Philosophy of biology

Philosophy of biology (also called, rarely, biophilosophy) is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology (e.g., Aristotle, Descartes, and even Kant), philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Philosophers of science then began paying increasing attention to developments in biology, from the rise of Neodarwinism in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of Deoxyribonucleic acid in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering.

Overview

Philosophy of biology today has become a very visible, well-organized discipline -- with its own journals, conferences, and professional organizations.

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Generally, these authors could be seen as following an empiristic tradition, favoring naturalistic and physicalistic theories over their counterparts.

Related Topics:
Empiristic - Naturalistic - Physicalistic

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Contemporary philosophers of biology have largely avoided traditional questions about the distinction between life and nonlife. Instead, they have examined the practices, theories, and concepts of biologists with a view toward better understanding biology as a scientific discipline (or group of scientific fields).

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Scientific ideas are handled as philosophical ones and the consequences are explored. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to delineate genuine biophilosophical works from popular scientific accounts of biological research. A few of the questions philosophers of biology have attempted to answer, for example, include:

Related Topics:
Scientific - Popular scientific - Biological - Research

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• "How is ecology related to medicine?"
• "What is a biological species?"
• "How is rationality possible, given our biological origins?"
• "How might our biological understandings of race, sexuality, and gender reflect social values?"
• "What is natural selection, and how does it operate in nature?"
• "How do medical doctors explain disease?"
• "Where do language and logic stem from?";
• "What is the material basis of consciousness?"

A subset of these philosophers with a more explicitly philosophical, less empirical, orientation hope that biology is able to provide scientifc answers to such fundamental problems of epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, anthropology and even metaphysics.

Related Topics:
Scientifc - Epistemology - Ethics - Aesthetics - Anthropology - Metaphysics

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Furthermore, progress in biology urges modern societies to rethink traditional values concerning all aspects of human life. The possibility of genetic modification of human stem cells, for example, has led to an ongoing controversy on how certain biological techniques could infringe upon ethical consensus (see bioethics).

Related Topics:
Human - Life - Genetic - Stem cells - Bioethics

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Some more explicitly philosophical questions are addressed by some philosophers of biology including:

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• "What is life?"
• "What makes humans uniquely human?";
• "What is the basis of moral thinking?";
• "What are the factors we use for aesthetical judgements?";
• "Is evolution compatible with Christianity or other religious systems?"