Biology Reference
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provides resources for thinking about how generalizations and mechanisms are
discovered, evaluated, and extrapolated and into how such concepts are deployed in
explanation, prediction, and control. The perceived need to defend laws, no matter
how much they have been weakened and stripped of their once-robust metaphysical
content, reflects a conservative refusal to acknowledge that perhaps the philosophy
of science might benefit from coming at its subject matter from a fresh perspective.
Mechanists decenter laws in their thinking about science because the old paradigm,
centering laws, has become mired in debates that are inconsequential and, as a
result, have stopped generating new questions and producing new results. In this
chapter, we have argued that by trying on the mechanistic gestalt, one can make
progress on problems concerning explanation, laws, prediction, and manipulation
where the nomic approach seems to have run out of gas. Moving forward, there are
far more interesting and better-motivated questions
to ask than whether
mechanisms can replace generalizations or vice versa.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank Jim Bogen, Lindley Darden, Alexander Reutlinger,
and the members of the DFG research group “Causation and Explanation” for comments on earlier
drafts. This project was made possible by the funding provided by the Deutsche Forschungsge-
meinschaft (DFG).
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