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Strategies of Explanatory Abstraction in Molecular Systems Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nicholaos Jones
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Abstract

I consider three explanatory strategies from recent systems biology that are driven by mathematics as much as mechanistic detail. Analysis of differential equations drives the first strategy; topological analysis of network motifs drives the second; mathematical theorems from control engineering drive the third. I also distinguish three abstraction types: aggregations, which simplify by condensing details; generalizations, which simplify by generalizing details; and structurations, which simplify by contextualizing details. Using a common explanandum as a reference point—namely, the robust perfect adaptation of chemotaxis in Escherichia coli—I argue that each strategy targets various abstraction types to different mechanistic details.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 955 - 968
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank Philippe Huneman for organizing the symposium on explanatory strategies across the life sciences and our cosymposiast Anya Plutynski. For helpful comments, I also thank Lindley Darden, Maureen O’Malley, anonymous reviewers for this journal, and audiences from the symposium, the Alabama Philosophical Society, Mississippi State University, and the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice.

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