Biology 1

Fridolin Gross (Universität Kassel)
Occam's razor refers to the idea that among competing but equally successful explanations the simplest should be preferred, but there are different ways in which this principle has been understood and defended. Recently, systems biologists have argued that the approach of molecular biology is misguided because it relies on the unjustified application of Occam's razor. I analyze which version of the principle is relevant in this context and ask whether the allegation stands up to scrutiny by looking at actual research practices in molecular biology and whether approaches in systems biology really do rely less on considerations of simplicity.

Marshall Abrams (University of Alabama, Birmingham)
I argue that biological evolution and other complex processes depend on imprecise chances, i.e. imprecise analogues of real-valued objective probabilities. I give a general argument for the existence of imprecise chances in nature. I then argue that natural selection, whether involving imprecise chances or not, would give rise to organisms whose behavior was imprecisely chancy. This behavior would then be part of the environment of other organisms in ways that would the make latter's evolution imprecisely chancy. Thus evolution sometimes involves imprecise chance. I explain why the absence of reports of imprecise chance in evolution is nevertheless unsurprising.

Predrag Šustar (University of Rijeka), Zdenka Brzović (University of Rijeka)
The new causal-mechanical (CM) account of scientific explanation has been acclaimed as especially suitable for molecular biology because of its closeness to scientific practice. However, it has been recently criticized as over-permissive in distinguishing acceptable explanations. We examine two particular issues arising from the levels explanatory constraint: the right-level and level-grounding issues. We argue, through the case-study of de novo genes origin, against the new mechanists' CM. Namely, the 'one level below' is not a necessary condition for CM, and in the cases of evolutionary constrained systems, the identification of levels and component-parts' role are fixed by selective pressures.

Gregor P. Greslehner (University of Salzburg)
'Structure' and 'function' are both ambiguous terms. Discriminating different meanings of these terms sheds light on research and explanatory practice in molecular biology, as well as clarifying central theoretical concepts in the life sciences like the sequence-structure-function relationship and its corresponding scientific "dogmas". The overall project is to answer three questions, primarily with respect to proteins: (1) What is structure? (2) What is function? (3) What is the relation between structure and function? The results of addressing these questions lead to an answer to the title question, what the statement 'structure determines function' means.