Laws, causes, and kinds: Toward a solution to the biology problem

Philosophers of science have long focused on physics in formulating answers to philosophical questions. When asking about realism, explanation, or theory change, for example, physics has been the central---sometimes the only---science from which cases and examples are drawn. Philosophers of biology have not much tried to correct this narrowness of attention, turning their energies instead to questions about what species are, what the unit of selection is, or how explanation works in biology. This dissertation attempts to build a bridge between philosophy of science and philosophy of biology by asking whether the divisions between the two sciences are as deep as many have argued.; My analysis finds its impetus in law-based approaches to science, and the project centers on dissolving what I call the biology problem for philosophy of science. Some argue that there are differences between the biological sciences and the physical ones that stem from the complexity or contingency of evolved systems. Proponents of this view contend that complexity, contingency, or other features of biological systems stand in the way of laws of biology. From this arises the further question of how many philosophies there ought to be. If evolved systems are anomic, do we need a separate accounting of them?; Here I argue by way of careful analyses of complexity and contingency in biology that the differences between physics and biology, at least with respect to laws, are largely artificial. The central move is to deny the characteristic complexity and contingency of biological systems by pointing to complexity and contingency in central parts of physics. I also gesture at an answer to the second question, arguing that dissolving the biology problem also dissolves the motivation behind asking how many philosophies of science there are.; This dissertation also contains a pair of case studies---one on selection on higher taxa and one on kinds at the foundations of ecology and conservation biology. These cases take as their touchstone the discussion of explanation that emerges from my dissolution of the biology problem. That discussion argues for local explanations in which laws do not play a central role, and the case studies are examples of such explanations.