Systems biology and the mechanistic framework.
Philosophical analyses of biology have recently been dominated by a mechanistic perspective. Examples taken from different domains in the life sciences, from molecular biology to physiology, seem to support mechanistic accounts. In this paper, I examine the emerging field of systems biology and argue that some of its approaches do not fit the mechanistic framework. I present an example of what can be called design explanation and show how it differs from classical mechanistic explanations. First, it is a non-causal kind of explanation that does not show how a function is produced by a mechanism but illustrates how a system's function determines its structure. Second, it points to general design principles that do not depend much on evolutionary contingency. Thus, systems biology has theoretical ambitions, but I argue that its modeling strategy can help it to avoid classical problems encountered by theoretical efforts in biology in the past, by giving it a strong empirical grounding.
Braillard
Pierre-Alain
PA
University of Kyoto, Graduate School of Letters, Department of Philosophy, Kyoto, Japan.
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002633:Chemotaxis; D004738:Engineering; D005399:Fishes / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010684:Philosophy; D012106:Research; D012119:Respiration; D049490:Systems Biology