Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences

Scientific philosophers examine the nature and significance of levels of organization, a core structural principle in the biological sciences.

This volume examines the idea of levels of organization as a distinct object of investigation, considering its merits as a core organizational principle for the scientific image of the natural world. It approaches levels of organization--roughly, the idea that the natural world is segregated into part-whole relationships of increasing spatiotemporal scale and complexity--in terms of its roles in scientific reasoning as a dynamic, open-ended idea capable of performing multiple overlapping functions in distinct empirical settings.

The contributors--scientific philosophers with longstanding ties to the biological sciences--discuss topics including the philosophical and scientific contexts for an inquiry into levels; whether the concept can actually deliver on its organizational promises; the role of levels in the development and evolution of complex systems; conditional independence and downward causation; and the extension of the concept into the sociocultural realm. Taken together, the contributions embrace the diverse usages of the term as aspects of the big picture of levels of organization.

Contributors

Jan Baedke, Robert W. Batterman, Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, Markus I. Eronen, Carl Gillett, Sara Green, James Griesemer, Alan C. Love, Angela Potochnik, Thomas Reydon, Ilya Tëmkin, Jon Umerez, William C. Wimsatt, James Woodward

Daniel S. Brooks is Visiting Scholar at the University of Cincinnati. James DiFrisco is Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven. William C. Wimsatt is Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of Chicago.

Preface
Introduction: Levels of Organization: The Architecture of the Scientific Image
1: Levels, Robustness, Emergence, and Heterogeneous Dynamics: Finding Partial Organization in Causal Thickets
2: Levels of Organization as Tool and Doctrine in Biology
3: Our World Isn't Organized into Levels
4: Levels, Nests and Branches: Compositional Organization and Downward Causation in Biology
5: Levels, Perspectives and Thickets: Toward an Ontology of Complex Scaffolded Living Systems
6: Integrating composition and process in levels of developmental evolution
7: Manipulating Levels of Organization
8: The Origin of New Levels of Organization
9: Downward Causation and Levels
10: Cancer beyond genetics: On the practical implications of downward causation
11: Multiscale Modeling in Inactive and Active Materials
12: Using Compositional Explanations to Understand Compositional Levels: An Integrative Account
13: Functional Kinds and the Metaphysics of Functional Levels: In What Sense Are Functionally Defined Kinds and Levels Non-Arbitrary?
14: Control Hierarchies: Pattee's Approach to Function and Control as Time-Dependent Constraints
15: Phenomenological Levels in Biological and Cultural Evolution