ebook ebooks e-book e-books downloaden bei MyEbooks.ch downloaden

Mapping the Future of Biology Evolving Concepts and Theories

:	Robert S. Cohen, Jürgen Renn, Kostas Gavroglu, Anouk Barberousse, Michel Morange, Thomas Pradeu.
:	Anouk Barberousse, Michel Morange, Thomas Pradeu
:	Mapping the Future of Biology Evolving Concepts and Theories
:	Springer-Verlag
:	9781402096365
:	1
:	CHF 135.20
:

:	Biologie
:	English

:	178
:	Wasserzeichen/DRM
:	PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:	PDF

Carving Nature at its Joints? In order to map the future of biology we need to understand where we are and how we got there. Present day biology is the realization of the famous metaphor of the organism as a bete machine elaborated by Descartes in Part V of the Discours,a realization far beyond what anyone in the seventeenth century could have im- ined. Until the middle of the nineteenth century that machine was an articulated collection of macroscopic parts, a system of gears and levers moving gasses, solids, and liquids, and causing some parts of the machine to move in response to the force produced by others. Then, in the nineteenth century, two divergent changes occurred in the level at which the living machine came to be investigated. First, with the rise of chemistry and the particulate view of the composition of matter, the forces on macroscopic machine came to be understood as the ma- festation of molecular events, and functional biology became a study of molecular interactions. That is, the machine ceased to be a clock or a water pump and became an articulated network of chemical reactions. Until the ?rst third of the twentieth century this chemical view of life, as re?ected in the development of classical b- chemistry treated the chemistry of biological molecules in much the same way as for any organic chemical reaction, with reaction rates and side products that were the consequence of statistical properties of the concentrations of reactants.

	Foreword	6
	Carving Nature at its Joints?	6
	Contents	9
	Contributors	11
	Introduction	12
	1.1 Molecular Biology Meets Evolutionary Biology: Challenges to Post- Mayrian Biology	12
	1.2 Elaborating Key Concepts	18
	1.3 Detailed Contents of this Book	22
	Articulating Different Modes of Explanation: The Present Boundary in Biological Research	25
	2.1 Introduction	25
	2.2 Molecular Explanatory Models	26
	2.3 Putting These Models Side by Side or Opposing Them is a Dead- End	28
	2.4 The Difficulty of Interlinking Different Explanations	32
	2.5 A Paradoxical Conclusion	34
	Compromising Positions: The Minding of Matter	37
	3.1 TheWord	37
	3.2	38
	Four Themes	38
	3.3 Serving Two Masters: Minding Matter	46
	3.4 Conclusion	53
	Abstractions, Idealizations, and Evolutionary Biology	56
	4.1 Introduction	56
	4.2 Idealization and Abstraction	56
	4.3 Successes and Pitfalls	60
	4.4 The Informational Gene	62
	The Adequacy of Model Systems for Evo-Devo: Modeling the Formation of Organisms/ Modeling the Formation of Society	65
	5.1 Introduction	65
	5.2 New Model Systems for Evo-Devo	68
	5.3 Model Systems and the Assumptions of Developmental and Evolutionary Biology	74
	Niche Construction in Evolution, Ecosystems and Developmental Biology	77
	6.1 Introduction	77
	6.2 Niche Construction	78
	6.3 Earthworms	82
	6.4 Other Examples	83
	6.5 The Limitations of the Standard Theory	84
	6.6 Extended Evolutionary Theory	87
	6.7 Modelling Niche Construction	88
	6.8 The Implications of Niche Construction for Ecology	89
	6.9 A Simple Model of an Ecosystem	90
	6.10 Ecosystems and Evolution Without Niche Construction	92
	6.11 Ecosystems and Evolution with Niche Construction	93
	6.12 EMGAs	95
	6.13 Integrating Ecology and Evolution	95
	6.14 Niche Construction and Developmental Biology	96
	6.15 Gene Networks in Development and Ecosystems	98
	Novelty, Plasticity and Niche Construction: The Influence of Phenotypic Variation on Evolution	100
	7.1 Where Does Novelty Come From? A Hypothesis	100
	7.2 Biased Variation and Evolution	102
	7.3 Phenotypic Plasticity and its Significance	104
	7.4 The Organism-Environment Developmental Loop	110
	The Evolution of Complexity	117
	8.1 The Arrow of Complexity Hypothesis	118
	8.2 Replaying the Tape of Life	119
	8.3 Complexity Growth by Passive Diffusion	121
	8.4 The Evolution of Complexity in Artificial Life Models	123
	8.5 Objections and Replies	128
	8.6 Conclusions	136
	Self-Organization, Self-Assembly, and the Origin of Life	137
	9.1 Introduction	137
	9.2 The Origin of Life in Four Acts	139
	9.3 The Gospel of Inevitability	141
	Self-Organization and Complexity in Evolutionary Theory, or, in this Life the Bread Always Falls Jammy Side Down	147
	10.1 What is Life?	148
	10.2 Organization	150
	10.3 Is Natural Selection All-Powerful?	152
	10.4 Constraints	154
	10.5 Order for free	157
	10.6 Conclusion	160
	References	161
	Index	176