Zach, Martin and Greslehner, Gregor P. (2023) Understanding immunity: an alternative framework beyond defense and strength. Biology & Philosophy, 38 (1). ISSN 1572-8404
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Abstract
In this paper we address the issue of how to think about immunity. Many immunological writings suggest a straightforward option: the view that the immune system is primarily a system of defense, which naturally invites the talk of strong immunity and strong immune response. Despite their undisputable positive role in immunology, such metaphors can also pose a risk of establishing a narrow perspective, omitting from consideration phenomena that do not neatly fit those powerful metaphors. Building on this analysis, we argue two things. First, we argue that the immune system is involved not only in defense. Second, by disentangling various possible meanings of ‘strength’ and ‘weakness’ in immunology, we also argue that such a construal of immunity generally contributes to the distortion of the overall picture of what the immune system is, what it does, and why it sometimes fails. Instead, we propose to understand the nature of the immune system in terms of contextuality, regulation, and trade-offs. We suggest that our approach provides lessons for a general understanding of the organizing principles of the immune system in health and disease. For all this to work, we discuss a wide range of immunological phenomena.
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| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | |||||||||
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| Additional Information: | Published via Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. | |||||||||
| Keywords: | Immune system, Contextuality, Regulation, Trade-offs, Strong immunity, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology/Genetics Specific Sciences > Complex Systems Specific Sciences > Medicine > Health and Disease General Issues > Philosophers of Science General Issues > Rhetoric of Science |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Martin Zach | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 15 Feb 2023 14:56 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 15 Feb 2023 14:56 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 21764 | |||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Biology & Philosophy | |||||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | |||||||||
| Official URL: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-023-09893-2 | |||||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-023-09893-2 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology/Genetics Specific Sciences > Complex Systems Specific Sciences > Medicine > Health and Disease General Issues > Philosophers of Science General Issues > Rhetoric of Science |
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| Date: | 15 February 2023 | |||||||||
| Volume: | 38 | |||||||||
| Number: | 1 | |||||||||
| ISSN: | 1572-8404 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/21764 |
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