Derek Skillings (University of Bordeaux, CNRS)
This paper examines two types of difficulties encountered while reasoning about biological systems. The first, which I call the translation problem, is a difficulty with imagining and predicting the behavior of biological phenomena that stems from the stochastic and contingent nature of many biological processes. The second, dubbed the interpretation problem, is a difficulty with identifying all the numerous salient causal factors and interactions behind the production of biological phenomena. Approaches to causal explanation are best seen as heuristics, which focuses our attention on both how our conceptual tools resolve problems, and when and where they can break down.
