2001 – “On Biological Laws and the Laws of Biological Sciences”

• “On Biological Laws and the Laws of Biological Sciences”, Revista Patagónica de Filosofía 2 (2001): 29-43.

The aim of the present paper is to contribute to the discussion on the laws of biology. In this respect two of the arguments against the existence of laws in biology are reconstructed and discussed, namely, the one based on their non-universality (Smart 1963) and the one based on their the evolutionary contingency (Beatty 1995). Then, the distinction between natural laws or laws of nature and scientific laws or laws of science is introduced and the consequent distinction between biological laws and the laws of biological sciences. Finally, the topic is discussed from the point of view of the structuralist conception of scientific theories, hand in hand with the distinction between fundamental and special laws, and the reconstruction of genetics made by Balzer and Dawe (1990), further developed by Lorenzano (1995, 2000, 2002), and by Balzer and Lorenzano (2000), in particular the reconstruction of the fundamental law of fit.

Acceder a “On Biological Laws and the Laws of Biological Sciences”.