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Multilevel Research Strategies and Biological Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Maureen A. O’Malley ,
Ingo Brigandt ,
Alan C. Love ,
John W. Crawford ,
Jack A. Gilbert ,
Rob Knight ,
Sandra D. Mitchell  and
Forest Rohwer
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Abstract

Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical understandings of explanation, modeling, and representation.

Type
Biological Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 811 - 828
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

We thank Carol Cleland for expertly chairing the PSA 2012 Symposium that was the basis for this paper. We are grateful to the audience at that same symposium for its questions, and to Andrea Woody for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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