limits of evolutionary explanations, the justifications of ethics, and methodological issues concerning evolutionary accounts of ethics, among other topics. They offer deep insights into the origin and purpose of human moral capacities and of moral systems.

Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy
  • An Introduction
  • Sahotra Sarkar
  • Published online:
    17 July 2009
    Print publication:
    19 September 2005
  • This book explores the epistemological and ethical issues at the foundations of environmental philosophy, emphasising the conservation of biodiversity. Sahota Sarkar criticises attempts to attribute intrinsic value to nature and defends an anthropocentric position on biodiversity conservation based on an untraditional concept of transformative value. Unlike other studies in the field of environmental philosophy, this book is as much concerned with epistemological issues as with environmental ethics. It covers a broad range of topics, including problems of explanation and prediction in traditional ecology and how individual-based models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is transforming ecology. Introducing a brief history of conservation biology, Sarkar analyses the consensus framework for conservation planning through adaptive management. He concludes with a discussion of directions for theoretical research in conservation biology and environmental philosophy.

The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy
  • A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy
  • Marc Ereshefsky
  • Published online:
    16 July 2009
    Print publication:
    27 November 2000
  • The question of whether biologists should continue to use the Linnaean hierarchy has been a hotly debated issue. Invented before the introduction of evolutionary theory, Linnaeus's system of classifying organisms is based on outdated theoretical assumptions, and is thought to be unable to provide accurate biological classifications. Marc Ereshefsky argues that biologists should abandon the Linnaean system and adopt an alternative that is more in line with evolutionary theory. He traces the evolution of the Linnaean hierarchy from its introduction to the present. He illustrates how the continued use of this system hampers our ability to classify the organic world, and then goes on to make specific recommendations for a post-Linnaean method of classification. Accessible to a wide range of readers by providing introductory chapters to the philosophy of classification and the taxonomy of biology, the book will interest both scholars and students of biology and the philosophy of science.

Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution
  • Taking Development Seriously
  • Jason Scott Robert
  • Published online:
    10 July 2009
    Print publication:
    04 March 2004
  • Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution (evo-devo), an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology.

Philosophy of Experimental Biology
  • Marcel Weber
  • Published online:
    08 July 2009
    Print publication:
    30 August 2004
  • Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists.

Form and Function in Developmental Evolution
  • Edited by Manfred D. Laubichler, Jane Maienschein
  • Published online:
    28 June 2009
    Print publication:
    19 March 2009
  • This book represents an effort to understand very old questions about biological form, function, and the relationships between them. The essays collected here reflect the diversity of approaches in evolutionary developmental biology (Evo Devo), including not only studies by prominent scientists whose research focuses on topics concerned with evolution and development, but also historically and conceptually oriented studies that place the scientific work within a larger framework and ask how it can be pushed further. Topics under discussion range from the use of theoretical and empirical biomechanics to understand the evolution of plant form, to detailed studies of the evolution of development and the role of developmental constraints on phenotypic variation. The result is a rich and interdisciplinary volume that will begin a wider conversation about the shape of Evo Devo as it matures as a field.

Philosophy and Biodiversity
  • Edited by Markku Oksanen, Juhani Pietarinen
  • Published online:
    26 June 2009
    Print publication:
    06 September 2004
  • This important collection focuses on the nature and importance of biodiversity. The concept is clarified and its intrinsic and instrumental value are discussed. Even though the term biodiversity was invented in the 1980s to promote the cause of species conservation, discussions on biological diversity go back to Plato. There are many controversies surrounding biodiversity and a few of them are examined here: What is worthy of protection or restoration and what is the acceptable level of costs? Is it permissible to kill sentient animals to promote native populations? Can species be reintroduced if they have disappeared a long time ago? How should the responsibilities for biodiversity be shared? This book will be of interest to philosophers of science and biologists, but also to anyone interested in conservation and the environment.

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