sábado, 8 de agosto de 2015

Revisiting Generality in Biology: Systems Biology and the Quest for Design Principles

S. Greenpublished online in Biology and Philosophy, DOI: 10.1007/s10539-­‐015-­‐9496-­‐9

Due to the variation, contingency and complexity of living systems, biology is often taken to be a science without fundamental theories, laws or general principles. 
Design principles signify general dependency-relations between structures and functions, given a set of formally defined constraints. I contend that design principles increase our understanding of living systems by relating specific models to general types.
I show that constraint-based generality is distinct from other types of generality in biology, and argue that general principles play a unifying role does not entail theory reduction.

Keywords: Design Principles; Systems Biology; Unification; Biological laws; Constraints; Generic
abstraction




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