Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research
William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson
Language: English
Published by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Aspen Book Co., Denver, CO, U.S.A.Aspen Book Co.
AbeBooks seller since January 29, 2025
Condition: Used - Good
£ 37.18
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Add to basketItem description from seller
Covers show minor shelf wear and light rubbing to the black matte finish. The spine is uncreased and the binding is tight. A few pages in the front matter show faint pencil markings in the margins, otherwise the interior is clean and unmarked. No stamps or stickers. First published by Princeton University Press, 2000.
Seller Inventory # A16-B1-JJG-DRJ-0604
- Title
- Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research
- Author
- William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson
- Publisher
- The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Publication year
- 2010
- Condition
- Good
- Dust jacket
- n/a
- Binding
- Trade Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0262514737
- ISBN 13
- 9780262514736
In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized.
When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Robert C. Richardson is Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Philosophy and a University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Cincinnati, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the author of Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology (MIT Press, 2007).
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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