The end of final causes in biology / Lucas John Mix.

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The end of final causes in biology / Lucas John Mix.

9783031140174 (electronic bk.)
3031140176 (electronic bk.)
3031140168
9783031140167

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]

English

1 online resource

10.1007/978-3-031-14017-4 doi

QH331

570.1

This book provides a straightforward introduction to teleology in biology, the work it did and the work it can do. Informed by history and philosophy, it focuses on scientific concerns. Seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century biologists proposed a menagerie of biological "actors" to explain power without appealing to Aristotelian vegetable souls and final causes. Three constraints on teleology narrowed the field, selecting among the various actors as they mutated and recombined. Methodological naturalism, local adaptation, and blind chance each represent a significant philosophical advance in biology. Kant, Darwin, and the Modern Synthesis provided a new teleology, grounded in natural selection, an etiological recursion of form and function, and the details of carbon chemistry on Earth. They naturalized teleology, but they also finalized nature, shifting conceptions about the world and science. Understanding these links historical, philosophical, and theoretical sets the stage for new work moving forward. Dr. Lucas John Mix is the Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology and an associate in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. He studies life concepts at the intersection of science, philosophy and theology and has worked with NASA Astrobiology programs for the last 25 years on understanding the meaning and extent of life. His previous books include Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone (2009) and Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin: On Vegetable Souls (2018).

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

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Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed November 11, 2022).

Print version: 9783031140174
Print version: 9783031140167

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