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.

Revisiting darwinian teleology: A case for inclusive fitness as design explanation
Publication date: Available online 17 July 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Philippe HunemanAbstractThis paper elaborates a general framework to make sense of teleological explanations in Darwinian evolutionary biology. It relies on an attempt to tie natural selection to a sense of optimization. First, after assessing the objections made by any attempt to view selection as a maximising process within population genetics, it understands Grafen's Formal Darwinism (FD) as a conceptual link established between popu...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - July 17, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Policing the social body: Medicine and the administration of legal gender recognition in France and Italy, an historical perspective
Publication date: Available online 11 July 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Olivia FiorilliAbstractThis paper explores the role of medicine in the regulation of legal gender recognition for trans and gender diverse people in France and Italy. I focus on the processes that led the two countries to establish for the first time a procedure for legal gender change in the 1980s/1990s. Despite the differences, both in France and in Italy medical knowledge and technologies were embedded in the procedures for legal gen...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - July 11, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

An unappreciated merit of counterfactual histories of science
Publication date: Available online 9 July 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Luca TamboloAbstractThis paper critically engages with Ian Hesketh's (2016) analysis of counterfactual histories of science. According to such analysis, extant counterfactual histories—especially of biology—have a rather conservative flavor, since due to the authors' concern for plausibility, they typically converge on actual science, in the sense that their endpoints coincide with (or are very similar to) those of the corresponding ...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - July 9, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Chemical arbitrariness and the causal role of molecular adapters
Publication date: Available online 4 July 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Oliver M. LeanAbstractJacques Monod (1971) argued that certain molecular processes rely critically on the property of chemical arbitrariness, which he claimed allows those processes to “transcend the laws of chemistry”. It seems natural, as some philosophers have done, to interpret this in modal terms: a biological relationship is chemically arbitrary if it is possible, within the constraints of chemical “law”, for that relations...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - July 5, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Imitating nature: Analogy and experiment in D'Arcy Thompson's Science of Form
Publication date: Available online 28 June 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Matthew HolmesAbstractD'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's “Science of Form” – the explanation of biological development and morphology through physical forces and mathematical laws – has traditionally been viewed as an idiosyncratic, even heretical, episode in the history of evolutionary biology. Yet recent scholarship has sought to overturn this view by demonstrating that Thompson was active in contemporary scientific networks. This pa...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - June 29, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Anticipatory measure: Alex Comfort, experimental gerontology and the measurement of senescence
Publication date: Available online 25 June 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Tiago MoreiraAbstractAgeing is routinely measured by counting the number of years lived since the birth of an individual but at least since at least the 1930s, the validity, precision and sensitivity of chronological age as a measure has been criticised across the biological and behavioural sciences of ageing. This quest that has been reinforced by the contemporary investment in the possibility of technologically manipulating the rate o...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - June 26, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Misunderstanding graphs: The confusion of biological clade diversity diagrams and archaeological frequency seriation diagrams
Publication date: Available online 18 June 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): R. Lee LymanAbstractGraph perception involves the accurate decipherment of (often quantitative) data displayed in visual form. Because graph style may reflect discipline-specific tradition, similar graph styles in distinct disciplines can be subject to misinterpretation. Both archaeologist James A. Ford and paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould confused spindle diagrams representing archaeological frequency seriation and paleontological clad...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - June 20, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Placebo trials without mechanisms: How far can they go?
Publication date: Available online 17 June 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): David TeiraAbstractIn this paper, I suggest that placebo effects, as we know them today, should be understood as experimental phenomena, low-level regularities whose causal structure is grasped through particular experimental designs with little theoretical guidance. Focusing on placebo interventions with needles for pain reduction -one of the few placebo regularities that seems to arise in meta-analytical studies- I discuss the extent ...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - June 18, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Editorial Board
Publication date: June 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Volume 75Author(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 - May 31, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Treatment for whom? Towards a phenomenological resolution of controversy within autism treatment
Publication date: Available online 16 April 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Themistoklis PantazakosAbstractAutism's mainstream, behavioural treatment has recently faced allegations from neurodiversity activists, who claim that behaviourism is methodologically faulted and in serious breach of patient consent and human rights. In the present paper, I delve into this mounting controversy to suggest, contra behaviourism, that people with autism diagnoses do not just display a divergent set of behaviours, but shoul...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - April 18, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Editorial Board
Publication date: April 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Volume 74Author(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 - April 13, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Pharmaceutical Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and social change in the twentieth-century, Jeremy Greene, Flurin Condrau, Elizabeth Siegel Watkins (Eds.). University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2016), 320pp, price $110 cloth, ISBN: 978-0226-39073-4
Publication date: Available online 20 March 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): James H. Mills (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 - March 21, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives, Scott Lidgard, Lynn Nyhart (Eds.). University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2017), 361, $25 paperback, $75 cloth, ISBN: 9780226446455
Publication date: Available online 20 March 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): James DiFrisco (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 - March 21, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Race and nutrition in the New World: Colonial shadows in the age of epigenetics
Publication date: Available online 16 March 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Jan Baedke, Abigail Nieves DelgadoAbstractThis paper addresses historical dimensions of epigenetic studies on human populations. We show that postgenomic research on health disparities in Latin America reintroduces old colonial views about the relations between race, environment, and social status. This especially refers to the idea – common in colonial humoralism and epigenetics – that different types of bodies are in balance and ...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - March 17, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Reforming uncultivated minds: The species transmutation debate and American science of life in the antebellum agricultural press, 1820–1859
Publication date: Available online 21 February 2019Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical SciencesAuthor(s): Anahita RouyanAbstractThe paper traces a debate about species transmutation that unfolded in agricultural periodicals published in the Northeastern United States between 1820 and 1859. The reformers who curated the content of these publications promoted agricultural improvement by disseminating knowledge about relevant science and technology topics. The widespread belief in the transmutation of grains provided them with an opportuni...
Source: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - February 22, 2019 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research