title: Chance between holism and reductionism: tensions in the conceptualisation of Life.
abstract: In debates between holism and reductionism in biology, from the early twentieth century to more recent re-enactments involving genetic reductionism, developmental systems theory or systems biology, the role of chance - the presence of theories invoking chance as a strong explanatory principle - is hardly ever acknowledged. Conversely, Darwinian models of chance and selection (Dennett, 1995; Kupiec, 1996, 2009) sit awkwardly with reductionist and holistic concepts, which they alternately challenge or approve of. I suggest that the juxtaposition of chance and the holism-reductionism pair (at multiple levels, ontological and methodological, pertaining to the vision of scientific practice as well as to the foundations of a vision of Nature, implicit or explicit) allows the theorist to shed some new light on these perennial tensions in the conceptualisation of Life.
authors.affiliation: Centre for History of Science, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, University of Ghent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. charles.wolfe@ugent.be
authors.forename: Charles T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Wolfe
mesh_terms: D019369:Life; D013269:Stochastic Processes