Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Editorial Board
Publication date: February 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Volume 79Author(s): (Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences)
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - February 19, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Asexual organisms, identity and vertical gene transfer
Publication date: Available online 7 February 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Gunnar BabcockAbstractThis paper poses a problem for traditional phylogenetics: The identity of organisms that reproduce through fission can be understood in several different ways. This prompts questions about how to differentiate parent organisms from their offspring, making vertical gene transfer unclear. Differentiating between parents and offspring stems from what I call the identity problem. How the problem is resolved has impl...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - February 8, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Theoretical and clinical disease and the biostatistical theory
Publication date: Available online 31 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Steven TreskerAbstractAlthough concepts of disease have received much scrutiny, the benefits of distinguishing between theoretical and clinical disease—and what is meant by those terms—may not be as readily apparent. One way of characterizing the distinction between theoretical and clinical conceptions of disease is by relying on Boorse's biostatistical theory (BST) for a conception of theoretical disease. Clinical disease could ...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - February 1, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Inhibition and metaphor of top-down organization
Publication date: Available online 30 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Roger SmithAbstractThe paper discusses the metaphorical nature and meaning of a concept, inhibition, ubiquitous in physiological, psychological and everyday descriptions of the controlling organization of human conduct. There are three parts. The first reviews the established argument in the theory of knowledge that metaphor is not ‘merely’ figure of speech but intrinsic to language use. The middle section provides an introductio...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 30, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Evolutionary contingency as non-trivial objective probability: Biological evitability and evolutionary trajectories
Publication date: Available online 6 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): T.Y. William WongAbstractContingency-theorists have put forth differing accounts of evolutionary contingency. The bulk of these accounts abstractly refer to certain causal structures in which an evolutionarily contingent outcome is supposedly embedded. For example, an outcome is evolutionarily contingent if it is at the end of a ‘path-dependent’ or ‘causally dependent’ causal chain. However, this paper argues that many of thes...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 23, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Postgenomics function monism
Publication date: Available online 8 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Zdenka Brzović, Predrag ŠustarAbstractThe ENCODE project has made important new estimates of human genome functionality, now revising the percentage considered functional to more than 80%, which is in stark contrast to the received view, which estimated that less than 10% of the conserved parts of the human genome are functional. ENCODE's unorthodox use of the notion of biological function has stirred the so-called ENCODE controvers...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 8, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Synthesising arguments and the extended evolutionary synthesis
Publication date: Available online 6 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Andrew BuskellAbstractSynthesising arguments motivate changes to the conceptual tools, theoretical structure, and evaluatory framework employed in a given scientific domain. Recently, a broad coalition of researchers has put forward a synthesising argument in favour of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (‘EES’). Often this synthesising argument is evaluated using a virtue-based approach, which construes the EES as a wholesale alte...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 7, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Evolutionary contingency as non-trivial objective probability:Biological evitability and evolutionary trajectories
Publication date: Available online 6 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): T.Y. William WongAbstractContingency-theorists have put forth differing accounts of evolutionary contingency. The bulk of these accounts abstractly refer to certain causal structures in which an evolutionarily contingent outcome is supposedly embedded. For example, an outcome is evolutionarily contingent if it is at the end of a ‘path-dependent’ or ‘causally dependent’ causal chain. However, this paper argues that many of thes...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 7, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Pluralism and incommensurability in suicide research
Publication date: Available online 3 January 2020Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Hane Htut MaungAbstractThis paper examines the complex research landscape of contemporary suicidology from a philosophy of science perspective. I begin by unpacking the methods, concepts, and assumptions of some of the prominent approaches to studying suicide causation, including psychological autopsy studies, epidemiological studies, biological studies, and qualitative studies. I then analyze the different ways these approaches parti...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 4, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

DNA is not an ontologically distinctive developmental cause
Publication date: Available online 30 December 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Davide VecchiAbstractIn this article I critically evaluate the thesis that DNA is an ontologically distinctive developmental cause. I shall critically analyse different versions of the latter thesis by taking into consideration concrete developmental cases. I shall argue that DNA is neither a developmental determinant nor an ontologically distinctive developmental cause. Instead, I shall argue that mechanistic analysis shows that DN...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - January 1, 2020 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

How to choose your research organism
Publication date: Available online 26 December 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Michael R. Dietrich, Rachel A. Ankeny, Nathan Crowe, Sara Green, Sabina LeonelliAbstractDespite August Krogh's famous admonition that a ‘convenient’ organism exists for every biological problem, we argue that appeals to ‘convenience’ are not sufficient to capture reasoning about organism choice. Instead, we offer a detailed analysis based on empirical data and philosophical arguments for a working set of twenty criteria that...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - December 28, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Peaceful atoms in Japan: Radioisotopes as shared technical and sociopolitical resources for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and the Japanese scientific community in the 1950s
Publication date: Available online 26 December 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Kaori Iida (Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences)
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - December 28, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

The origins of the stochastic theory of population genetics: The Wright-Fisher model
Publication date: Available online 25 December 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Yoichi Ishida, Alirio Rosales (Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences)
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - December 25, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Kant, organisms, and representation
Publication date: Available online 26 November 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Patrick R. LelandAbstractSome interpreters claim Kant distinguishes between organisms and living things. I argue this claim is underdetermined by the textual evidence. Once this is recognized, it becomes a real possibility that Kant's various remarks about the essential properties of living things generalize to organisms as such. This, in turn, generates a puzzle. Kant repeatedly claims that the capacity for representation is essent...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - November 27, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Pandora's box closed: The Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine and Nazi medical experiments on human beings during World War II
This article shows that on the basis of British wartime and post-war research, and determinations that were made by the British Advisory Committee for the Investigation of German Medical War Crimes, by 1948 the RAF IAM had essentially rejected the results of the Nazi aviation medicine experiments on scientific and ethical grounds. (Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences)
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - November 22, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research