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Ontological Butchery: Organism Concepts and Biological Generalizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jack A. Wilson
Jack A. Wilson*
Affiliation:
Washington and Lee University
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 24405; e-mail: jwilson@wlu.edu.
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Abstract

Biology lacks a central organism concept that unambiguously marks the distinction between organism and non-organism because the most important questions about organisms do not depend on this concept. I argue that the two main ways to discover useful biological generalizations about multicellular organization—the study of homology within multicellular lineages and of convergent evolution across lineages in which multicellularity has been independently established—do not require what would have to be a stipulative sharpening of an organism concept.

Type
Philosophy of Biology, Psychology, and Neuroscience
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S301 - S311
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank David Hull and Michelle Little for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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