Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology
Alexander Rosenberg
Abstract
After the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists working in molecular biology embraced reductionism—the theory that all complex systems can be understood in terms of their components. Reductionism, however, has been widely resisted by both nonmolecular biologists and scientists working outside the field of biology. Many of these antireductionists, nevertheless, embrace the notion of physicalism—the idea that all biological processes are physical in nature. How, the author of this book asks, can these self-proclaimed physicalists also be antireductionists? The book navigates this ... More
Keywords: DNA structure, molecular biology, reductionism, complex systems, antireductionists, physicalism, biological processes, natural selection, dualism, molecular developmental biology
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2006 | Print ISBN-13: 9780226727295 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 | DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226727318.001.0001 |
