Reasoning in Biological Discoveries

Lindley Darden is Professor of Philosophy and in the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Theory Change in Science: Strategies from Mendelian Genetics, as well as numerous articles in history and philosophy of science journals. Elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1995, she served as President of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology from 2001 to 2003.

• Long contents; List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Biological Mechanisms: 1. Thinking about mechanisms Peter Machamer and Carl F. Craver; 2. Discovering mechanisms in neurobiology: the case of spatial memory Carl F. Craver; 3. Strategies in the interfield discovery of the mechanism of protein synthesis Carl F. Craver; 4. Relations among fields: Mendelian, cytological and molecular mechanisms; Part II. Reasoning Strategies: Relating Fields, Resolving Anomalies: 5. Interfield theories Nancy Maull; 6. Theory construction in genetics; 7. Relations among fields in the evolutionary synthesis; 8. Selection type theories Joseph A. Cain; 9. Strategies for anomaly resolution: diagnosis and redesign; 10. Exemplars, abstractions, and anomalies: representations and theory change in Mendelian and molecular genetics; 11. Strategies for anomaly resolution in the case of adaptive mutation; Part III. Discovering Mechanisms: Construction, Evaluation, Revision: 12. Strategies for discovering mechanisms: construction, evaluation, revision; Bibliography; Index.

"Overall, this book is useful both as an introduction to the philosophical literature on mechanisms and as an overview of the main themes in Darden's work. It is a good introduction not only because Darden's views have had such an influence on recent work on mechanisms in philosophy of science, but also because she discusses the work of other philosophers throughout the papers and in the final chapter."Robyn Bluhm, Ph.D, The University of Western Ontario, Metapsychology Online Reviews.