|
Les explications mathématiques de phénomènes physiques| old_uid | 15911 |
|---|
| title | Les explications mathématiques de phénomènes physiques |
|---|
| start_date | 2018/05/17 |
|---|
| schedule | 14h-16h |
|---|
| online | no |
|---|
| summary | The topic of my research project is chance in biology, specifically the concept of chance at the molecular/cellular and macro-evolutionary levels. Contemporary historians and philosophers of biology have focused on the meaning of chance and its role in modern Evolutionary Theory (hereafter ET) (e.g., Beatty, 1984; Brandon and Carson 1996; Graves Horan and Rosenberg 1999; Gayon 2005; Glymour 2001; Millstein 1996, 2000a,, 2002). Apart from some notable exceptions (e.g. Millstein 2000, Merlin 2016, Huneman 2017), primarily for pragmatic reasons, philosophical investigation has centered on the role of chance in micro-evolutionary changes which happen at or below the species level. It is mainly at this level – the populational level – that biologists investigate the transmission of heritable changes and their spread in populations by drift and natural selection. Consequently, a significant literature concerning the concepts of chance in molecular and cellular biology and in macro-evolutionary biology is at the moment lacking. The ultimate aim of my project is to fill this gap by questioning the meaning and role of the concept of chance in the characterization of molecular/cellular phenomena as well as macro-evolutionary phenomena. My objective is to show how in these two research areas the concept of chance can be epistemologically different from the variety of concepts of chance used in ET. In my presentation, I will address some questions only for the molecular/cellular level. Contemporary molecular biologists refer to chance mainly as noise in gene expression (e.g. Pilpel 2014). I will analyze this conception of chance in order to argue that it is an inadequate epistemological (and ontological?) approach. Indeed, recent biological evidence (e.g. Meyer and Roeder 2014; Heams 2014) suggest that chance is more than a mere nuisance of gene expression. This is the starting point for new conceptions of chance in molecular/cellular studies. |
|---|
| responsibles | Michon |
|---|
| |
|