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2008年11月02日
Mechanismic explanation (Draft ME#1 for "The Systemic Concept of Species" of 6November2008 talk)
Bechtel & Abrahamsen (2005) contrasted mechanistic explanations to nomological explanations for their argument, and did not relate mechanisms with laws. However, mechanismic explanations must include reference to laws. For, it is (at least partly) laws that makes mechanisms possible to work. Spatiotemporal arrangements of many kinds of molecules under physical and chemical laws (at least partly) form mechanisms and submechanisms (Morphologenetic field constraints also may participate). Thus, the representation of a mechanism should indicate the law(s) and the kinds of spatiotemporal arrangements concerned, and fully show the necessary and satisfactory conditions and otherwise switching and compensatory mechanisms (biological systems often have compensatory or alternative subsystems and such subsystems' mechanisms start to work when lacking some of the required conditions (e.g., materials for chemical synthesis, or a whole organism's system may be in the state of minimum metabolism, and so on).
References
Bechtel, W. & Abrahamsen, A. 2005. Explanation: a mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36: 421-441.
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