Skip to main content
Log in

On the Different Ways of “Doing Theory” in Biology

  • Thematic Issue Article: The Meaning of “Theory” in Biology
  • Published:
Biological Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

“Theoretical biology” is a surprisingly heterogeneous field, partly because it encompasses “doing theory” across disciplines as diverse as molecular biology, systematics, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Moreover, it is done in a stunning variety of different ways, using anything from formal analytical models to computer simulations, from graphic representations to verbal arguments. In this essay I survey a number of aspects of what it means to do theoretical biology, and how they compare with the allegedly much more restricted sense of theory in the physical sciences. I also tackle a recent trend toward the presentation of all-encompassing theories in the biological sciences, from general theories of ecology to a recent attempt to provide a conceptual framework for the entire set of biological disciplines. Finally, I discuss the roles played by philosophers of science in criticizing and shaping biological theorizing.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. There are, of course, dissenting views. Consider for instance what Carl Woese—a microbiologist, not a professional historian—has had to say about the role of physics in shaping twentieth century biology: “It is instructive to catalog some of the changes that fundamental reductionism wrought in our perception and practice of biology. Chief among these is that the biologist’s sense of what is important and what is fundamental was retooled to conform to the classical physicist’s perception thereof. From this followed changes in the biologist’s concept of organism, in his or her view of what constitutes an explanation, in what constitutes a “comprehensive” understanding of biology, in what biology’s relationship to the other sciences is, in what biology can tell us about the nature of reality, in what biology’s role in the society is, and in what biology’s future course will be. These in turn produced changes in how biological knowledge is organized—the structure of academic curricula, the nature and purview of biological disciplines and text books, the priorities of biological funding agencies—and an overall change in the perception of biology by the society itself. All has by now been set in stone” (Woese 2004, p. 174).

  2. According to West et al. (1999) the 3/4 scaling is a result of basic physical constraints imposed on organismal metabolism, which is why it is universal, transcending the particular evolutionary history of those organisms.

  3. I do not mean to imply that there are no such things as emergent properties, only that the concept is far from being clear (O'Connor 2006). And of course there are several physical but non-biological systems that also display emergent properties under at least some definitions of the term.

References

  • Baker A (2008) Experimental mathematics. Erkenntnis 68:331–344

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beatty J (1995) The evolutionary contingency thesis. In: Lennox JG, Wolters G (eds) Concepts, theories and rationality in the biological sciences. University of Konstanz Press, Konstanz; University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, pp 45-81

  • Burchfield JD (1974) Darwin and the dilemma of geological time. Isis 65:300–321

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carroll JW (2011) Laws of nature. In: Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/laws-of-nature/. Accessed 22 June 2012

  • Cartwright N (1983) How the laws of physics lie. Clarendon Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chang H (2004) Complementary science: history and philosophy of science as a continuation of science by other means. In: Inventing temperature: measuring scientific progress. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 235-250

  • Charlesworth B (1990) Optimization models, quantitative genetics, and mutation. Evolution 44:520–538

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cowperthwaite MC, Meyer LA (2007) How mutational networks shape evolution: lessons from RNA models. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 38:203–230

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crombach A, Hogeweg P (2008) Evolution of evolvability in gene regulatory networks. PLoS Comput Biol 4:1–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crow JF (2008) Mid-century controversies in population genetics. Genetics 42:1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins R (1976) The selfish gene. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1995) Darwin’s dangerous idea. Simon and Schuster, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Dobzhansky T (1964) Biology, molecular and organismic. Am Zool 4:443–452

    Google Scholar 

  • Dupré J (1983) The disunity of science. Mind 92:321–346

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eldredge N, Gould SJ (1977) Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology 3:115–151

    Google Scholar 

  • Eldredge N, Thompson JN, Brakefield PM, Gavrilets S, Jablonski D, Jackson JBC, Lenski RE, Lieberman BS, McPeek MA, Miller W III (2005) The dynamics of evolutionary stasis. Paleobiology 31:133–145

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elgin M (2003) Biology and a priori laws. Philos Sci 70:1380–1389

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elgin M (2006) There may be strict empirical laws in biology, after all. Biol Philos 21:119–134

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Estes S, Arnold SJ (2007) Resolving the paradox of stasis: models with stabilizing selection explain evolutionary divergence on all timescales. Am Nat 169:227–244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falconer DS, Mackay T (1996) Introduction to quantitative genetics, 4th edn. Benjamin Cummings, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher RA (1930/1999) The genetical theory of natural selection: a complete variorum edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford

  • Gavrilets S (1997) Evolution and speciation on holey adaptive landscapes. Trends Ecol Evol 12:307–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gavrilets S (1999) A dynamical theory of speciation on holey adaptive landscapes. Am Nat 154:1–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giere RN (1999) Science without laws. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould SJ (2007) Contingency. In: Crowther PR, Briggs DEG (eds) Palaeobiology II. Blackwell, Malden, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardy G (1908) Mendelian proportions in a mixed population. Science 28:49–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hartl DL, Clark AG (2007) Principles of population genetics. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Hey J (1999) The neutralist, the fly and the selectionist. Trends Ecol Evol 14:35–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Honjo K, Furukubo-Tokunaga K (2009) Distinctive neuronal networks and biochemical pathways for appetitive and aversive memory in Drosophila larvae. J Neurosci 29:852–862

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hubbell SP (2001) The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan J (2000) The limits and lies of human genetic research: dangers for social policy. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan J (2009) The paradox of stasis and the nature of explanations in evolutionary biology. Philos Sci 76:797–808

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan J, Winther RG (2012) Prisoners of abstraction? The theory and measure of genetic variation, and the very concept of “race.” Biol Theory 7. doi:10.1007/s13752-012-0048-0

  • Kimura M (1985) The neutral theory of molecular evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleffmann T, Russenberger D, von Zychlinski A, Christopher W, Sjolander K, Gruissem W, Baginsk S (2004) The Arabidopsis thaliana chloroplast proteome reveals pathway abundance and novel protein function. Curr Biol 14:354–362

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koertge L (ed) (2000) A house built on sand: exposing postmodernist myths about science. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Lande R, Arnold SJ (1983) The measurement of selection on correlated characters. Evolution 37:1210–1226

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lange M (2005) Ecological laws: what would they be and why would they matter? Oikos 110:394–403

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lockwood DR (2008) When logic fails ecology. Quart Rev Biol 83:57–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lynch M (2007) The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:8597–8604

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Magnus PD (2011) Drakes, seadevils, and similarity fetishism. Biol Philos 26:857–870

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maynard-Smith J (1982) Evolution and the theory of games. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mayr E, Provine W (eds) (1998) The evolutionary synthesis: perspectives on the unification of biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Mikkelson GM (2003) Ecological kinds and ecological laws. Philos Sci 70:1390–1400

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman SA, Müller GB (2000) Epigenetic mechanisms of character origination. J Exp Biol (Mol Devol Evol) 288:304–317

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nonacs P, Dill LM (1993) Is satisficing an alternative to optimal foraging theory? Oikos 67:371–375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Connor T (2006) Emergent properties. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/. Accessed 22 June 2012

  • Pigliucci M (2006) Genetic variance covariance matrices: a critique of the evolutionary quantitative genetics research program. Biol Philos 21:1–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M (2008a) The proper role of population genetics in modern evolutionary theory. Biol Theory 3:316–324

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M (2008b) Is evolvability evolvable? Nature Rev Genet 9:75–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M (2008c) The borderlands between science and philosophy an introduction. Quart Rev Biol 83:7–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M, Kaplan J (2006) Making sense of evolution: the conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pigliucci M, Müller GB (eds) (2010) Evolution: the extended synthesis. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheiner SM (2010) Toward a conceptual framework for biology. Quart Rev Biol 85:293–318

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheiner SM, Willig MR (2008) A general theory of ecology. Theor Ecol 1:21–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson GG (1944) Tempo and mode in evolution. Columbia University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Smolin L (2007) The trouble with physics: the rise of string theory, the fall of a science, and what comes next. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Sober E (1993) The nature of selection: evolutionary theory in philosophical focus. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Stearns SC, Schmid-Hempel P (1987) Evolutionary insights should not be wasted. Oikos 49:118–125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Uebel T (2011) Vienna circle. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/vienna-circle/. Accessed 22 June 2012

  • Van Fraassen BC (1989) Laws and symmetry. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weinberg W (1908) Über den Nachweis der Vererbung beim Menschen. Jahresh Ver vaterl Natkd Württ 64:368–382

    Google Scholar 

  • West GB, Brown JH, Enquist BJ (1999) The fourth dimension of life: fractal geometry and allometric scaling of organisms. Science 284:1677–1679

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt WC (1997) Aggregativity: reductive heuristics for finding emergence. Philos Sci 64:S372–S384

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woese CR (2004) A new biology for a new century. Microbiol Mol Biol R 68:173–186

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Massimo Pigliucci.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pigliucci, M. On the Different Ways of “Doing Theory” in Biology. Biol Theory 7, 287–297 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0047-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0047-1

Keywords

Navigation