Comparing Part-Whole Reductive Explanations in Biology and Physics¹

Abstract

Many biologists and philosophers have worried that importing models of reasoning from the physical sciences obscures our understanding of reasoning in the life sciences. In this paper we discuss one example that partially validates this concern: part-whole reductive explanations. Biology and physics tend to incorporate different models of temporality in part-whole reductive explanations. This results from differential emphases on compositional and causal facets of reductive explanations, which have not been distinguished reliably in prior philosophical analyses. Keeping these two facets distinct facilitates the identification of two further aspects of reductive explanation: intrinsicality and fundamentality. Our account provides resources for discriminating between different types of reductive explanation and suggests a new approach to comprehending similarities and differences in the explanatory reasoning found in biology and physics.

¹ Both authors contributed equally to this paper. We are grateful for the comments and suggestions we have received on this material from many colleagues, including Ingo Brigandt, Tom Doyle, Susan Hawthorne, Marie Kaiser, Peter McLaughlin, Ken Schaffner, Ken Waters, and Marcel Weber. Useful feedback also came from participants at the 2009 workshop ‘Explanation, Confirmation, and Prediction in Biology and Medicine,’ held in Konstanz, Germany and sponsored by the European Science Foundation (Research Networking Programme). We want to express our appreciation for financial support from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to pursue this collaboration, which grew out of our mutual participation in the Second German-American Frontiers of Humanities Symposium, Hamburg, Germany, October 2005, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the American Philosophical Society.