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Two Outbreaks of Lawlessness in Recent Philosophy of Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Elliott Sober
Elliott Sober*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
*
†Department of Philosophy, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
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Abstract

John Beatty (1995) and Alexander Rosenberg (1994) have argued against the claim that there are laws in biology. Beatty's main reason is that evolution is a process full of contingency, but he also takes the existence of relative significance controversies in biology and the popularity of pluralistic approaches to a variety of evolutionary questions to be evidence for biology's lawlessness. Rosenberg's main argument appeals to the idea that biological properties supervene on large numbers of physical properties, but he also develops case studies of biological controversies to defend his thesis that biology is best understood as an instrumental discipline. The present paper assesses their arguments.

Type
Symposium: Are There Laws of Biology?
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S458 - S467
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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Footnotes

‡

My thanks to Robin Andreasen, André Ariew, John Beatty, Robert Brandon, Wyman Brantley, Martin Carrier, Terry Horgan, Harold Kincaid, Alexander Rosenberg, Chris Stephens, and Ann Wolfe for useful discussion.

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