Laura R. Franklin-Hall
Three sets
of issues are confronted in this dissertation. First, I ask questions about the
nature of kinds and individuals in contemporary biology, looking at 1) whether
there are “natural joints”, 2) whether bacteria can be partitioned into species
based on an evolutionary standard, 3) what “parents” are from a biological
point of view, 4) whether the ease with which some species can “re-evolve”
should affect our judgments about the spatio-temporal connectedness of species,
and thus our commitment to the thesis of species individuality.
Second, I
confront classic problems in the philosophy of science, such as the nature of
explanation and reduction, from the perspective of contemporary biology. In
particular, I consider 1) whether a philosophical account of a mechanism might
help us construct a superior account of scientific explanation in biology, 2)
whether developmental biology can be reduced to a lower level science, 3)
whether the modularity of some biological systems might provide a foundation
for resisting reductionist arguments.
Third, I
ponder some intriguing issues of experimental method in biology, such as
whether there are any genuinely exploratory experiments and whether we should
have any ethical qualms with experimentation on artificial organisms. I
conclude with a summary chapter which draws together themes from the entire
dissertation.
PART I: KINDS AND INDIVIDUALS
Chapter 1: Plato’s Joints
Chapter 2: Bacteria, Sex and Systematics
Chapter 3: Parents
Chapter 4: Species Ontology in Actual (and
Possible) Worlds
PART II:
EXPLANATIONS
Chapter 5: Mechanisms Under the Microscope
Chapter 6: Developmental Reductions
Chapter 7: Modular Explanations
PART III:
EXPERIMENTS
Chapter 8: Exploratory Experiments
Chapter 9: Ersatz Animals
Chapter 10: Interests and Kinds; Explanations
and Experiments