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Material Models in Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

James R. Griesemer
James R. Griesemer*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Extract

Propositions are no more constitutive of science than they are of any activity: a body of knowledge is not all there is to the life of science. Thus I take the premise underlying the topic of this symposium to be uncontroversial, there is a “non-propositional” side of science and of biology in particular. From time to time, however, philosophers ask whether the “non-propositional” side of science is theoretically superfluous, or as Duhem put it, logically dispensable. What they mean to ask is whether science can be fully analyzed in propositional terms; must philosophy of science, in other words, consider the non-propositional side in order to adequately account for science?

Negative answers to the question often rest on the tacit view that the most (or only) important thing about science is scientific theories.

Type
Part III. Biology: The Non-Propositional Side
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 79 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1991

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