Discovering Complexity Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research

by Bechtel, William; Richardson, Robert C.

• ISBN13: 9780262514736
• ISBN10: 0262514737
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-06
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

In Discovering Complexity,William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility-the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexitywas originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993.

Author Biography

William Bechtel is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience and other books. Robert C. Richardson is Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Philosophy and University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology (MIT Press, 2007). Both are Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Table of Contents

Preface to the MIT Press Edition	p. xi
Preface to the Original Edition	p. xiii
Introduction: Discovering Complexity-Further Perspectives	p. xvii
The Appearance of a New Mechanistic Philosophy of Science	p. xvi
Discovery Heuristics: Conceptual and Experimental	p. xx
Decomposition and Localization	p. xxviii
Recomposing and Situating Mechanisms	p. xxxvii
Model Systems, Conserved Mechanisms, and Generalization	p. xl
Rethinking Emergence	p. xliv
Conclusion	p. xlvii
Scientific Discovery and Rationality
Cognitive Strategies and Scientific Discovery	p. 3
Rationalizing Scientific Discovery	p. 3
Procedural Rationality	p. 11
Complex Systems and Mechanistic Explanations	p. 17
Mechanistic Explanation	p. 17
Decomposition and Localization	p. 23
Hierarchy and Organization	p. 27
Conclusion: Failure of Localization	p. 31
Emerging Mechanisms
Introduction	p. 35
Identifying the Locus of Control	p. 39
Introduction: Identifying System and Context	p. 39
External Control: The Environment as a Control	p. 41
Internal Control: The System as a Control	p. 47
Fixing on a Locus of Control: the Cell in Respiration	p. 51
Conclusion: Localization of Function	p. 59
Direct Localization	p. 63
Introduction: Relocating Control	p. 63
Phrenology and Cerebral Localization	p. 65
Competing Models of Cellular Respiration	p. 72
Conclusion: Direct Localization and Competing Mechanisms	p. 88
The Rejection of Mechanism	p. 93
Introduction: Mechanism and Its Opponents	p. 93
Flourens and the Integrity of the Nervous System	p. 95
The Vitalist Opposition to Mechanistic Physiology	p. 99
Conclusion: Setting for Descriptions	p. 113
Elaborating Mechanisms
Introduction	p. 119
Complex Localization	p. 125
Introduction: Constraints on Localization	p. 125
Top-Down Constraints	p. 128
Bottom-Up Constraints	p. 138
Conclusion: The Rise and Decline of Decomposability	p. 145
Integrated Mechanisms	p. 149
Introduction: Replacing a Direct Localization	p. 149
Direct Localization of Fermentation in Zymase	p. 153
A Complex Linear Model of Fermentation	p. 156
An Integrated System Responsible for Fermentation	p. 163
Conclusion: The Discovery of Integration	p. 168
Reconstituting the Phenomena	p. 173
Introduction: Biochemical Genetics	p. 173
Classical Genetics	p. 175
Developmental Genetics	p. 181
One Gene/One Enzyme	p. 188
Conclusion: Reconstituting the Phenomena	p. 192
Emergent Mechanism
Introduction	p. 199
"Emergent" Phenomena in Interconnected Networks	p. 202
Introduction: Dispensing with Modules	p. 202
Hierarchical Control: Hughlings Jackson's Analysis of the Nervous Systems	p. 203
Parallel Distributed Processing and Cognition	p. 210
Distributed Mechanisms for Genomic Regulation	p. 223
Conclusion: Mechanistic Explanations without Functional Decomposition and Localization	p. 227
Constructing Causal Explanations	p. 230
Decomposition and Localization in Perspective	p. 230
Four Constraints on Development	p. 234
Conclusion: Looking Forward	p. 243
Notes	p. 245
References	p. 257
Index	p. 281
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