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Discovering Complexity - Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research (Paperback)
Loot Price: R444
Discovery Miles 4 440
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Discovering Complexity - Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research (Paperback)
Series: Discovering Complexity
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List price R544
Loot Price R444
Discovery Miles 4 440
You Save R100 (18%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 15 working days
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An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of
mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the
life sciences. 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
Complexity was 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.
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