Discovering complexity : decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research / William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson.
2010
Q180.55.M4 B4 2010eb
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Title
Discovering complexity : decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research / William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson.
Author
ISBN
9780262289177 (electronic bk.)
0262289172 (electronic bk.)
9780262514736
0262514737
0691087628 (acid-free paper)
9780691087627 (acid-free paper)
0262289172 (electronic bk.)
9780262514736
0262514737
0691087628 (acid-free paper)
9780691087627 (acid-free paper)
Published
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2010]
Copyright
©1993
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (liv, 286 pages) : illustrations
Item Number
9786612978364
Call Number
Q180.55.M4 B4 2010eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
507.2
Summary
"In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of 'choice points' that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility--the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993"--MIT CogNet.
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