Hermida, Margarida and Ladyman, James (2024) Physical Explanation and the Autonomy of Biology. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

It is often claimed that biology is autonomous from the physical sciences, but this is seldom made precise. This paper makes explicit, for the first time, five distinct ‘autonomy of biology’ theses. Three moderate theses concerning scientific status, methodological distinctness, and non-reducibility of biology to physics, are correct, and are nearly universally accepted. Two stronger theses concerning the exclusivity of biological explanation and irrelevance of physical laws, are shown to be false on the basis of two case studies of physical explanations of biological phenomena. Which scales and laws are explanatorily relevant for a particular phenomenon must be decided empirically.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Hermida, Margarida margarida.hermida@kcl.ac.uk 0000-0002-0259-109X Ladyman, James james.ladyman@bristol.ac.uk
Keywords:	biology; physics; autonomy; reduction; explanation
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
Depositing User:	Dr. Margarida Hermida
Date Deposited:	01 Jun 2024 03:02
Last Modified:	01 Jun 2024 03:02
Item ID:	23500
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
Date:	2024
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23500

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