Abstract
In Making Sense of Life, Keller emphasizes several differences between biology and physics. Her analysis focuses on significant ways in which modelling practices in some areas of biology, especially developmental biology, differ from those of the physical sciences. She suggests that natural models and modelling by homology play a central role in the former but not the latter. In this paper, I focus instead on those practices that are importantly similar, from the point of view of epistemology and cognitive science. I argue that concrete and abstract models are significant in both disciplines, that there are shared selection criteria for models in physics and biology, e.g. familiarity, and that modelling often occurs in a similar fashion.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 281-294 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Foundations of Science |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2009 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
My work on this paper was supported by the John Templeton Foundation, as part of the project ‘Why ‘Why?’—Methodological and Philosophical Issues at the Physics–Biology Interface’. I should like to thank all those involved in the project, namely Wilson Poon, Alexander Bird (to whom I owe special thanks for comments on drafts), Tom McLeish, and Greg Radick. I should also like to thank the audience members at the workshop on Evelyn Fox Keller’s work at the Leeds Humanities Research Institute, where I presented an early version of this paper, especially John Christie, John Grahame, Steven French, and Evelyn Fox Keller herself.The same paper is presented at the Symposium on "Making Sense of Science : Historical and Philosophical Themes in the Work of Evelyn Fox Keller", Leeds, United Kingdom, 3-4 May 2007.
Keywords
- Analogy
- Evelyn Fox Keller
- Modelling
- Structural similarity
- Structuralism