Philosophy of Biology - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591025273 ISBN 13: 9781591025276

Publisher: Prometheus, 2007

Synopsis

Biologists study life in its various physical forms, while philosophers of biology seek answers to questions about the nature, purpose, and impact of this research. What permits us to distinguish between living and nonliving things even though both are made of the same minerals? Is the complex structure of organisms proof that a creative force is working its will in the physical universe, or are existing life-forms the random result of an evolutionary process working itself out over eons of time? What moral and social questions arise regarding modern advances in biotechnology? What is more relevant to human nature: genetics or sociocultural influences? Is Darwinism the death-knell of God? These are just some of the vital questions addressed by a distinguished group of philosophers and scientists which includes: Aristotle, Francisco J. Ayala, , Michael Benton, Tom Bethell, Joe Cain, David Castle, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Michael Denton, A.G.N. Flew, Stephen Jay Gould, J.B.S. Haldane, John F. Haught, D. W. E. Hone, James W. Kirchner, James Lovelock, Jane Maienschein, Ernst Mayr, Gregory M. Mikkelson, Leslie Orgal, William Paley, the Prince of Wales, Christopher Pynes, Richard A. Richards, Mark Ridley, Holmes Rolston III, Michael Ruse, Lee Silver, Elliott Sober, Kim Sterelny, Derek Turner, and Edward O. Wilson. This second edition contains material on design without selection, testing macroevolutionary claims, recent biotechnological issues, key ecological concerns, the Gaia hypothesis, genetically modified foods, and the so-called intelligent design movement.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University.As a prominent philosopher of science, he is well known for his work on the relationship between science and religion, the creation-evolution controversy and the demarcation problem within science. He has published over 25 books: most recently, Reflections on the Origin of Species, with David Reznick (Princeton UP, 2008); Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science (Cambridge UP, 2010); and Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2015).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PHILOSOPHY of BIOLOGY

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2007 Michael Ruse
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59102-527-6

Contents

INTRODUCTION Michael Ruse.....................................................................................................9BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONCause and Effect in Biology Ernst Mayr........................................................................................49LIFE AND ITS ORIGINThe Generation of Animals Aristotle...........................................................................................63What Is Life? J. B. S. Haldane................................................................................................67The Origin of Life: A Review of Facts and Speculations Leslie E. Orgel.........................................................71EXPLAINING DESIGNNatural Theology William Paley................................................................................................83Origin of Species Charles Darwin..............................................................................................87Beyond the Reach of Chance Michael Denton.....................................................................................93Accumulating Small Change Richard Dawkins.....................................................................................109DARWINISMThe Structure of Darwinism A. G. N. Flew......................................................................................117Darwin's Mistake Tom Bethell..................................................................................................133Darwin's Untimely Burial Stephen Jay Gould....................................................................................141MACRO-EVOLUTIONDarwinism and the Expansion of Evolutionary Theory Stephen Jay Gould..........................................................147Beyond Darwinism? The Challenge of Macroevolution to the Synthetic Theory of Evolution Francisco J. Ayala.....................167The Evolution of Large Size: How Does Cope's Rule Work? David W. E. Hone and Michael J. Benton................................185Beyond Detective Work: Empirical Testing in Paleobiology Derek Turner.........................................................193CLASSIFICATIONSpecies Concepts and Their Application Ernst Mayr.............................................................................203Solving the Species Problem: Kitcher and Hull on Sets and Individuals Richard A. Richards.....................................215Principles of Classification Mark Ridley......................................................................................229HUMAN NATUREHeredity Edward O. Wilson.....................................................................................................243Sociobiology and the Theory of Natural Selection Stephen Jay Gould............................................................251The Peculiar Primate Kim Sterelny.............................................................................................263G. M. FOODSA Royal View Prince of Wales..................................................................................................277An Open Letter to Prince Charles Richard Dawkins..............................................................................283The Environment's Best Friend: GM or Organic? Lee M. Silver...................................................................287Acceptance of Biotechnology in a Risk Society David Castle....................................................................297BIOLOGICAL METAPHORSWhat Is Gaia? James Lovelock..................................................................................................307The Gaia Hypothesis: Fact, Theory, and Wishful Thinking James W. Kirchner.....................................................309Are We at War with Nature? Derek D. Turner....................................................................................329ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICSOn Behalf of Bioexuberance Holmes Rolston, III................................................................................347Biophilia and the Conservation Ethic Edward O. Wilson.........................................................................355Philosophical Problems for Environmentalism Elliott Sober.....................................................................365Toward a General Theory of Diversity and Equality Gregory M. Mikkelson........................................................385WHEN LIFE BEGINSReport of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion........................................................................393South Dakota Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act (HB 1215)............................................................403How and When Does a Life Begin? Jane Maienschein..............................................................................407H. R. 810: Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005..........................................................................421Statement of Administration Policy H. R. 810: Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act...............................................423Why Is There a Stem Cell Debate? And How to Depoliticize It Christopher A. Pynes..............................................425GOD AND BIOLOGYThe First Book of Moses, Called Genesis........................................................................................435Rethinking Attacks on Evolution: Lessons From the 1925 Scopes Trial Joe Cain..................................................439Does Evolution Rule Out God's Existence? John F. Haught.......................................................................457FURTHER READING................................................................................................................471

Introduction

What is philosophy? What is biology? What is the philosophy of biology? Let me start with the second question, which might seem the easiest. Biology, surely, is the science of life, of living things. But, what is a living thing? Examples come readily to mind. Humans are living things, living humans, that is! And so are snakes and oak trees and the bacteria that make food go bad. On the other hand, planets are not living things, and neither are shovels or spades or rocks or mountains or the sea. "Or the sea?" Is it irrational to talk about "the living ocean" and how it ebbs and flows, attacks and protects, helps and hinders? Or, what about a thunderstorm, if you do not believe the sea has the kind of self-maintenance often associated with life? A thunderstorm picks up energy as it goes along, throwing out waste and destruction behind it, just like an elephant, only more so.

Now, at this moment, I do not want to press this particular train of thought. Apart from anything else, we shall be coming back to the notion of "life." Rather, I want to use the discussion to make a point. What have we been doing in the last paragraph? We have certainly not been practicing biology-no dead frogs were laid out on a table. Rather, we have been thinking about biology. And this provides a clue to our other questions: to philosophy in general and to the philosophy of biology in particular. Philosophy is a second-order inquiry that looks at other subjects-politics, art, religion, or, in our case, biology-and asks questions about them. The biologist qua biologist dissects and studies frogs and humans and oak trees and bacteria. But, when it comes to questions about what the biologist is doing, then we are in the realm of philosophy.

Is this not all somewhat presumptuous? A nonexpert in the field calmly enters it and tells its practitioners what they are doing and how they should behave. Sometimes, I confess it is presumptuous; unless the philosopher makes some effort to understand the field being studied, grief will not be far behind. However, just as the experienced auto mechanic knows that there are certain principles common to all cars and that a detached general knowledge is not necessarily bad, so the experienced philosopher learns that certain principles apply through all human endeavors, and various problems and concerns keep arising. A detached general knowledge is not necessarily bad.

Moreover, apart from the intrinsic interest of philosophical problems, some outside help can often be of much use to the success of a first-order subject. An example illustrates this point perfectly for biology. In recent years various extreme evangelical Christians, those who insist on taking every word of the Bible absolutely literally (so-called fundamentalists), have been trying hard to have their (Creationist) views inserted into biology curricula. Whatever the ultimate resolution of these efforts, what has become apparent is that there is more here than straight science. Can claims that the earth is only six thousand years old and that human beings were created miraculously by God ever, even in principle, be part of geology and biology, or are they necessarily religious? These, clearly are questions about science rather than questions within science. In other words, they are philosophical questions.

Since even the least reflective of us are bound to encounter philosophical problems sooner or later, we had better get them out on the table and look at them explicitly. But, how should we set about doing this, particularly in biology? My experience is that approaching philosophy is similar to driving a car: There is only so much talking you can do about it; it is far better to get behind the wheel and try it yourself. This is the approach I have taken in this volume, a collection of readings by biologists and philosophers, past and present. I have divided my selection of readings into sections, trying as much as possible to let people of different opinions each have their say; I myself simply try to offer a few guidelines to disentangle the various threads.

There is a reasonable continuity to the sections, but feel free to sample those subjects of particular personal interest. I suspect, however, that the topics with the greatest intellectual appeal, such as human nature, morality, and God, which I have put toward the end, will take on a fuller and richer meaning when some of the earlier sections have been covered. I should add that I have not chosen readings because they are simple. My guide has been to select topics and contributions that are interesting and important. But, I have tried as far as possible to keep matters jargon-free. In addition, at the end I have provided some suggestions for further reading.

The eighteenth-century English lawyer Oliver Edwards, a friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson, is reputed to have said that although he had tried to practice philosophy on several occasions, he could never stay miserable long enough! This image of philosophy persists to this day. I cannot pretend that this collection is a barrel of laughs, but I shall be very disappointed if the reader at no time is gripped by the material. The ideas are important, and there is a real thrill in the cut and thrust of intellectual debate. Philosophy may not be funny, but it can be fun.

BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Ernst Mayr was one of the giants of twentieth-century evolutionary biology. Born in Germany, as a young man he came to and settled in America, dying in 2004 at the great age of one hundred. He was an ornithologist and leading theoretician of taxonomy (the practice of biological classification). His Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942), in which he established the overall, gradual nature of evolution, is rightly considered one of the great classics of the field. Mayr was always interested in the methodology and foundations of his science, and this led him naturally into philosophical inquiries. One of his most celebrated papers, reprinted here as a kick-off introduction to this collection, deals with the nature of biological explanation. What kind of question is it that fascinates a biologist? What sorts of information are they after, and what kinds of understanding do they hope to achieve?

The great Greek philosopher Aristotle-you will be meeting him in person in the next section-argued that real scientific understanding involves causes. You have to go beyond describing what happens to trying to find out why and how things happen. You have to go beyond, let us say, hearing a noise, to finding out what made that noise happen. You have to come up with an answer like: The falling rock made the noise, or was the cause of the noise. Mayr agrees with this kind of thinking and (in fact still following Aristotle on this matter) argues that there are basically two kinds of questions that need answering in biology-questions that lead to rather different sorts of causes. On the one hand, there are questions demanding what Mayr calls proximate causes. These deal with the mechanics of the situation. They tell you how things happen. In Mayr's example, what is it that triggers a bird's flying south? On the other hand, there are questions dealing with what Mayr calls ultimate causes. These tell you why things happen. In Mayr's example, why the bird flies south is to avoid the New England winter and to find food stuffs.

Throughout this collection you will find both kinds of causes being invoked. It would be fair to say, however, that there will be more discussion of ultimate (what earlier thinkers, including Charles Darwin, called final) causes. This is because they are so central to evolutionary thinking and for many reasons-from the apparent distinctiveness of its nature to the all-too-real clashes with religion-evolutionary theory has garnered a great deal of philosophical attention. The important point is to keep in mind Mayr's caution-ask first what kind of question is being asked, and ask second what kind of answer would satisfy.

LIFE AND ITS ORIGINS?

Go back to the beginning discussion. For all the similarities, we probably do not want to say that the ocean or a thunderstorm is a living thing. But, wherein does lie the difference between life and nonlife? It is tempting to suppose that living things must be made of different substances from nonliving things-and this is often true. The body of Abraham Lincoln was not the same substance as the statue of Lincoln in Washington. Yet, we know now that living beings are made, ultimately, from the same minerals as nonliving things. Moreover, since the early nineteenth century it has been possible to synthesize the compounds of living beings from inert substances.

This all leads one to think-it has certainly led many philosophers to think-that living things must have something special in addition to make them living, a sort of life force or fluid, akin perhaps to the mind but living in or through all life and separating the quick from the dead. Such a force has been called, naturally, a "vital" force (and its enthusiasts "vitalists"). This view goes back to Aristotle, who was as distinguished a biologist as he was a philosopher.

I can think of no better person than Aristotle himself to begin this collection, and so our first reading is from one of his best known works, On the Generation of Animals, in which he wrestles with the way in which the sperm or the seed affects the growing organism. Aristotle thought that the male parent provides the form of the offspring whereas the female parent provides the substance, and he argues that somehow this form gets transmitted through "soul." Precisely what he means by this notion has engaged scholars for over two thousand years. It is certainly not the Christian notion, but it represents some sort of animating force that gives vitality and feeling.

Everyone who reads Aristotle comes away with tremendous respect for his biological acumen. Nevertheless, I suspect that in this doctrine of soul he would find few modern followers. Let me therefore say that there is nothing at all foolish about such a position. After all, there is something different about the living and the nonliving. Nor is it significant that we can never see the soul or vital force. If I open your skull, I doubt I will see your mind; but, I do not doubt you have one. However, this said, the trouble with vital forces is they do not seem to do much. Or, perhaps, the problem is that they do too much. The more biologists delve into living things, the more they find that not only are the substances the same as for the nonliving, but the workings are not so very different either. A bird stays aloft because it exploits the powers of nature-gravity, winds, heat, and the like-no less (and no more) than does a cloud or a handful of sand in a storm.

This is an exaggeration, of course. The bird puts things together much better than does a sandstorm: a point that brings me to our second reading, by J. B. S. Haldane. He was (as we shall learn later) a distinguished and creative biologist who thought and worked in the second quarter of this century. He was also an ardent Marxist, and the piece I have chosen appeared during the Second World War in the Daily Worker, the English communist newspaper. (This explains the reference to Engels and perhaps also the enthusiasm for Alexander Nevsky, a film by the great Russian director, Serge Eisenstein.) Haldane rejects vital forces, as I have just rejected them. But he suggests that there is more to the organization of life and, in particular, what this organization does, than a trivial and slighting glance would indicate. In essence, he invites us to start shifting our gaze from what life is to what life does. We must stop thinking in terms of the static and start thinking in terms of the dynamic.

Whether this approach will work is another matter. Certainly, we are going to need much more detail than Haldane's sketch provides. But, surely, Haldane is onto something. After all, what is life if it is not activity, be this eating, drinking, defecating, copulating, or practicing biology or philosophy? For this reason, we should not dismiss Haldane's suggestion out of hand, particularly when, nearly a half century later, we see that much of his science is no less out of date than Aristotle's. Haldane thought that proteins are key substances in life. Now we know that is only part of the story. Yet, the thrust of Haldane's suggestion that "life is a pattern of chemical processes" makes just as much sense now as it did then-indeed, with our deeper understanding of the chemistry of life, it might perhaps make more sense.

The third piece in this section is rather different. Leslie Orgel is today one of the leading researchers in origin of life studies, and this is a recent survey that he wrote about the field. It is obviously a bit more technical than the first two pieces, but don't let that bother you unduly, because the basic ideas are relatively easy to follow. Start with the great discovery in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick that the material carrying the information about life-the molecular equivalent of the gene-is a long molecule (deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA) which is twisted in a double helix around a fellow. The information comes not so much in the composition of the molecule but in the order in which sub-molecules occur along the string. The information is read off the DNA molecule by another long molecule (ribonucleic acid, RNA), and this then picks up other smaller molecules in the cell (amino acids) and strings them together to make proteins. These latter are the building blocks of the cell and also (as enzymes) make the cellular processes work.

There was great excitement in the 1950s when it was discovered that one could make amino acids naturally, that is, under conditions that were thought to be the case when life on this planet started. (The universe is about fifteen billion years old, the Earth is about four and one-half billion years old, and the fossil record and other evidence suggests that life started about three and three-quarter billion years ago.) It seemed as if the solution to the origin of life problem was just around the corner. However since then, enthusiasm has cooled significantly. For a start, it is now not at all clear what kind of world we had when life started. Was it a place with an atmosphere with lots of hydrogen (reducing), hence making oxygen-containing products (like amino acids) stable, or not? If not, then are there other alternatives? Orgel points out that the vents in deep sea beds are today favored by some as the place where such products might have been synthesized and retained. For a second, which came first, the chicken or the egg? You need DNA to makes proteins. You need proteins to make DNA. Orgel notes that today many think the RNA molecule had a crucial role to play. In certain circumstances it can not only carry information but synthesize itself.

The theme of Orgel's piece is that we seem to have a detective story with too many clues and too many suggested solutions. "It would be hard to find two investigators who agree on even the broad outline of the events that occurred so long ago and made possible the subsequent evolution of life in all its variety." But note also his ending. We may be very far "from knowing whodunit." Nevertheless: "The only rational certainty is that there will be a solution." Is this the only rational certainty? Orgel and his fellow workers assume the laws that created life are the regular laws of physics and chemistry. Are they right about this? Could it be that we need some special kinds of laws? Could it be that science has to stop at this point and give up the fight? The well-known American philosopher Alvin Plantinga is (somewhat atypically for a Calvinist) deeply hostile to modern science and quite scathing about biology. About the claim that "life arose by naturalistic means"-that life arose through the normal laws of nature-he sneers: "This seems to me for the most part mere arrogant bluster; given our present state of knowledge, I believe it is vastly less probable, on our present evidence, than its denial." Is this really so? Or should we bet that somehow, somewhere, the scientific solution will appear?

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591025273
• ISBN 13: 9781591025276
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 473
• Editor: Ruse Florida State University Michael