Our dream of distinguishing psychological functions without analyzing neuroscientific detail is unsustainable. This book presents David Marr's computational theory of vision, focusing on his separation of computational, algorithmic and implementational levels.
Our dream of distinguishing psychological functions without analyzing neuroscientific detail is unsustainable. This book presents David Marr's computa...
Vitalism is understood as impacting the history of the life sciences, medicine and philosophy, representing an epistemological challenge to the dominance of mechanism over the last 200 years, and partly revived with organicism in early theoretical biology. The contributions in this volume portray the history of vitalism from the end of the Enlightenment to the modern day, suggesting some reassessment of what it means both historically and conceptually. As such it includes a wide range of material, employing both historical and philosophical methodologies, and it is divided fairly evenly...
Vitalism is understood as impacting the history of the life sciences, medicine and philosophy, representing an epistemological challenge to the domina...
This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative...
This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written ...
This volume explores the interactions between organisms and their environments and how this "entanglement" is a fundamental aspect of all life. It brings together the work and ideas of historians, philosophers, biologists, and social scientists, uniting a range of new perspectives, methods, and frameworks for examining and understanding the ways that organisms and environments interact.
The volume is organized into three main sections: historical perspectives, contested models, and emerging frameworks. The first section explores the origins of the modern idea of organism-environment...
This volume explores the interactions between organisms and their environments and how this "entanglement" is a fundamental aspect of all life. It ...
This book brings together for the first time philosophers of biology to write about some of the most central concepts and issues in their field from the perspective of biology education. The chapters of the book cover a variety of topics ranging from traditional ones, such as biological explanation, biology and religion or biology and ethics, to contemporary ones, such as genomics, systems biology or evolutionary developmental biology. Each of the 30 chapters covers the respective philosophical literature in detail and makes specific suggestions for biology education.
The aim of this...
This book brings together for the first time philosophers of biology to write about some of the most central concepts and issues in their field fro...
Since the 1970s, the origin of cancer is being explored from the point of view of the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT), focusing on genetic mutations and clonal expansion of somatic cells. As cancer research expanded in several directions, the dominant focus on cells remained steady, but the classes of genes and the kinds of extra-genetic factors that were shown to have causal relevance in the onset of cancer multiplied. The wild heterogeneity of cancer-related mutations and phenotypes, along with the increasing complication of models, led to an oscillation between the hectic search of 'the' few...
Since the 1970s, the origin of cancer is being explored from the point of view of the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT), focusing on genetic mutations and...
This volume describes features of autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively generated during the macroevolutionary transitions.
The author...
This volume describes features of autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about majo...
This anthology of essays presents a sample of studies from recent philosophy of medicine addressing issues which attempt to answer very general (interdependent) questions: (a) what is a disease and what is health? (b) How do we (causally) explain diseases? (c) And how do we distinguish diseases, i.e. define classes of diseases and recognize that an instance X of disease belongs to a given class B? (d) How do we assess and choose cure/ therapy?
The book is divided into three sections: classification, disease and evidence. In general, attention is focused on statistics in medicine and...
This anthology of essays presents a sample of studies from recent philosophy of medicine addressing issues which attempt to answer very general (in...
Recounting the compelling story of a scientific discovery that took more than a century to complete, this trail-blazing monograph focuses on methodological issues and is the first to delve into this subject. This book charts how the biochemical and biophysical mechanisms of photosynthesis were teased out by succeeding generations of scientists, and the author highlights the reconstruction of the heuristics of modelling the mechanism--analyzed at both individual and collective levels.
Photosynthesis makes for an instructive example. The first tentative ideas were developed by organic...
Recounting the compelling story of a scientific discovery that took more than a century to complete, this trail-blazing monograph focuses on method...
This root-and-branch re-evaluation of Darwin's concept of sexual selection tackles the subject from historical, epistemological and theoretical perspectives. Contributions from a wealth of disciplines have been marshaled for this volume, with key figures in behavioural ecology, philosophy, and the history of science adding to its wide-ranging relevance. Updating the reader on the debate currently live in behavioural ecology itself on the centrality of sexual selection, and with coverage of developments in the field of animal aesthetics, the book details the current state of play, while...
This root-and-branch re-evaluation of Darwin's concept of sexual selection tackles the subject from historical, epistemological and theoretical per...
