Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
12
Biological mechanisms: organized to maintain
autonomy
1
William Bechtel
SUMMARY
Mechanistic explanations in biology have continually confronted the challenge
that they are insufficient to account for biological phenomena. This challenge is
often justified as accounts of biological mechanisms frequently fail to consider
the modes of organization required to explain the phenomena of life. This,
however, can be remedied by developing analyses of the modes of organization
found in biological systems. In this paper I examine Tibor Gánti's account
of a chemoton, which he offers as the simplest chemical system that exhibits
characteristics of life, and build from it an account of autonomous systems,
characterized following Moreno as active systems that develop and maintain
themselves by recruiting energy and raw materials from their environment and
deploying it in building and repairing themselves. Although some theorists
would construe such self-organizing and self-repairing systems as beyond the
mechanistic perspective, I maintain that they can be accommodated within the
framework of mechanistic explanation properly construed.
1
I thank Fred Boogerd, Frank Bruggeman, Andrew Hamilton, Alvaro Moreno, Adam Streed, and Cory Wright
for the very useful discussions and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
