共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 78 毫秒
1.
Philip Richard Sullivan 《Biology & philosophy》2009,24(1):65-79
This paper demonstrates that the human visual system, the primary sensory conduit for primates, processes ambient energy in
a way that obligatorily constructs the objects that we ineluctably perceive. And since our perceptual apparatus processes
information only in terms of objects (along with the properties and movements of objects), we are limited in our ability to comprehend ‘what
is’ when we move beyond our ordinary world of midsize objects—as, for example, when we address the micro microworld of quantum
physics.
相似文献
Philip Richard SullivanEmail: |
2.
Debates over adaptationism can be clarified and partially resolved by careful consideration of the ‘grain’ at which evolutionary
processes are described. The framework of ‘adaptive landscapes’ can be used to illustrate and facilitate this investigation.
We argue that natural selection may have special status at an intermediate grain of analysis of evolutionary processes. The
cases of sickle-cell disease and genomic imprinting are used as case studies.
相似文献
Peter Godfrey-SmithEmail: |
3.
Making Sense in Time: Remote Sensing and the Challenges of Temporal Heterogeneity in Social Analysis of Environmental Change—cases from Malawi 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
This article contributes to the encouraging recent trend toward more critical examination of the linkages between remote sensing
and social analysis of environmental change. Using two case studies from Malawi, we explain the importance of thinking about
temporal scale when using remote sensing data. Specifically, from our on-the-ground research, we came to appreciate three
important issues: (1) multiple causation and multiple temporal scales operating simultaneously—making inference of casual
relations between particular social factors and observed land use changes difficult; (2) ‘visible’ vs. ‘invisible’ processes
and events; and (3) ‘continuous’ vs. ‘punctuated’ social and environmental processes. We observe that in each case, social
differentiation is key to understanding which temporal frames are most relevant in understanding observed land use dynamics.
We conclude that, while these are not entirely new observations, research on the applications of remote sensing in social
analysis of environmental change could be enriched by more rigorous examination of linkages between environmental change,
temporal scale, and the social relations (including social differentiation) that can help to explain how and why particular
temporal frames are most salient.
相似文献
Pauline E. PetersEmail: |
4.
5.
Peter Godfrey-Smith 《Biology & philosophy》2007,22(3):429-437
Jablonka and Lamb's claim that evolutionary biology is undergoing a ‘revolution’ is queried. But the very concept of revolutionary
change has uncertain application to a field organized in the manner of contemporary biology. The explanatory primacy of sequence
properties is also discussed.
相似文献
Peter Godfrey-SmithEmail: |
6.
Alan C. Love 《Biology & philosophy》2007,22(5):691-708
“Functional homology” appears regularly in different areas of biological research and yet it is apparently a contradiction
in terms—homology concerns identity of structure regardless of form and function. I argue that despite this conceptual tension
there is a legitimate conception of ‘homology of function’, which can be recovered by utilizing a distinction from pre-Darwinian
physiology (use versus activity) to identify an appropriate meaning of ‘function’. This account is directly applicable to
molecular developmental biology and shares a connection to the theme of hierarchy in homology. I situate ‘homology of function’
within existing definitions and criteria for structural assessments of homology, and introduce a criterion of ‘organization’
for judging function homologues, which focuses on hierarchically interconnected interdependencies (similar to relative position
and connection for skeletal elements in structural homology). This analysis of biological concepts has at least three broad
philosophical consequences: (1) it provides the grounds for the study of behavior and psychological categories as homologues;
(2) it demonstrates that philosophers who take selected effect function as primary effectively ignore large portions of comparative,
structural, and experimental research, thereby misconstruing biological reasoning and knowledge; and, (3) it underwrites causal
generalizations, which illuminates inferences made from model organisms in experimental biology.
相似文献
Alan C. LoveEmail: |
7.
Tim Lewens 《Biology & philosophy》2009,24(2):161-182
Godfrey-Smith (2001) has distinguished three types of adaptationism. This article builds on his analysis, and revises it in places, by distinguishing
seven varieties of adaptationism. This taxonomy allows us to clarify what is at stake in debates over adaptationism, and it
also helps to cement the importance of Gould and Lewontin’s ‘Spandrels’ essay. Some adaptationists have suggested that their
essay does not offer any coherent alternative to the adaptationist programme: it consists only in an exhortation to test adaptationist
hypotheses more thoroughly than was usual in the 1970s. Here it is argued that the ‘Spandrels’ paper points towards a genuinely
non-adaptationist methodology implicit in much evolutionary developmental biology. This conclusion helps to expose the links
between older debates over adaptationism and more recent questions about the property of evolvability.
相似文献
Tim LewensEmail: Email: |
8.
Gillian Barker 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(1):1-25
Two critiques of simple adaptationism are distinguished: anti-adaptationism and extended adaptationism. Adaptationists and
anti-adaptationists share the presumption that an evolutionary explanation should identify the dominant simple cause of the
evolutionary outcome to be explained. A consideration of extended-adaptationist models such as coevolution, niche construction
and extended phenotypes reveals the inappropriateness of this presumption in explaining the evolution of certain important
kinds of features—those that play particular roles in the regulation of organic processes, especially behavior. These biological
or behavioral ‘levers’ are distinctively available for adaptation and exaptation by their possessors and for co-optation by
other organisms. As a result they are likely to result from a distinctive and complex type of evolutionary process that conforms
neither to simple adaptationist nor to anti-adaptationist styles of explanation. Many of the human features whose evolutionary
explanation is most controversial belong to this category, including the female orgasm.
相似文献
Gillian BarkerEmail: |
9.
Renuka M. Sharma 《Journal of bioethical inquiry》2007,4(3):181-192
This paper discusses the persistent devaluation of the girl child in India and the link between the entrenched perception
of female valuelessness and the actual practice of infanticide of girl babies or foetuses. It seeks to place female infanticide,
or ‘gendercide,’ within the context of Western-derived conceptions of ethics, justice and rights. To date, current ethical
theories and internationally purveyed moral frameworks, as well as legal and political declarations, have fallen short of
an adequate moral appraisal of infanticide. This paper seeks to rethink the issue.
相似文献
Renuka M. SharmaEmail: |
10.
Peter Harries-Jones 《Biosemiotics》2009,2(2):193-204
The paper examines the sudden disappearance in the United States of millions of honeybees in managed bee colonies. The major
research undertaken in the U.S. concentrates on finding the pathogens responsible. This paper suggests an alternative avenue
of research a) that as a result of global warming there is a disjunction between bees pollinating cycles and the life cycle
of plants b) that understanding changes in “timing cycles” as a result of global warming is the key to understanding the disappearance
of the bees. It notes that Gregory Bateson argued that any condition of ecosystem collapse would be characterized first by
a collapse in its communicative order rather, than from changed physical states. The collapse of bee colonies and demise of
other pollinators is a seeming confirmation of Gregory Bateson argument. Honeybees are ‘go betweens’ in ecosystemic order.
It also argues that an appropriate topology of timing cycles and their recursions would enable better visual comprehension
of the heterarchical ‘pattern which connects’, in Bateson’s phrase, and prompt awareness of possible catastrophe in human
food supplies.
相似文献
Peter Harries-JonesEmail: |
11.
Brett Calcott 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(5):639-657
According to Pigliucci and Kaplan, there is a revolution underway in how we understand fitness landscapes. Recent models suggest
that a perennial problem in these landscapes—how to get from one peak across a fitness valley to another peak—is, in fact,
non-existent. In this paper I assess the structure and the extent of Pigliucci and Kaplan’s proposed revolution and argue
for two points. First, I provide an alternative interpretation of what underwrites this revolution, motivated by some recent
work on model-based science. Second, I show that the implications of this revolution need to carefully assessed depending on question being asked,
for peak-shifting is not central to all evolutionary questions that fitness landscapes have been used to explore.
相似文献
Brett CalcottEmail: |
12.
Mathematical neuronal models are normally expressed using differential equations. The Parker-Sochacki method is a new technique
for the numerical integration of differential equations applicable to many neuronal models. Using this method, the solution
order can be adapted according to the local conditions at each time step, enabling adaptive error control without changing
the integration timestep. The method has been limited to polynomial equations, but we present division and power operations
that expand its scope. We apply the Parker-Sochacki method to the Izhikevich ‘simple’ model and a Hodgkin-Huxley type neuron,
comparing the results with those obtained using the Runge-Kutta and Bulirsch-Stoer methods. Benchmark simulations demonstrate
an improved speed/accuracy trade-off for the method relative to these established techniques.
相似文献
Robert D. StewartEmail: |
13.
In this paper we review and argue for the relevance of the concept of open-ended evolution in biological theory. Defining
it as a process in which a set of chemical systems bring about an unlimited variety of equivalent systems that are not subject
to any pre-determined upper bound of organizational complexity, we explain why only a special type of self-constructing, autonomous
systems can actually implement it. We further argue that this capacity derives from the ‘dynamic decoupling’ (in its minimal
or most basic sense: the phenotype–genotype decoupling) by means of which a radically new way of material organization (minimal
living organization) is achieved, allowing for the long-term sustenance of systems whose individual-metabolic and collective-historical
pathways become thereafter deeply intertwined.
相似文献
Kepa Ruiz-MirazoEmail: |
14.
Donald Favareau 《Biosemiotics》2008,1(1):5-23
With the publication of this inaugural issue of the internationally peer-reviewed journal Biosemiotics, our still-developing young interdiscipline marks yet another milestone in its journey towards adulthood. For this occasion,
the editors of Biosemiotics have asked me to provide for those readers who may be newcomers to our field a very brief overview of the history of biosemiotics,
contextualizing it within and against the larger currents of philosophical and scientific thinking from which it has emerged.
To explain the origins of this most twenty-first century endeavour effectively, however, will require tracing—at least to
the level of a thumbnail sketch—how the ‘sign’ concept appeared, was lost, and now must be painstakingly rediscovered and
refined in science. To relate this long history, this article will appear in Biosemiotics in three instalments, examining, respectively: (1) The History of the Sign Concept in Pre-Modernist Science, (2) The History
of the Sign Concept in Modernist Science, and (3) The Biosemiotic Attempt to Develop a More Useful Sign Concept for Contemporary
Science. In this instalment, we begin our introductory ‘stroll through the woods of sciences and signs’ by following the development
of the sign concept within the context of scientific inquiry, in necessarily broad outline, from the beginnings of such inquiry
in sixth century BCE, through its long development in the Middle Ages, and up unto the onset of modernity. For only within
this larger historical context can our contemporary attempt to develop a naturalistic understanding of sign relations be understood.
相似文献
Donald FavareauEmail: |
15.
Amazon Forestry Tranformed: Integrating Knowledge for Smallholder Timber Managemet in Eastern Brazil
Robin R. Sears Christine Padoch Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez 《Human ecology: an interdisciplinary journal》2007,35(6):697-707
Recent discussions of local knowledge emphasize its dynamic nature invoking local peoples’ ability to effectively integrate
traditional or local with science-based or “modern” knowledges. The smallholder timber industry of the Amazon’s estuarine
floodplain provides an outstanding example of local patterns of resource management and economic activities transformed from
within by smallholder farmers who participated in the industrial timber boom of the 1970s and 1980s. These farmers of eastern
Amazonia have developed a vertically integrated local industry based on expertise reflecting profound locally developed knowledge
of specific forests and management of ecological processes, individual observation and experimentation, as well as concepts
and practices derived from temporary employment by large-scale industrial timber firms. At each stage of the smallholder forestry
process—from managing natural regeneration to running small sawmills and marketing lumber—local managers apply an innovative
set of practices reflecting their diverse experiences. This combination of technical, market, and ecological knowledge results
in forests, timber markets, and economic patterns that do not correspond to many of the widely-held generalizations concerning
either local or industrial tropical timber exploitation. This article uses data from 7 years of research in the Amazon floodplain.
相似文献
Christine PadochEmail: |
16.
Social Learning Processes in Swiss Soil Protection—The ‘From Farmer - To Farmer’ Project 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Flurina Schneider Patricia Fry Thomas Ledermann Stephan Rist 《Human ecology: an interdisciplinary journal》2009,37(4):475-489
Social learning approaches have become a prominent focus in studies related to sustainable agriculture. In order to better
understand the potential of social learning for more sustainable development, the present study assessed the processes, effects
and facilitating elements of interaction related to social learning in the context of Swiss soil protection and the innovative
‘From Farmer - To Farmer’ project. The study reveals that social learning contributes to fundamental transformations of patterns
of interactions. However, the study also demonstrates that a learning-oriented understanding of sustainable development implies
including analysis of the institutional environments in which the organizations of the individual representatives of face-to-face-based
social learning processes are operating. This has shown to be a decisive element when face-to-face-based learning processes
of the organisations’ representatives are translated into organisational learning. Moreover, the study revealed that this
was achieved not directly through formalisation of new lines of institutionalised cooperation but by establishing links in
a ‘boundary space’ trying out new forms of collaboration, aiming at social learning and co-production of knowledge. It is
argued that further research on social learning processes should give greater emphasis to this intermediary level of ‘boundary
spaces’.
相似文献
Stephan RistURL: www.cde.unibe.ch |
17.
T. Ryan Gregory 《Evolution》2008,1(2):121-137
Charles Darwin sketched his first evolutionary tree in 1837, and trees have remained a central metaphor in evolutionary biology
up to the present. Today, phylogenetics—the science of constructing and evaluating hypotheses about historical patterns of
descent in the form of evolutionary trees—has become pervasive within and increasingly outside evolutionary biology. Fostering
skills in “tree thinking” is therefore a critical component of biological education. Conversely, misconceptions about evolutionary
trees can be very detrimental to one’s understanding of the patterns and processes that have occurred in the history of life.
This paper provides a basic introduction to evolutionary trees, including some guidelines for how and how not to read them.
Ten of the most common misconceptions about evolutionary trees and their implications for understanding evolution are addressed.
相似文献
T. Ryan GregoryEmail: |
18.
19.
Jonathan Kaplan 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(5):625-638
The concepts of adaptive/fitness landscapes and adaptive peaks are a central part of much of contemporary evolutionary biology;
the concepts are introduced in introductory texts, developed in more detail in graduate-level treatments, and are used extensively
in papers published in the major journals in the field. The appeal of visualizing the process of evolution in terms of the
movement of populations on such landscapes is very strong; as one becomes familiar with the metaphor, one often develops the
feeling that it is possible to gain deep insights into evolution by thinking about the movement of populations on landscapes
consisting of adaptive valleys and peaks. But, since Wright first introduced the metaphor in 1932, the metaphor has been the
subject of persistent confusion, from equivocation over just what the features of the landscape are meant to represent to
how we ought to expect the landscapes to look. Recent advances—conceptual, empirical, and computational—have pointed towards
the inadequacy and indeed incoherence of the landscapes as usually pictured. I argue that attempts to reform the metaphor
are misguided; it is time to give up the pictorial metaphor of the landscape entirely and rely instead on the results of formal
modeling, however difficult such results are to understand in ‘intuitive’ terms.
相似文献
Jonathan KaplanEmail: |
20.
Aricò S 《Cell biology and toxicology》2008,24(6):475-481
Science-based indicators aimed at measuring the sustainability of human activities on the environment have become of prime
importance in the policy arena. At the international level, the Commission on Sustainable Development and the Convention on
Biological Diversity and other Multilateral Environmental Agreements have recognised the need to develop a set of scientific
indicators related to changes in biodiversity and other environmental issues able to direct policy decisions. In the marine
realm, the study of the effects of both ‘top-down’ extractive activities such as fishing is more and more dealt with, in conjunction
with ‘bottom-up’ activities such as nutrient loading and the effects on biogeochemical cycles, marine geochemistry and ecosystem
structure and functioning of other pollutants and contaminants. ‘Conventional’ approaches such as the identification of taxa,
model organisms and related methodologies will continue playing a key role for the monitoring of human-induced changes in
the marine environment. On the other hand, newly developed disciplines such as genomics, proteomics and biodiversity informatics
are increasingly looked at as a source of information and applications that can respond to questions and concerns by the policy
community such as the need to adapt to global and climate change in the marine environment so as to mitigate its societal
implications.
相似文献
Salvatore AricòEmail: |