The End of Final Causes in Biology - Couverture rigide

Mix, Lucas John

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 3031140168 ISBN 13 : 9783031140167

Editeur : Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

Synopsis

This book provides a straightforward introduction to teleology in biology, the work it did and the work it can do. Informed by history and philosophy, it focuses on scientific concerns. Seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century biologists proposed a menagerie of biological "actors" to explain power without appealing to Aristotelian vegetable souls and final causes. Three constraints on teleology narrowed the field, selecting among the various actors as they mutated and recombined. Methodological naturalism, local adaptation, and blind chance each represent a significant philosophical advance in biology. Kant, Darwin, and the Modern Synthesis provided a new teleology, grounded in natural selection, an etiological recursion of form and function, and the details of carbon chemistry on Earth. They naturalized teleology, but they also finalized nature, shifting conceptions about the world and science. Understanding these links - historical, philosophical, and theoretical - sets thestage for new work moving forward.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Dr. Lucas John Mix is the Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology and an associate in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. He studies life concepts at the intersection of science, philosophy and theology and has worked with NASA Astrobiology programs for the last 25 years on understanding the meaning and extent of life.

His previous books include Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone (2009) and Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin: On Vegetable Souls (2018).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Palgrave Macmillan
• Date d'édition: 2022
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 3031140168
• ISBN 13: 9783031140167
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 156
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Springer Nature Customer Service Center GmbH; ProductSafety@springernature.com; ; Europaplatz 3,69115 Heidelberg, Germany; Heidelberg; 69115; Allemagne