Discovery And Explanation In Biology And Medicine

Kenneth F. Schaffner compares the practice of biological and medical researchand shows how traditional topics in philosophy of sciencesuch as the natureof theor... » 

Kenneth F. Schaffner compares the practice of biological and medical researchand shows how traditional topics in philosophy of sciencesuch as the natureof theories and of explanationcan illuminate the life sciences. WhileSchaffner pays some attention to the conceptual questions of evolutionarybiology his chief focus is on the examples that immunology human geneticsneuroscience and internal medicine provide for examinations of the wayscientists develop examine test and apply theories.Although traditional philosophy of science has regarded scientific discoverythe questions of creativity in scienceas a subject for psychological ratherthan philosophical study Schaffner argues that recent work in cognitivescience and artificial intelligence enables researchers to rationally analyzethe nature of discovery. As a philosopher of science who holds an M.D. he hasexamined biomedical work from the inside and uses detailed examples from theentire range of the life sciences to support the semantic approach toscientific theories addressing whether there are laws in the life sciencesas there are in the physical sciences. Schaffners novel use of philosophicaltools to deal with scientific research in all of its complexity provides adistinctive angle on basic questions of scientific evaluation and explanation. «