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Mechanism and Biological Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

William Bechtel
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Abstract

This article argues that the basic account of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, involving sequential execution of qualitatively characterized operations, is itself insufficient to explain biological phenomena such as the capacity of living organisms to maintain themselves as systems distinct from their environment. This capacity depends on cyclic organization, including positive and negative feedback loops, which can generate complex dynamics. Understanding cyclically organized mechanisms with complex dynamics requires coordinating research directed at decomposing mechanisms into parts (entities) and operations (activities) with research using computational models to recompose mechanisms and determine their dynamic behavior. This coordinated endeavor yields dynamic mechanistic explanations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 533 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I thank Adele Abrahamsen, Colin Allen, Carl Craver, Lindley Darden, William Wimsatt; audiences at Duke University, Indiana University, University of the Basque Country, University of California, Irvine, University of Chicago, University of Groningen; and referees for this journal for many helpful comments and suggestions. This article’s title is not original; it previously appeared as the title of a 1972 article in Philosophy of Science by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana. They noted the long prominence of mechanistic language in biology (e.g., in the vitalism/mechanism controversy), but their ultimate goal, quite different from that of this article, was to defend the position that came to be known as functionalism in philosophy of mind, according to which the proper characterization of a mechanism was abstract, not tied to particular realizations of components. In publications that began appearing shortly thereafter, however, they began to develop their conception of autopoiesis and an understanding of mechanism that is much closer to the position advanced in this article.

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