Integrative Promise and Explanatory Virtues in the Life Sciences
(2023) National Chung Cheng University — Location: Chiayi, Taiwan (1.November.2023)
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- Abstract
- Explanations in the life sciences, I will argue, are often defended on the basis of a cluster of related, interconnected explanatory virtues: their capacity to integrate disparate biological phenomena (integration), their use of stringent tests of that integration (stringency), their opportunistic relationships to other biological fields (opportunism), and their often forthright acceptance of non-epistemic value judgments (non-epistemic values). In a recent book (currently under review), I have proposed to call this cluster of explanatory virtues integrative promise. I will present this general approach, and then illustrate it by drawing upon recent debates over a “return to natural history” in evolutionary biology – a controversy, I claim, that is fruitfully explained as being one over the integrative promise of natural history for the contemporary life sciences.
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Citations
Pence, C. (2023). Integrative Promise and Explanatory Virtues in the Life Sciences. National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/28904