CAREER: Causal Explanation in Biology and the Diversity of Causal Concepts

该奖项支持一项职业建议。这些建议包括研究部分和紧密结合的教学部分。该研究项目旨在开发一种新颖的科学解释，以捕捉生物学中因果概念、结构和推理的多样性。它将扩展过去二十年来主导该领域的机械论观点；它是以生物学中实际的解释性推理为指导的方式这样做的。该项目将展示如何在因果关系的干预主义解释中理解不同的解释模式。理解生物学解释的理论基础将在这个项目中发展，以澄清生物学家如何理解他们的工作，以及如何将这项工作传达给公众。该项目的教学部分包括计划为代表性不足的学生创造教育机会，增加哲学领域的多样性，并改善本科生在使用历史和哲学方法来解决科学方法论问题方面的培训。还计划开发科学传播资源和向不同受众传播生物解释的指南。这些影响将通过针对哲学中代表性不足的群体的夏季多样性计划，加州大学欧文分校生物学兴趣小组的发展，以及一系列课堂多样性倡议的实施来实现，这些倡议反映了加州大学欧文分校为少数族裔服务的机构地位。在现代生物学的背景下，科学家描述他们研究的方式经常使用机械框架；生物现象被理解为像机器一样，具有较低层次的因果部分，所有这些因果部分相互作用以产生一些感兴趣的结果。因此，科学哲学家和普通公众开始认为生物学的解释主要是机械论的。然而，这种观点未能适应生物学中不同于机械论范式的因果概念的多样性。例如，生物学家将因果概念与机制概念相结合，包括途径、级联、触发和过程等概念，而这些概念尚未得到很好的理解。这表明，因果解释比科学家传播并得到哲学家支持的单一机械范式更加多样化和多样化。一种将所有生物学解释简化为机制的观点，模糊了在这一科学领域中发现的丰富多样的因果概念、推理策略和实验技术。保持我们最好的生物科学要求科学家们意识到这种多样性，它在科学传播中有适当的特征，在科学文献的哲学中得到赞赏。这项研究计划将使用哲学和历史方法来发展一种新的生物学解释，以适应生物学中因果概念和因果推理的多样性。这将有助于加深我们对生物学解释的理解，加强科学交流。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a CAREER proposal. Such proposals have a research component, and a closely integrated pedagogical component. The research project is to develop a novel account of scientific explanation that captures the diversity of causal concepts, structures, and reasoning in biology. It will expand on mechanistic views that have dominated the field for the past two decades; it does so in a way that is guided by actual explanatory reasoning in biology. The project will demonstrate how distinct patterns of explanation can be understood within an interventionist account of causation. The theoretical foundation for understanding biological explanation to be developed in this project promises to clarify how biologists understand their work and how this work is communicated to public audiences. The pedagogical component of the project includes plans to create educational opportunities for underrepresented students, to increase diversity in the field of philosophy, and to improve undergraduate student training in the use of historical and philosophical methods to address questions about scientific methodology. There are also plans to develop resources for science communication and guidelines for communication of biological explanation to different audiences. These impacts will be achieved through a summer diversity program for underrepresented groups in philosophy, the development of a biology interest group at UC Irvine, and the implementation of a set of classroom diversity initiatives that reflect consideration of UC Irvine’s minority-serving institution status.In the context of modern biology, the way that scientists describe their research often makes use of a mechanistic framework; biological phenomena are understood as machine-like, having lower-level causal parts that all interact to produce some outcome of interest. As a result, philosophers of science and the general public have come to regard explanations in biology as predominantly mechanistic. However, this view fails to accommodate the diversity of causal concepts in biology that differ from the mechanistic paradigm. For example, biologists appeal to causal concepts that are not well understood with the notion of mechanism including concepts such as pathways, cascades, triggers, and processes. This suggests that causal explanation is more diverse and variegated than the single mechanistic paradigm that is communicated by scientists and supported by philosophers. A view that reduces all biological explanation to mechanisms, obscures the rich and diverse set of causal concepts, reasoning strategies, and experimental techniques that are found in this scientific field. Maintaining our best biological science requires that scientists have an awareness of this diversity, that it is properly characterized in science communication, and that is it appreciated in the philosophy of science literature. This research proposal will use philosophical and historical methods to develop a novel account of biological explanation that accommodates the diversity of causal concepts and causal reasoning in biology. This account will be used to further our understanding of biological explanation and enhance science communication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.