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5 - How Are Biology Concepts Used and Transformed?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2020

By
Ingo Brigandt
Edited by
Kostas Kampourakis  and
Tobias Uller
Kostas Kampourakis
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Tobias Uller
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

Scientific knowledge (and its transformation) is often presented in terms of models or overarching theories (Chapter 4). This chapter, in contrast, focuses on concepts as units and organizers of scientific knowledge. Concepts, on the one hand, are more fine-grained units in that a scientific theory contains many individual concepts. On the other hand – and this makes a look at concepts in biology particularly interesting – a concept can be used across several theories, and it can persist even when a theory has been discarded. The concept of a species continues to be used well after pre-Darwinian theories about species were abandoned, and this concept is used across all of biology, in such different theoretical contexts as vertebrate development and microbial ecology. The gene concept is likewise used in very different fields; it has survived despite the flaws of the original Mendelian theory of inheritance and a move toward molecular accounts.

Type
Chapter
Information
Philosophy of Science for Biologists , pp. 79 - 101
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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