"Laws, Causation and Explanations in Classical Genetics: A Model-Theoretic Account"

LORENZANO, PABLO

Praga

Congreso; 16th Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science; 2019

Division of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science

The aimof this communication is to analyze the kind of explanations usually given inClassical Genetics. Explanations in biology have intriguing aspects to bothbiologists and philosophers. A summary of these aspects are found in theintroduction to the anthology Explanationin Biology: An Enquiry into the Diversity of Explanatory Patterns in the LifeSciences (Braillard & Malaterre 2015): We will outline four of the most salient problems in the current debate.These problems are related to (1) whether natural laws exist in biology, (2)whether causation plays a specific explanatory role in biology, (3) whetherother forms of explanation ? e.g., functional or teleological ? are alsoneeded, and (4) whether the recent mechanistic type model of explanation thatbrings together some form of law-like generalizations and of causation fulfillall expectations. (p. 9)With ouranalysis of explanations in Classical Genetics the last problem, which relatesto the first two ones, will be addressed straightforward. But instead of doingit with "the recent mechanistic type model of explanation", it will be done with a model-theoretic,structuralist account of explanation.First,explanations in Classical Genetics will be presented in the traditional formatof explanations as summarized by arguments. Later on,the nature of these explanations will be discussed by using explanations inanother area of science, namely, Classical Mechanics.Toclarify the situation, and to carry out an analysis of explanations inClassical Genetics, notions of the structuralist view of theories ‒ especiallythose of theory-net, fundamental law (or guiding principle), specialization,and special law ‒ will be applied to Classical Genetics. In this application,Classical Genetics? fundamental law/guiding principle will be made explicit. Next, inorder to make more transparent the ontological commitments of ClassicalGenetics (some of which would play a causal role), explanations will bepresented in a model-theoretic, structuralist format as ampliative embeddings into nomic patterns within theory-nets.Finally,it will conclude with a discussion of the presented analysis, arguing in favorof the model-theoretic, structuralist account of explanation "that bringstogether some form of law-like generalizations and of causation".