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Physical Models and Biological Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Margaret Morrison
Margaret Morrison*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
†Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1H8 Canada.
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Abstract

In addition to its obvious successes within the kinetic theory the ideal gas law and the modeling assumptions associated with it have been used to treat phenomena in domains as diverse as economics and biology. One reason for this is that it is useful to model these systems using aggregates and statistical relationships. The issue I deal with here is the way R. A. Fisher used the model of an ideal gas as a methodological device for examining the causal role of selection in producing variation in Mendelian populations. The model enabled him to create the kind of population where one could measure the effects of selection in a way that could not be done empirically. Consequently we are able to see how the model of an ideal gas was transformed into a biological model that functioned as an instrument for both investigating nature and developing a new theory of genetics.

Type
Symposium: Models as Mediators
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S315 - S324
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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Footnotes

‡

Support of research by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Wisssenschaftskolleg Zu Berlin and the modelling project at the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.

References

Fisher, R. A. (1918), “The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance”, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, V. 52, Part II: 399–433.Google Scholar
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