More Worry and Less Love?

REVIEW SYMPOSIUM

MORE WORRY AND LESS LOVE?

Alexander Rosenberg, Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to StopWorrying and Love Molecular Biology. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. x+263. US$40.00 HB

By Alan C. Love

Worry carries with it a connotation of false concern, as in �yourmother is always worried about you’. And yet some worrying,including that of your mother, turns out to be justified. AlexanderRosenberg’s new book is an extended argument intended to as-suage false concerns about reductionism and molecular biologywhile encouraging a loving embrace of the two. It collects previ-ously published and newly written material woven together with anoverarching narrative: Darwinian theory �reductively’ reaches allthe way down to the history of macromolecules. Rosenberg seesthis as a distinct break with his earlier works (The Structure ofBiological Science, 1985; and Instrumental Biology or the Disunityof Science, 1994), where he argued against reductionism conceptua-lised in terms of Nagelian formal strictures on theory reduction.Ironically, Rosenberg now uses the same argument for reduction-ism in the context of explanation that he previously used againstreductionism in the context of theories: natural selection. The oper-ation of natural selection at the level of macromolecules simulta-neously shows that biology is relatively autonomous from physicalscience and vindicates reductionism – a Darwinian reductionism.

Rosenberg frames his analysis in terms of ‘‘biology’s untenabledualism’’, i.e. the joint commitment to physicalism and antireduc-tionism. ‘‘How can you be a physicalist and deny the ‘‘nothingbut’’ thesis?... It is this paradoxical state of affairs that makes aperplexing mystery out of the problem of exactly how molecularbiology relates to the rest of biology’’ (p. 3). After setting the stagearound this puzzle in the Introduction, subsequent chapters unpack

Metascience (2008) 17:1–26 � Springer 2008DOI 10.1007/s11016-007-9159-9

various elements of the argument. Chapter 1 establishes keydistinctions (�how-possible’ vs. �why-necessary’ and �ultimate’ vs.�proximate’ explanations) in order to �reconfigure’ reductionism.Chapters 2 and 3 use molecular developmental biology as an exem-plar of this new explanatory reductionism. Here Rosenberg repliesto criticisms of genes having a privileged causal role in develop-ment and defends the integrity of some contested concepts (�gene’,�genetic information’, and �developmental programming’).Chapters 4–6 deal directly with natural selection. Rosenberg arguesthat natural selection undergirds a reductionist biology becausenatural selection is a fundamental physico-chemical law of nature.Chapters 7 and 8 draw out putative applications for humans interms of our molecular history with respect to altruism and geneticdeterminism.

Although argued with characteristic force and precision, naggingworries remain. Claims that reductionism has been ‘‘the scientificworldview’s program of research since the 17th century’’ and underits aegis ‘‘more and more phenomena’’... have been shown to be‘‘nothing but’’ matter in motion are tendentious (pp. 2–3). The his-torical thumbnails he provides about physics and chemistry do notlay the matter to rest. Before Rosenberg’s specific arguments canbe adequately assessed, we need to attend to the framing of his dis-cussion. It is the problematic nature of Rosenberg’s assumptionsand core distinctions that justify worry about his reductionism.This critical tactic is preferable because his argument arises from aphilosophical strategy that is not universally shared, especiallywhen it comes to the difference between epistemology and meta-physics.

Rosenberg’s construal of reductionism as a �nothing but’ thesisis metaphysical (physicalism) but he often switches over to episte-mological language such as �theory’, �explanation’, or �research pro-gram’. This is because he aims to derive conclusions for practicalresearch activity from metaphysical considerations, which in hisview is where the real philosophical action lies: ‘‘the dispute is...not epistemic but ontological’’ (p. 179). Unless garden variety bio-logical explanations are replaced by Darwinian macromolecularexplanations, we are left with either �explanatory Protagoreanism’,which resists reductionism with the feeble claim that it is impossiblebecause of our cognitive deficiencies (‘‘a claim about biologists, notabout biology’’, p. 36), or vitalism returns through the back door.

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The issue is metaphysical: ‘‘[t]he antireductionist needs there to besomething in the nature of all truly biological phenomena [i.e.metaphysics] that acts as barrier to reduction’’ (p. 15). The moral isepistemological: pursue macromolecular methodologies and expla-nations. This strategy contrasts with that of many philosophers ofbiology who concentrate on comprehending reductionism as a kindof reasoning (i.e. epistemology), and subsequently inquire about itsmetaphysical implications (if any).

Rosenberg’s attempt to make metaphysical concepts do workfor biology began thirty years ago when he co-opted the idea of�supervenience’ from Jaegwon Kim to explicate the concept of fit-ness. It continues here in exactly the same form when he importsKim’s causal exclusion argument from philosophy of mind to bol-ster his reductionist thesis. Needless to say, these are not settledmatters and should be treated with caution. Three other problem-atic aspects of Rosenberg’s argument structure can be identified, allof which are required for him to arrive at his conclusion:

Claim 1: ‘‘Let us distinguish functional biology from molecularbiology’’ (p. 25). This distinction is mapped onto the �how-possi-ble’/�why-necessary’ explanation distinction in order to facilitate acentral inference. Only �why-necessary’ explanations really explain(see below, Claim 3) and they are only found in molecular biology.Functional biology (‘‘what makes a kind functional is that its in-stances are the products of an evolutionary etiology’’) only pro-duces �how-possible’ explanations because selection is blind to thevariety of causal details and multiple realizations underneath adap-tations. But the distinction should be rejected for multiple reasons.First, it sets up an artificial �two-levellism’ that does not reflect thestructure of reasoning and knowledge in biology. Even the prob-lematic institutional division between �Ecology, Evolution, andBehaviour’ and �Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology’ can-not recover Rosenberg’s split. Second, this leaves out a consider-able amount of biology that is neither �molecular’ nor �functional’.Large swathes of biology are structural, whether molecular or not,and just as relevant to questions of reductionism (e.g. part–wholecompositional relations). Third, and related, �functional’ means farmore than �evolutionary etiology’ in biological science, which leadsus to the next claim.

Claim 2: ‘‘To call something a wing is not to describe it in terms ofits composition, or structure, but in terms of [its selected effect]...

MORE WORRY AND LESS LOVE? 3

Biology ‘‘taxonomizes’’ the phenomena in which it interests itselffunctionally, not structurally’’ (pp. 18–19). It is hard to know what tosay about this claim other than that it is prima facie simply false. Fewbiologists would recognise Rosenberg’s picture of individuationbecause structural considerations are prevalent in descriptions of bio-logical kinds. Many examples can be adduced: cell individuation viashape (e.g. columnar), bone individuation based on shape (e.g. pelvis[basin]), muscle individuation using location (e.g. brachialis [pertain-ing to the upper arm]), and anatomical units (e.g. head). Generaliza-tions based on these structural categorizations are greatly narrowedif individuation must occur functionally because the functions ofthese structures vary tremendously. Judgments of homology in com-parative biology explicitly individuate structures apart from functionand would be vitiated otherwise. There is more to function in biologythan Rosenberg is prepared to accept (cf. Wouters, 2003), and farmore to biology than function.

Claim 3: ‘‘Explanations need laws or something like them... theabsence of laws is a serious problem for biological explanation’’(p. 135). Rosenberg’s commitment to nomothetic explanation is acornerstone in his argument for Darwinian reductionism. It is whatgives the �necessary’ in �why-necessary’ explanations from molecularbiology, which is sadly out of reach to functional biology’s �how-possible’ explanation sketches. For this reason, natural selectionexplanations at the level of macromolecules are more complete andadequate accounts of biological phenomena. And, because the prin-ciple of natural selection is a non-derived physico-chemical law,biology remains largely autonomous from physics and chemistry.But Rosenberg’s rejection of Kitcher’s unification account of expla-nation and any account of �inexact laws’ (e.g. Jim Woodward’s�invariance under intervention’) is not really convincing. The onlygenuine law in biology for Rosenberg is the principle of naturalselection, so real explanation in biology must always invoke it (ifonly implicitly). Many will object to this conception of the princi-ple of natural selection but another reason to worry is that it relieson the problematic understanding of function and individuationalready discussed. Also, Rosenberg’s view of how biological expla-nation works leaves most biologists not offering explanations. Thisis poignant for biologists using Newtonian mechanics to explainbiological phenomena. (Functional morphologists, who taxonomisetheir elements of research structurally, routinely treat aspects of

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animal morphology in terms of physical concepts, such as theapplication of a force or load to an appendage to understand thedynamics of locomotion). Most worrisome is the counterintuitiveconsequence that a macromolecular level selection explanation of along extinct population from billions of years ago is causally rele-vant to and justifies an individual level selection explanation for anextant population (cf. p. 194ff).

All three of these claims are emblematic of the fact that biologi-cal concepts are not what motivate Rosenberg. This also can be ob-served in his treatment of examples and the narrow cross-section ofdisciplines from which he chooses them. First, one is often frus-trated with his interpretation of the biology, such as his discussionof Drosophila wing formation (p. 49). Rosenberg claims the gene‘‘wingless builds wings’’ and that it has this name ‘‘because of thoseeffects which were selected by the environment to provide wings’’.He overlooks the fact that wingless also plays a critical role in pat-terning the cuticle of embryos. And what about cleopatra andglass-bottom boat? Second, the heterogeneity of reasoning in molec-ular and evolutionary biology is irrelevant to Rosenberg. Largeportions of evolutionary research not falling under Rosenberg’sdefinition (‘‘evolution means the Darwinian mechanism of blindvariation and natural selection’’, p. ix) do not matter and nevermake an appearance. His assertion that ‘‘nothing in the laboratoryhas arisen to suggest impediments to the research program ofreductionism’’ (p. 7) is contentious when some molecular biologicalresearchers apparently recognise such impediments: ‘‘Our resultssuggest that the cellular responses induced by multiplex proteinkinase inhibitors may be an emergent property that cannot beunderstood fully considering only the sum of individual inhibitor-kinase interactions’’ (Kung et al., 2005, p. 3587).

Diffusing justified worry requires agreement on the nature ofwhat is in question. Rosenberg’s primary interest is in metaphysicsrather than epistemology; he sees his philosophical task as hunting�ghosts in the machine’. Many philosophers of biology take episte-mology to be the primary domain of analysis, especially becausebiological reasoning is so heterogeneous; functional ascriptions arediverse; and explanation occurs without universal, exceptionlesslaws. Rosenberg demurs. But this implies that the disagreementdoes not concern the argument but rather what we should be


arguing about. And this is certainly something that implies moreworry and less love.

Department of PhilosophyUniversity of MinnesotaMinneapolis, MNUSA

By Ingo Brigandt

Darwinian Reductionism develops a novel variety of explanatoryreduction (as opposed to classical theory reduction), arguing thatbiological explanations can be complete (why-necessary rather thanhow-possible explanations) only if they invoke laws operating atthe physical, macromolecular level. This novel notion of reductionis intended to make room for reductive explanations despite theexistence of multiple realizations. Rosenberg forcefully argues thatprevious discussions in the philosophy of biology have ignoredimportant metaphysical considerations, yet his own metaphysicallydriven account ignores relevant epistemological and scientific issues.Rosenberg rightly attempts to restructure the reduction vs. anti-reduction debate, but at the same time he discards points on whicheveryone has agreed – reductionists and antireductionists alike. Hesensibly does not spend much space rehearsing well-known argu-ments for and against antireductionism, but when mentioning anti-reductionist positions Rosenberg creates straw men, such as thetenet that antireductionists deny that biological facts supervene onphysical facts (p. 20), e.g. by assuming that the spatial distance ofcells is not a physical property (p. 84). Many philosophical ideasand claims about biology put forward are controversial; andRosenberg does not provide support for many of his claims thatare not generally accepted by those working in the relevant fields.

To my mind, the structure of his overall account is unclear.Rosenberg introduces a whole set of arguments for reductionismthat reinforce each other but are logically independent, and the dis-cussion neither presents these as independent arguments, nor givesa clear and consistent account of their relation. Some of his claims(pp. 22, 132) explicitly locate the main argument for reductionismin the first half of the book (Chap. 23). On this account, the secondpart (Chaps. 4–6) addresses some remaining issues, the idea beingthat since the main argument in the first half presupposes the

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theory of natural selection, this theory has to be reduced to themolecular level in the second part. However, as far as I can tell,whenever Chaps. 2 and 3 invoke natural selection, it is actuallynever in those parts of the discussion where Rosenberg argues forreductionism (selection is mentioned when making seeming conces-sions, yet it is emphasised that these do not affect reduction). Thisargument in the first part consists in the claim that recent successesin developmental genetics shows that development is the executionof a genetic program. Many philosophers and biologists believethat this is false; and Rosenberg’s discussion is too brief to provideconvincing support for his interpretation, also ignoring some rele-vant previous philosophical accounts of the same material (e.g.Laubichler and Wagner, 2001; Robert, 2004).

At other points of the book, however, Rosenberg suggests that hismain argument is to be found in the second part of the book (pp. 20,41, 152, 177). This argument for reductionism rests on the status ofnatural selection and is thus at the heart of Darwinian Reductionism.It turns out to not depend on the earlier discussion at all.Chapters 4–6 suggest that there are three options: (1) natural selec-tion is not a physical process but ontologically emergent, in whichcase antireduction is vindicated; (2) natural selection is a physical pro-cess derivable from physical laws, which implies reduction; and (3)natural selection is a basic, underived physical law, which also vindi-cating reduction (p. 182). Most of Rosenberg’s discussion is targetedat showing that Option 3 obtains. Note that none of these options –focusing on evolutionary theory – makes reductionism dependent onthe nature of explanations in experimental biology, such as molecu-lar, cellular and developmental biology. In contrast, previous debatesbetween reductionists and antireductionists have taken the issue toturn on facts about experimental biology.

Rather than discussing Rosenberg’s argument for natural selec-tion being a basic physical law, I focus on how this relates toreduction. First, antireductionists in philosophy of biology are notvitalists but non-reductive physicalists. Thus, they assume that anybiological process is also a physical process, which shows thatOptions 2 and 3 do not entail reduction. Rosenberg thinks thatnon-reductive physicalism is simply not a viable metaphysical posi-tion, and to support this view he appeals to Jaegwon Kim’s (1998)prominent �exclusion argument’ against non-reductive physicalismabout mental phenomena (which has been effectively criticised; see


Marras, 2007). Showing that non-reductive physicalism is meta-physically impossible would provide a sufficient argument forreduction, but this would be an argument independent of the statusof natural selection and thus of most ideas in Darwinian Reductionism.Rosenberg does not defend Kim’s argument or reply to standardobjections – he only presents the argument ‘‘briefly’’ (p. 180) – soin the end it is just another, independent argument.

Second, recall that Rosenberg devotes so much effort to show-ing that natural selection is a basic physical law because the pivotalidea of Darwinian Reductionism is that reductionism is true if andonly if selection is a physical process (p. 20). His argument for link-ing the status of selection with the truth of reduction is based onthe assumption that all biological kinds are individuated in termsof their function, where �function’ means an entity’s selected effect –an idea repeated like a mantra throughout the book (pp. 19, 25,30, 40,...). Because every �kind’ in biology, including molecular andexperimental biology, is individuated in terms of its selection his-tory, any description and explanation involves reference to naturalselection: ‘‘since Dobzhansky’s dictum is literally true, every proxi-mate explanation in biology is implicitly ultimate, every such expla-nation includes an implicit commitment to the theory of naturalselection’’ (p. 20). Thus, an explanation from experimental biologyis fully reductive only if the presupposed principle of natural selec-tion is in fact physical-molecular.

In line with his view that all biological kinds are selected-func-tion kinds, Rosenberg maintains that taxa are individuated in termsof their function; yet it is surely uncontroversial that taxonomistsclassify in terms of phylogeny. His example is �amphibian’, thoughRosenberg does not explain what he takes the function of amphibi-ans to be that unites them as a kind, or what the function (selectedeffect) of a whole organism is, as opposed to the function of a part(p. 139). Despite his tenet that ‘‘every biologically interesting struc-ture is labelled by the term that expresses its selected effect’’(p. 137), the orthodox view within biology is that morphologicalstructures are individuated phylogenetically in terms of homology,and their names are non-descriptive proper names (e.g. �hyoid’).Rosenberg makes the same problematic claim about genes and bio-chemical structures (p. 20). He is right that some gene names,e.g. wingless (p. 49), are derived from their phenotypic function(though in this case it is a simple causal-role, not a selected-effect

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function), but it is unclear what he would make of such names asspatzle and sonic hedgehog. At one point, Rosenberg quotes a longpassage from a molecular biology textbook describing the mecha-nism of DNA replication. The explanation proceeds in terms ofstructure, activity and causal-role function, without presupposingany evolutionary idea. Yet Rosenberg asserts that ‘‘[t]he PNS [prin-ciple of natural selection] haunts the entire discussion’’ (p. 156).

The conventional wisdom among biologists and philosophers ofbiology is that kinds in biology (even within evolutionary biology)are for the most part individuated in terms of structure, commonancestry, activity, or causal-role function, and only rarely in termsof selected effects (Griffiths, 2006). Parts are individuated in termsof selected effect function in studies of convergent evolution andprocesses such as mimicry. Unless Rosenberg can provide supportfor the idea that all biological kinds are selected-function kinds, theimplications of his assumption about biological kinds for his pro-ject are severe. Given that individuation schemes used by scientistsare the basis for descriptions, generalizations, and explanations,Rosenberg’s discussion does not reflect how theorizing and expla-nation proceed within experimental biology. Thereby the accountmisses an issue that has been central to the reduction debate. Themore immediate implication is that Rosenberg’s main discussionabout the status of selection (Chaps. 4–6) is irrelevant: since not allkinds in experimental biology are individuated in terms of selectedeffects, it is not the case that all statements in experimental biologymake implicit reference to natural selection. This underminesRosenberg’s pivotal assumption that reduction is true if and only ifselection is a physical process.

It is laudable that Rosenberg attempts to go well beyond pastphilosophical accounts by devising a novel notion of reduction.Still, quite independent of the merits of his particular arguments, atthis point in the debate is it really relevant to devise more argu-ments for either reductionism or antireductionism? While explana-tions in experimental biology often appeal to several levels oforganismal organization at the same time, Rosenberg still perpetu-ates the dichotomy between �biological explanations involve thehigher level only’ and �explanations involve the molecular levelonly’ (when construing antireductionists somewhat erroneously asendorsing a two-level picture, where an alleged �biological’ levelcannot be reduced to a �physical level’; pp. 7, 12, 26). What I take


to be the more fruitful task for future philosophical study is to tryunderstanding how biologists can investigate several levels of orga-nization jointly and put forward explanations where molecularfactors shed light on higher-level features and vice versa.

Department of PhilosophyUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton, Canada

By Karola Stotz

Rosenberg’s latest opus identifies a dilemma faced by all anti-reduc-tionists, and indeed most of biology and philosophy of biology, andrecommends his new �Darwinian reductionism’ as a remedy. This di-lemma is the ‘‘untenable dualism’’ of rejecting reductionism whileretaining a commitment to physicalism, a situation that Rosenbergargues ‘‘must catastrophically shift to vitalism’’ (p. 21). According toRosenberg, antireductionists reject reductionism and the hegemonyof molecular biology because they think that �ultimate’ explanationsin terms of evolution by natural selection are in principle irreducible.They are irreducible because selection is blind to a variety of causeswith similar effects, which ensures the multiple realizability of alladaptations. Problematically though, anti-reductionists still attemptto hold on to some version of the physicalist’s �nothing but’ thesis:‘‘There are no non-physical events, states, or processes, and so bio-logical events, states, and processes are �nothing but’ physical ones’’(p. 25). Rosenberg’s remedy is simple: Darwinism can be reduced tothe macromolecular level and therefore fulfils the reductionistrequirement, but also represents an irreducible chemical process andso assures biology its autonomous status. To put it in Rosenberg’sown terms, the �how possible’ explanations of �functional biology’(everything but molecular biology) are reduced to the �why necessary’explanations of (Darwinian) reductionism.

Both the diagnosed dilemma and the prescribed remedy rely onproblematic assumptions. There are other reasons why people em-brace anti-reductionism. Not only is there more to evolution thanthe statistical process of natural selection, but there is more tofunctional biology than evolutionary biology and there is more tothe �functional’ in functional biology than selected effects. Mostimportantly, though, in my view there are different kinds of reduc-tionism than Rosenberg’s metaphysical one, and there is more to

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physicalism than several varieties of the �nothing but’ thesis. I willbe particularly concerned with these last two assertions.

Rosenberg claims that the main reasons for embracing anti-reductionism belong in the realm of politics, religion, and ethics, aswell as the defence of turf and funding. The only exception is thealready mentioned argument from Dobzhansky’s dictum that �noth-ing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’ and themultiple realizability of biological kinds. I do not think this is fairto the leading adherents of anti-reductionism in philosophy of biol-ogy (e.g. Kitcher, 1984; but see also Dyke, 1988; and the physicistsquoted below). A more extended discussion of Rosenberg’s distinc-tion between epistemic and ontological reductionisms would alsohave been helpful, as many of these theorists would question hissuggestion that anything short of metaphysical reductionism isphilosophically uninteresting. Most importantly, Rosenbergneglects to discuss the many forms of emergence (weak, strong,trivial, and nontrivial), and the various different commitments toreductionism that go along with them. The book defines the reduc-tionistic program of molecular biology as the belief that all biologi-cal phenomena must in principle be fully reducible to the scientificlaws recognised by physics and chemistry: there is nothing more tobiological facts than the interaction of the macromolecules thatbring them about. Here Rosenberg implicitly refers to metaphysicalreductionism. At another place we are informed that biologicalexplanations need to be ‘‘improved, corrected, strengthened, mademore accurate and adequate, and completed’’ by molecular biology(p. 4). This statement, however, translates the former into biologi-cal practice and therefore refers to epistemological reductionism,which includes methodological and explanatory reduction, and isnot just, as Rosenberg suggests, a matter of practical limitations onour ability to carry out reductions. However, without an under-standing of the difference between methodological and explanatoryreductionism that refers to different investigative and explanatorystrategies, Rosenberg is unable to accept that a biologist may valuemolecular research and understanding while at the same time seek-ing a full explanation that includes different levels of explanation.Hence her explanation would be non-reductionistic (instead of anti)while still grounded in molecular biology and other physical lawsthat provide the necessary but not sufficient condition for the emer-gent phenomenon accounted for in the explanation. But Rosenberg


will not recognise that there are other dimensions to non-reduction-ism beyond the multiple realizability caused by natural selection. Inthat case a variety of underlying causes have the same effect, butthere are opposite cases, in which the same macromolecules havedifferent effects due to their recruitment into different networks. Itis exactly the latter difference between molecular and cellular func-tions of molecules that creates problems for reductionist researchstrategies. The way in which the same molecules can function dif-ferently in different networks points toward concepts such as orga-nization, emergence, autonomy, self-organization, and complexity,none of which are mentioned in the book, but which are importantfor any discussion of reduction.

Rosenberg’s demand for a reductionistic biology rests on thecentral metaphysical thesis of physicalism and the claim that non-reductionistic biology is incompatible with physicalism. Physicalismaccording to Rosenberg is the assumption that all worldly phenom-ena are nothing but matter in motion. In contrast, the more aptterm �matter plus organization’ would make it immediately under-standable how even physicists can reconcile physicalism with anon-reductionist stance. There is more to physics than reduction toquantum mechanics, relativity theory and an elusive Theory ofEverything. According to the physicist George F. R. Ellis, truecomplexity is the emergence of higher levels of order from, but to alarge degree independent of, the underlying low-level physics. Orderimplies higher-level systemic organization that has real effects onthe behaviour of the parts at the lower level. Organised matter hasunique properties. In the same vein the Nobel laureates andStanford professors of physics Phillip W. Anderson and RobertB. Laughlin both independently challenge the prevailing reduction-ist strategy of modern science. While the former argues on thebasis of the principle of symmetry breaking that �More is different’,the latter asserts that laws and theories follow from collectivebehaviour, not the other way around. If we try to analyze thingstoo closely, we risk not understanding how they work on a macrolevel. Laughlin and David Pines claim that ‘‘the triumph of thereductionism of the Greeks is a pyrrhic victory: We have succeededin reducing all of ordinary physical behaviour to a simple, correctTheory of Everything only to discover that it has revealed exactlynothing about many things of great importance’’. They pointto higher organizing principles in nature, e.g. the principle of

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continuous symmetry breaking, localization, protection, and self-organization, that are insensitive to and independent of the under-lying microscopic theory of everything and often solely determinethe generic low-energy properties of stable states of matter (quan-tum protectorates) and their associated emergent physical phenom-ena.

However, to [many physical] scientists the idea is considered dangerous andludicrous, for it is fundamentally at odds with the reductionist beliefs central to

much of physics. But the safety that comes from acknowledging only the factsone likes is fundamentally incompatible with science. Sooner or later it must beswept away by the forces of history... The central task of theoretical physics in

our time is no longer to write down the ultimate equations but rather to cata-logue and understand emergent behavior in its many guises, including poten-tially life itself. We call this physics of the next century the study of complexadaptive matter’’ (Laughlin and Pines, 2000, pp. 28, 30).

Besides questioning Rosenberg’s idea of the content of physicsand hence of physicalism, none of his explanations of the motivesof anti-reductionists in biology get much grip on these anti-reduc-tionists in physics.

Chapters 2 and 3 attempt to vindicate reductionism through a ser-ies of success stories of developmental molecular biology. Rosenbergbelieves these show that development can be reduced to genetics.However, what they explain is not development but only the role ofgenes in development. These chapters shed some doubt on the seri-ousness of Rosenberg’s promise that his reductionism is not aboutneglecting some causes over others. Gene networks as reproduced inthis book are in reality only a convenient shortcut to the elucidationof functional co-dependence of genes. There is no mention that bytaking this shortcut they collapse a multi-molecular network ofgenes, regulatory sequences, gene products, and intra- and extra-environmental signals to a single dimension. This is deliberate, be-cause it makes the genome appear to constitute a program. The lastchapter, whilst hedging against the accusation of genetic determinismthrough a detailed story of how multiple mutations (�genes’) andenvironment can cause the �same’ phenotype, also asserts the specialrole of genes in programming and regulating development andnormal functioning. Had Rosenberg presented contemporary knowl-edge of the time- and tissue-dependent requirements for environmen-tal resources that activate, select, and even create the relevant nucleicacid sequences from the �same gene’, he would have concluded thatwhat appears as a �program’ is constituted after the fact by a network


of interactions. Elucidating details about �normal’ environmentswould have shown how much the organism or its parental generationhas to invest in order to reliable provide these environmental re-sources – just as in a self-organised ant colony, agency is located nei-ther in the genome nor the environment but in the organization of allfactors in an intricate network.

As much as I think that the anti-reductionists have often putforward unconvincing arguments for a hierarchical approach ofexplanation, Rosenberg’s conviction that reductionism will be thetruism of tomorrow is likely to be mistaken. Instead of being �nothingbut’ quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, physics con-sists of a hierarchy of laws that emerge out of complexly organisedmatter. Only when this truth sinks in will the reductionist camp inthe life sciences agree to embrace complexity.

Cognitive Science ProgramUniversity of IndianaBloomington, IN 47406USA

By Daniel Schweitzer

Can all biology be reduced to molecular biology? In his latest bookRosenberg attempts to do just that, arguing that that all �func-tional’ biology can be reduced to molecular biology. Rosenberg’sradical suggestion is that although there are clearly epistemologicallimitations to such a project, metaphysically at least, there is noreason why this cannot be achieved. An omniscient God who knewall the molecular facts about Earth would be in possession of acomplete account of the entire range of phenomena that the biolog-ical sciences encompass.

Rosenberg provides a rough definition of reductionism: ‘‘Reduc-tionism is the thesis that biological theories and the explanationsthat employ them do need to be grounded in molecular biologyand ultimately physical science, for it only by doing so that theycan be improved, corrected, strengthened, made more accurate andmore adequate, and completed’’ (p. 4). I will present an exampledrawn from developmental biology which will illustrate the possi-bility of non-reductionist explanations whose explanatory powerdoes not derive from the underlying details of the molecular

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biology upon which it supervenes. Further, this does not involveany appeal to a problematic notion of �downward causation’.

Rosenberg distinguishes between two forms of reductionism:(1) epistemic reductionism and (2) ontological reductionism. Rosenbergclaims that the former is too weak to capture the dispute betweenreductionism and anti-reductionism in biology. Indeed, this iscorrect because the real terms of dispute concerns the status ofontological reductionism. Ontological anti-reductionists claim thata physical approach to biological phenomena would miss certaingeneralisations that would obtain independently of us. Ontologicalantireductionists are committed to physicalism (the thesis that allbiological facts are fixed by the physical and chemical facts) butthey do not agree with the reductionists about the implications ofphysicalism for explanatory strategies or methodological issues inbiology. On Rosenberg’s account, functional explanations persist inbiology because we simply do not know or understand all themolecular details and pathways that constitute a particular biologi-cal process. Physicalist anti-reductionists disagree.

I would argue that Rosenberg subscribes to a problematicnotion of explanation in so far as he is committed to the view thatall explanations in biology are ultimately causal explanations. Butin fact, there are numerous examples of explanations in biologythat demonstrate that genuine explanations need not be causalexplanations. That is to say, explanatorily relevant information isnot always information about causes. For instance, populationbiologists employ the tools of mathematical modelling. Their mod-els are explanatory and not simply descriptive of the phenomenonunder investigation. Consequently, there are explanations in popu-lation biology that cannot be explained in terms of the underlyinglower level properties of the system. Similarly, as I will shortlyshow, there are explanations in developmental biology in which theexplanatorily salient information cannot be considered to be aproperty of the underlying molecular structures of the system.

Lewis Wolpert’s so called �French Flag model’ is a developmen-tal explanation which is akin to a dynamical modelling explanationin the case of population ecology. It was formulated in the late1960s in order to account for some puzzling features of develop-ment, including how patterns form in the early embryo as well asproviding a potential solution to the problem of size invariance(Wolpert, 1969). In a rather simplistic construal of development,


the model represents the spatial structure of the embryo by a lineargradient in the concentration of an unspecified substance termed amorphogen, in which the concentration of the morphogen is main-tained at the two ends of the embryo by hypothetical sources andsinks. According to this model, a cell in a developmental fieldascertains its position by measuring the concentration of the sub-stance at the point in which it finds itself. In this way, the develop-mental field can be considered to be a Cartesian field. In fact, givena two dimensional field, the concentration of two different morpho-gens are able to uniquely specify a particular position in the devel-opmental field.

The French flag model nicely illustrates the power of so-callednon-causal explanations because it is essentially a mathematicalmodel whose explanatory power does not derive from the underly-ing details at the cellular/molecular level. Such explanations, Ibelieve, may be termed �pattern explanations’ because they attemptto explain the emergence of patterns (e.g. segment formation inDrosophila) in virtue of properties of the mathematical model. Thatis not to say that the model’s success can be evaluated in abstrac-tion of the molecular details. It does, however, entail that there arecertain non-causal properties of the model whose explanatory pow-er cannot be accounted for in terms of the model’s ability to trackcausal properties of the system in question.

The French flag model of development has now been refinedand superseded by more sophisticated models. But the centralinsight to be learned from it remains – that there are genuinelynon-causal explanations in developmental biology. Modellingexplanations need not be causal because they can appeal to themathematical details of the model instead. One could argue thatthe very reason that such models are explanatory is because themathematical details are descriptive in so far as they track causalproperties of the system in question. But as is illustrated in the caseabove, no amount of empirical investigation into the phenomenonof interest, such as a developmental system, will reveal the ultimateexplanation. Indeed, no amount of detailed molecular investigationwill bring us closer to the truth. A detailed understanding of themolecular pathways involved in a developmental pathway mayeven distract us from the unifying, mathematical explanation of thephenomenon at hand.

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The French flag model provides a framework for conceptualis-ing development in the early embryo – in particular, it was used tounderstand the phenomenon of spatial regulation in the regenera-tion experiments conducted during the 1960s. Although the modeldoes not yield specific predictions pertaining to the types or quanti-ties of the molecules needed to carry out the functional roles asspecified by the model, it does provide the form of explanationcharacteristic of mathematical modelling explanations. For instanceit specifies that, for the production of a developmental field, one re-quires a morphogen whose diffusion rate can be calculated by thediffusion equations employed to model the dynamics of the system.In that sense, developmental explanation can be said to motivateresearch – generating research questions and providing new ave-nues for research.

If it is true that not all the causal details of the developmental sys-tem are explanatory, then this has some interesting implications. Forinstance, if all the underlying molecular details of developmentalbiology were known, then according to my analysis, there would stillbe gaps in our understanding. That is, there would still be features ofdevelopment that would need to be explained. Furthermore, suchproperties would not be discoverable through experimental investiga-tion alone. As the French flag model illustrates, there are some prop-erties of the system that are not fully captured by a moleculardescription of the process. By invoking the resources of mathematicalmodelling, this model is able to explain certain features of a develop-mental system in virtue of non-causal properties of the system.

According to Rosenberg, the explanation provided by theFrench flag model of development cannot be genuinely explana-tory. Explanations are only explanatory when they can be framedin terms of the underlying molecular biology of the system. In thecase of developmental biology, we have seen that there are genu-inely non-causal explanations that are irreducible. This of coursedoes not commit one to a problematic form of antireductionism:there is nothing anti-physicalist about such a position. However, itdoes entail the thesis that there are genuinely non-causal explana-tions in developmental biology whose explanatory power is irreduc-ible. Although Rosenberg’s aim is to understand how biologicalresearch is currently practised, I would argue that contemporarydevelopmental biology, rather than simply being dominated bymolecular biology, is increasingly recognising the importance of


modelling type explanations of the sort inspired by the pioneeringwork of Wolpert. Of course, the French flag model itself is rathersimplistic. But it serves to illustrate the power and extent ofdynamical explanations in the absence of a complete understandingof how the types of events posited by such models would be reali-sable in molecular biology.

University of QueenslandSt. LuciaQLD 4072Australia

Author’s Response

By Alexander Rosenberg

On putting down On the Origin of Species, Thomas Huxley isreputed to have said, �How stupid of me not to have thought of it.’On putting down (in all senses of the word) Darwinian Reduction-ism, the present reviewers must have been muttering �How stupidof him to have thought that!’ Doubtless it was due to a fault of myexposition that none of my reviewers was able to detect the broadstrategy of Darwinian Reductionism or How to Stop Worrying andLove Molecular Biology (hereafter DR). So, before turning to aconsideration of their more important criticisms, it will be worth-while stating the line of argument that the book attempts (evidentlyunsuccessfully) to articulate.

DR begins by arguing that the ruling orthodoxy in the philoso-phy of biology – physicalist antireductionism – must be treated astwo claims about the world, and not one claim about the worldjoined to another claim about our knowledge of it. Physicalism isthe thesis that the physical facts fix all the facts, including the bio-logical ones, and it is uncontroversial in the philosophy of biology.If antireductionism were merely the thesis that we don’t yet knowthe full story of how the physical facts do so, it would be uncon-troversially true. If antireductionism were the claim that, owing toepistemic limitations on us, or any sapient agent, we will neverknow this full story, then it would obviously stands in need of avery much stronger epistemological foundation that no one has yet

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provided and no antireductionist has even gestured at the need for.Be that as it may, many an antireductionist has explicitly deniedthat theirs is a claim about epistemic limitations. Indeed, they makea positive epistemic claim that biologists can, indeed must, under-stand and explain biological processes adequately and completelywithout adverting to the physical facts that fix these processes, forthe physical facts that fix the biological ones are explanatorily irrel-evant to them. These sorts of claims about biological explanationrequire an antireductionist metaphysics, which identifies biologicalkinds, and laws distinct from and irreducible to physical kinds andlaws. What is the existence of these kinds and laws but the exis-tence of facts that are not fixed by the physical facts? So under-stood, physicalist antireductionism is, I argue, echoing theexpression of an earlier naturalism in philosophy, an �untenabledualism.’

An antireductionism strong enough to be worth arguing for is ametaphysical thesis about natural kinds and laws – abstractexistents – that philosophical nominalists and philosophically unso-phisticated scientists cannot take seriously. Perhaps for these rea-sons biological kinds and laws are sometimes mistaken for the merepredicates and sentences that name these kinds and express the sci-entific hypotheses that are our best guesses as to what these lawsare. When this happens the metaphysical thesis is misunderstood asan epistemic one and the untenable dualism of physicalist antire-ductionism is not noticed. What we may excuse among scientistswho are indifferent to the ontological problem of abstract objectsand don’t distinguish sentences from propositions, is not acceptableamong philosophers, even us philosophers of science.

DR sought to resolve this untenable dualism by showing:(1) that biological explanations require improvements in complete-ness, precision, and adequacy, which can only be provided byenhancing their grounding in physical science; (2) that some biolog-ical processes are only so to be explained; and (3) that apparentlydistinctive biological concepts, categories, kinds and laws can beshown to be physical in character and hence are no barrier to thereduction contemplated in the first two theses. Reductionism, Iemphasised, is a methodological strategy demanded by a metaphys-ical claim – physicalism, and it must be sharply distinguished fromanother methodological strategy – eliminativism – with which it isoften (and sometimes purposely) confused, according to which


science needs to move from the bottom up in providing us withknowledge of the world and its processes, since it is the facts at thebottom that fix all the other processes. Eliminativism is so calledbecause its exclusively bottom-up strategy requires that we jettisonas unacceptable anything that cannot be immediately and com-pletely grounded in physical theory. Reductionism does not endorsethis methodology. Rather it is opportunistic, allowing research toproceed top-down, bottom-up, and from the middle in both direc-tions. It encourages the search for scientific knowledge of the worldat whatever level of the organization of the physical facts strikesthe scientist as worth studying. It only requires that once someunderstanding is achieved at any level, it can in principle always begrounded, and thereby almost always enhanced, in more funda-mental and ultimately physical processes. Opponents of reduction-ism are eager to assimilate it to eliminativism, for, so assimilated,reductionism would thereby require us to divest ourselves of agreat deal of hard-won scientific achievement, an admonition thatno scientist will follow. Here are a couple of examples in thereviewer’s remarks of this sort of misrepresentation of what reduc-tionists hold: ‘‘According to Rosenberg... [e]xplanations are onlyexplanatory when they can be framed in terms of the underlyingmolecular biology of the system’’ (Schweitzer, p. 23, emphasisadded); and ‘‘Rosenberg’s view of how biological explanationswork leaves most biologists not offering explanations’’ (Love, p. 6).

DR argues for Thesis 1 by showing that evolutionary explana-tions are by and large �how possible explanations’ and are alwaysstrengthened to the degree we can convert them into �why neces-sary’ explanations, and that doing so almost always requires thatwe identify the actual causal chain or mereological route fromexplanans to explanandum – usually a macromolecular one. DRargues for Thesis 2 by an extended example. It attempts to showthat there were no explanations at all in developmental biologybefore the advent of the macromolecular understanding of embryo-logical development as the articulation of a genetic programme.This argument leads to consideration of several theses advanced byphilosophers and biologists who argue against reductionism indevelopmental biology by denying that the gene has any specialfunction in development or even by arguing that there is really nosuch thing as the gene. DR argues at length for Thesis 3 thatapparently distinctive biological concepts, categories, kinds, and

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laws can be shown to be physical in character because it is on thedenial of this thesis that philosophers have advanced the onlyversion of antireductionism strong enough to be worth refuting andplausible enough to be worth believing.

Once Thesis 3 has been defended, DR turns to the project ofattempting to deal with the motives that so often drive opponentsof reductionism to accusations that it is not only a false thesis buta morally dangerous one – dehumanizing in its refusal to countenancecauses for socially significant human capacities and behavioursabove the genetic. This assimilation of macromolecular reduction-ism to genetic determinism, which lies behind so much of theattack on reductionism outside philosophy, rests on many errorsabout biology and mistakes about reductionism that the first sevenchapters of DR attempt to uncover. In the final two chapters Iattempt to deploy reductionism’s successes in molecular biology torefute this genetic determinism that everyone seems to fear, and sodraw the motivational force from antireductionism. Thus we mightall stop worrying and learn to love molecular biology.

The aim of DR – to articulate a version of reductionism sensitiveto so much that the philosophy of biology has revealed about thesubject of biology, its methods, theories, epistemology and its rela-tions to the other sciences – appears to have been completely invisibleto the four reviewers of the book. None have addressed the problemof �untenable dualism’ broached at the outset of the book and whichmade the rest of it a necessary undertaking. None argued (though allasserted) that physicalist antireductionism is a perfectly tolerablepackage of two metaphysical claims or a combination of one meta-physical and one epistemic claim. None diagnosed the evidently puer-ile mistake that led me to write about a problem not even importantenough to attract much attention in their reviews. What a lot of themdid fix upon, and attack, was a proposition central to the strongestmetaphysical argument for antireductionism: the thesis that mostbiological kinds are functional in the selected-effects sense of func-tion. Before defending this claim it is important that the dialecticalsituation be clear. Antireductionism needs some biological fact orother which is beyond the explanatory reach of physical science. Inthe work of Kitcher, Sober, and other antireductionists this fact isalleged to be the role of natural selection in producing and organiz-ing biological phenomena and thus underwriting their correct,adequate, complete biological explanations. These explanations will


be autonomous from physical science owing to the irreducibility ofthe process of natural selection to processes catalogued in chemistryor physics. And of course the more pervasive the process of naturalselection is in shaping biological facts, the greater will its presence bean obstacle to reduction. Conversely, the more it can be shown thatbiological kinds are not selected-effects functional kinds, the easier itshould be to reductively explain processes that they subsume.

Accordingly, it will make a reductionist’s argument far easier if,as several of my reviewers suggest, there is wide scope for non-se-lected-effects, �causal role’ functional analysis, description, andexplanation in biology. The scope for reduction will be furtherexpanded if structural, morphological, and compositional classifica-tions, generalizations, and theories can be seen to play substantialroles in biology. For then the difficulties that natural selection im-poses on the reductionist’s argument will be more limited. And ofcourse if the explanation for biological similarities that homologyclaims provide are themselves based on such purely physical dimen-sions, then matters will be proportionately that much easier foranyone like me who seeks to vindicate an approach to the biologi-cal that gives explanatory scope to the physical sciences.

In DR I invoked Dobzhansky’s dictum for two reasons. The firstwas that (a) the most powerful arguments for antireductionismemploy a combination of the Putnam/Garfinkel �square-peg, roundhole’ argument for the complete adequacy of higher level explana-tions and the irrelevance of lower level ones, with (b) the claim thatnatural selection is the indispensable higher level explanatory theoryeverywhere in biology. The second reason I adopted Dobzhansky’sdictum was my belief that by and large a strong thesis of adaptation-ism is correct: the biological is carved out from the physical by theoperation of natural selection, and this explains the pervasiveness offunctional description and analysis in the discipline. As such, I couldnot adopt my critics’ suggestion that the importance of selected-effectfunctions is greatly exaggerated in biology.

If natural selection �carves nature at the joints’, then it stands toreason that other classifications, say, homological ones, will be iso-morphic or extensionally equivalent to functional kinds – if homol-ogy carves likewise. Since many of the functional individuations arealso embodied in �folk biology’ and long antedate the comparativeanatomist’s classificatory projects, their epistemic role in the priorindividuation of biologically significant traits is inescapable. It is a

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more vexed question whether selected-effects are constitutively aswell as epistemically presupposed by all other biological taxonomies.But it is worth noting that the only domain of biology that isselected-effects function-free are those parts of molecular biologywhere individuation and explanation can proceed from primarystructure – i.e. molecular sequence. Thus, in so far as my reviewersminimise the role of selected effects, their reason for continuing to beresolutely antireductionist is more perplexing, as they have deprivedthemselves of the only attractive metaphysical argument for antire-ductionism.

But of course my critics are not interested in metaphysics. They,or at least some of them, are just interested in what biologists do, notwhat, by the biologist’s own lights, they ought to be doing. Thus,Love writes: ‘‘Many philosophers of biology take epistemology as theprimary domain of analysis, especially because biological reasoningis so heterogeneous, functional ascriptions are diverse, and explana-tions occur without universal, exceptionless laws (p. 192–196). It iscertainly correct that many philosophers of biology are interestedonly with what biologists do, their actual claims and actual methods,and not with what the biological facts are and how a conception ofthem might guide inquiry. But, frankly, I fail to see how the consider-ations that Love adduces provide any support for this preference asopposed to mine, which also attaches importance to the fit, or tempo-rary lack of it, between biologists’ theory and their self-proclaimedview about the way the world is. I too am of course interested in epis-temology. But too much of contemporary philosophy of biology’sepistemological exercises are merely uncritical reports of biology’s re-cent history, without any inclination to draw methodological morals,or undertake philosophy’s normative epistemological role of assess-ing the justification of the biologists’ claims. Quoting a molecularbiologists’ assertion that ‘‘multiplex protein kinase inhibitors may bean emergent property that cannot be understood fully consideringonly the sum of individual inhibitor-kinase interactions’’ (Love,p. 185–188, emphasis added) is no argument that protein kinase inhi-bition is an emergent property. Still less is it an account of whetheremergence is an epistemically coherent notion. Nor is it an argumentagainst reductionism to quote from a couple, or indeed a legion, ofphysicists who write things like: ‘‘the central task of theoretical phys-ics in our time is no longer to write down the ultimate equations butrather to catalogue and understand emergent behaviour in its many


guises, including potentially life itself. We call this physics of the nextcentury the study of complex adaptive matter’’ (Laughlin and Pines,2000, quoted in Stotz, p. 484–488). I can’t wait to see what the phys-ics textbooks will look like a hundred years hence. Neither, I suspect,can Steven Weinberg.

Worse than merely passages from biologists’ papers that disagreewith me is to invoke biological ideas as if they were unknown to me,and ignored in DR, when in fact I had almost fetishised them. ThusSchweitzer �introduces’ the �French Flag model’ of pattern formationin gene expression as a �counterexample’ to macromolecular reduc-tionism. To begin with, merely asserting that it offers the basis for anargument against reductionism doesn’t constitute an argumentagainst the latter. But additionally, Schweitzer omits to mention thefact that it was my work that introduced Wolpert’s models to philo-sophical discussion more than a decade ago, and that DR (and nothis review of it) contains the first thorough account of the French flagmodel (along with three other equally important Wolpertian modelsof genetically controlled pattern recognition), and that there is a sus-tained argument in the book to show how the model contributes toexplanations in a reductionist molecular biology. By contrast,Schweitzer merely asserts that the French flag model ‘‘does providethe form of explanation characteristic of mathematical modelingexplanations’’. Is it a quibble to complain that the French flag doesnot provide the form, but only an instance of mathematical models inpattern formation (for the other instances see DR, Chap. 3)? Thereally hard epistemological task for philosophers of biology, who likeSchweitzer apparently follow Sober in holding that �noncausal’(Schweitzer’s term) mathematical models explain contingent phe-nomena, is to give an account of how a priori truths can do this, andto show what is wrong with DR’s argument that they can’t.

Love and Brigandt separately attribute my arguments for reduc-tionism to Jaegwon Kim and then write them off without even awhisper as to what might be the matter with them. It is certainlytrue that one page in DR expounds the powerful dilemma of over-determination vs. competition that Kim lays before antireduction-ism in the philosophy of mind; and, that page argues, it also vexesbiological antireductionism. There is also a long footnote in whichKim’s distinction between higher �order’ vs. higher �level’ predicatesis employed to distinguish reductionism from eliminativism. Butphilosophers with longer memories than my present reviewers may

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remember that I introduced the notion of supevenience to biologyin 1978 (‘‘The Supervenience of Biological Concepts’’ in Philosophyof Science), having stolen it, not from Kim, but from DonaldDavidson’s ‘‘Concepts of Supervenience’’, 6 years before Kim’sstudy. Moreover, my previous work, Instrumental Biology or theDisunity of Science (1994) reflected the belief that, even with super-venience, the only way physcialists could tolerate a metaphysicallyautonomous biology was to treat it as a useful instrument, a heu-ristic device, instead of giving biological theory a realist interpreta-tion. As DR makes clear, the step from this instrumental view to arealist reduction of �the biological’, was not due to Kim’s argu-ments (powerful though I think they are). It is rather owing to anew appreciation of the long insistence, by philosophers like Soberand Beatty, that we take seriously the fact that biology is a histori-cal and terrestrial science, unlike chemistry and physics.

As to what might be wrong with Kim’s arguments, all we haveis a reference in Brigandt to Marras (1997). In this and other inter-esting and learned papers, Asonio Marras has argued that Kim’soverdetermination vs. competition arguments against irreducibletheories in psychology hinge on a metaphysical assumption aboutevents and property identities that might be challenged: roughlythat an event has only one constitutive property, a view of Kim’sthat goes back to 1973. I invite those who reject my reductionistconclusions because they reject Kim’s antireductionist arguments tojoin Marras in the heavy metaphysical lifting. A careful attentionto the details of the history of biology or the animadversions ofdistinguished biologists and less well-known physicists is no sub-stitute for this obligatory philosophical undertaking.

On leaving the British Academy debate of 1860 between Huxleyand Wilberforce, a lady was heard to say: ‘‘Descended from apes? Letus hope it is not true, but if it is true, let us hope it does not becomewidely known’’. My reviewer’s reactions seem to have been similar tohers: ‘‘Reducible to molecular biology? Let us hope it is not true, but ifit is true let us hope it does not become widely known’’.

Center for Philosophy of BiologyDuke UniversityDurham, NC, 27708USA


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Kitcher, P. ‘‘1953 and all that’’, Philosophical Review 93 (1984), pp. 335–373.Kung, C., D. M. Kenski, S. H. Dickerson, R. W. Howson, L. F. Kuyper,H. D. Madhani and K. M. Shokat. ‘‘Chemical Genomic Profiling to IdentifyIntracellular Targets of a Multiplex Kinase Inhibitor’’, Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences USA, 102 (2005), pp. 3587–3592.Laubichler, M. and G. P. Wagner. ‘‘How Molecular is Molecular DevelopmentalBiology? A Reply to Alex Rosenberg’s Reductionism Redux: Computing the

Embryo’’, Biology and Philosophy 16 (2001), pp. 53–68.Laughlin, R. B. and D. Pines. ‘‘The Theory of Everything’’, PNAS 97 (2000),pp. 28–30.

Marras, A. ‘‘Kim’s Supervenience Argument and Nonreductive Physicalism’’,Erkenntnis 66 (2007), pp. 305–327.

Robert, J. S. Embryology, Epigenesis, and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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of Chicago Press, 1994).Wolpert, L. ‘‘Positional Information and the Spatial Pattern of Cellular Differentia-tion’’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 25 (1969), pp. 1–47.

Wouters, A. ‘‘Four Notions of Biological Function’’, Studies in the History andPhilosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (2003), pp. 633–668.

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More Worry and Less Love?

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