Abstract
Several influential philosophers of biology have raised the claim that the generalizations of biology are historical and contingent (Beatty J (1995) The evolutionary contingency thesis. In: E. Sober (Ed.) (2006) Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology (pp. 217–247). Cambridge: MIT Press; Schaffner, K. (1993). Discovery and explanation in biology and medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Rosenberg (British Journal for Philosophy of Science, 52(4): 735–760, 2001); Craver, C. (2007). Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience. Oxford: Clarendon; Mitchell, S. D. (2009). Unsimple truths: Science, complexity and policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). This claim divides into the following subclaims, each of which I will contest: firstly, biological generalizations are restricted to a particular space-time region. I argue that biological generalizations are universal with respect to space and time. Secondly, biological generalizations are restricted to specific kinds of entities, i.e., these generalizations do not quantify over an unrestricted domain. I will challenge this second claim by providing an interpretation of biological generalizations that do quantify over an unrestricted domain of objects. Thirdly, biological generalizations are contingent in the sense that their truth depends on special (physically contingent) initial and background conditions. I will argue that the contingent character of biological generalizations does neither diminish their explanatory power nor is it the case that this sort of contingency is exclusively characteristic of biological generalizations.
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Notes
- 1.
A terminological clarification: my focus is on law statements rather than on laws themselves. My aim is not to argue for any particular metaphysical claim (such as a regularity view and a dispositionalist account).
- 2.
- 3.
Many of the problems I will discuss in this chapter would be even trickier if one disagreed with the majority view in philosophy of biology and in the debate on ceteris paribus laws at this point. Some philosophers (e.g., Cartwright 1983, 1989; Mumford 2004) believe that even fundamental physics deals (at least in part) with nonuniversal laws. However, this would rather encourage the debate in philosophy of biology: if this were the case, the issue of nonuniversal laws might turn out to be even more pressing.
- 4.
This is not to deny that the unique features of laws in physics are a topic of its own philosophical interest. Let me mention two questions of the greatest philosophical interest that are both related to the symmetry principles that constraint the law statements of physics: (a) how can we explain the existence of time-directed processes in a physical world that is governed by time-reversal invariant fundamental dynamical laws (cf. Albert 2000; Loewer 2008)? (b) Are symmetry principles laws? Are they empirical or a priori statements? Do they govern first-order laws (cf. Loewer 2009)?
- 5.
Lange mistakenly writes “exponentially.”
- 6.
Cf. Earman et al. (2002, 297f), Woodward (2002, p. 303), and Roberts (2004). As noted above, Cartwright (1983, 1989) and Mumford (2004) dispute the claim that paradigmatic laws of physics conform to the received philosophical picture (e.g., being universal). However, they do not deny that laws in the special sciences are nonuniversal, have exceptions, etc.
- 7.
- 8.
A variable X (in the terminology of statistics and causal modeling) is a function X:D ran(X), with a domain D of possible outcomes, and the range ran(X) of possible values of X. For quantitative variables X, ran(X) is usually taken to be the set of real numbers (cf. Pearl 2000; Eagle 2010, Chap. 0.9). For example, temperature is represented by a variable T that has several possible values such as T = 30.65°. However, in the debate on causation, philosophers often use qualitative, binary variables with ran(X) = {0; 1} – whether a binary variable takes one of its values is taken to represent whether or not a certain type of event occurs (cf. Hitchcock 2001). On notation: capital letters, such as X, Y, …, denote variables; lowercase letters, such as x, y, …, denote values of variables; the proposition that X has a certain value x is expressed by a statement of the form X = x, i.e., X = x is a statement about an event-type (cf. Woodward 2003).
- 9.
Named after Marc Lange (cf. Lange 1993, p. 235).
- 10.
Not everyone agrees: one option to avoid Lange’s dilemma is to reject the assumption giving rise to Lange’s dilemma. That is, to reject the claim that lawish statements are true and empirical statements. Following this line of reasoning, some philosophers have argued that biological generalizations lack empirical content and should be interpreted as a priori truths (cf. Sober 1997; Elgin 2003). This might be a fall-back option, but it cannot be the first choice, in my view, because most of the examples above clearly appear to be empirical statements.
- 11.
As Raerinne (2011b) points out, even if special initial and background conditions are necessary for a generalization to hold, the fact that these conditions obtain is not sufficient for the generalization to be true. If it is the case that not all initial and background conditions are considered (and this seems to be Beatty’s claim), then disturbing factors might still occur.
- 12.
Cf. Cartwright (1983, Essay 6) for a similar notion of a phenomenological law.
- 13.
One might want to dispute the claim that even the fundamental laws do not apply to everything (contra Schurz 2002; Hüttemann 2007). One objects that the fundamental laws, for instance, do not apply to angels and numbers. However, I think that, even if this were the case, we could preserve the universality2 for the fundamental laws by exactly the same strategy which I just used for preserving universality2 for lawish statements in the special sciences. Further, my arguments do not have to rely on the characterization of fundamental physical laws which Schurz and Hüttemann provide.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
This controversy is concerned with Lange’s dilemma which I will not address in this chapter.
- 17.
One of the problems of Schurz’s approach arises as soon as one starts to apply his theory of normic laws to nonbiological (e.g., economic) examples. His argument is based on a generalized theory of evolution which does not only apply to biological evolution but also to cultural evolution. The common domain of the life sciences (which, according to Schurz, include biology, psychology, as well as the social sciences and the humanities) are evolutionary systems or their products. One might worry, though, whether such a generalized theory of evolution is sufficiently confirmed.
- 18.
The main motivations to adopt a dispositionalist theory consist in (a) having a strategy to avoid Lange’s dilemma and (b) explaining why idealized laws can be applied in nonideal situations (cf. Reutlinger et al. 2011, Sect. 7).
- 19.
This distinction might also be regarded as a defense of Schurz’s normic approach to lawish generalizations, because Schurz’s main example of a normic law is “normally, birds can fly.” This is an unfortunate choice, I think, since the immediate response to this example is to deny that this statement plays a lawish role. Rather Schurz’s example ought to be classified as an architecture-generalization. Schurz’s account is strong when applied to dynamical generalizations.
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Reutlinger, A. (2014). The Generalizations of Biology: Historical and Contingent?. In: Kaiser, M.I., Scholz, O.R., Plenge, D., Hüttemann, A. (eds) Explanation in the Special Sciences. Synthese Library, vol 367. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7563-3_6
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