Zachary Shifrel (Virginia Tech)
Little research has been done on the application of structural realism to sciences beyond physics. It is unclear, for example, whether biology should lend itself precisely to talk of structural continuity. If biology does support such considerations, it is further unclear how structural realism might fare under the pessimistic meta-induction. This paper sketches an account of structural realism in biology through the analysis of structural continuity and surveys a few lessons that the biological application teaches. Biology is rich with mathematical models, its formal structures having recently gained the attention of those working in category theory, group theory, and algebraic topology. Mathematical frameworks like category theory also happen to allow for the representation and comparison of the structure of scientific theories. Drawing from recent applications of such mathematical frameworks to philosophical problems, I contrast the position of the structural realist in physics with that in biology. Some are content with a structural realism whose domain of validity is confined to the theory space of fundamental physics, but for those who want to extend their realism beyond coalescing neutron stars and elementary particles I show that certain critical features of structural realism are made salient in the biological application. I do this not by conferring inductive support on structural realism through a particular proof of structural continuity, but by drawing attention to difficulties that arise in the course of examining whether structure has remained invariant over time.
