22 found
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  1. Functions in Biological and Artificial Worlds: Comparative Philosophical Perspectives.Ulrich Krohs & Peter Kroes (eds.) - 2009 - MIT Press.
    This volume takes on both issues and examines the relationship between organisms and artifacts from the perspective of functionality.
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  2. Functions as based on a concept of general design.Ulrich Krohs - 2009 - Synthese 166 (1):69-89.
    Looking for an adequate explication of the concept of a biological function, several authors have proposed to link function to design. Unfortunately, known explications of biological design in turn refer to functions. The concept of general design I will introduce here breaks up this circle. I specify design with respect to its ontogenetic role. This allows function to be based on design without making reference to the history of the design, or to the phylogeny of an organism, while retaining the (...)
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  3.  75
    Data without models merging with models without data.Ulrich Krohs & Werner Callebaut - 2007 - In Fred C. Boogerd, Frank J. Bruggeman, Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr & Hans V. Westerhoff (eds.), Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations. Boston: Elsevier. pp. 181--213.
    Systems biology is largely tributary to genomics and other “omic” disciplines that generate vast amounts of structural data. “Omics”, however, lack a theoretical framework that would allow using these data sets as such (rather than just tiny bits that are extracted by advanced data-mining techniques) to build explanatory models that help understand physiological processes. Systems biology provides such a framework by adding a dynamic dimension to merely structural “omics”. It makes use of bottom-up and top-down models. The former are based (...)
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  4.  76
    Convenience experimentation.Ulrich Krohs - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1):52-57.
  5.  30
    Introduction to niches and mechanisms in ecology and evolution.Ulrich Krohs, Behzad Nematipour & Rose Trappes - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (6):1-7.
    Niches and mechanisms are two important but contested elements in the study of organism-environment interactions. Although they are closely interrelated, with niches playing a crucial role in theorizing about ecological and evolutionary mechanisms such as niche construction, facilitation, and species invasion, philosophical discussions about each issue have been largely disconnected. This collection addresses this gap, bringing together contributions from philosophers and biologists about the niche concept, niche construction theory, and ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. In this introduction we provide some background (...)
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  6. How Digital Computer Simulations Explain Real‐World Processes.Ulrich Krohs - 2008 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (3):277 – 292.
    Scientists of many disciplines use theoretical models to explain and predict the dynamics of the world. They often have to rely on digital computer simulations to draw predictions fromthe model. But to deliver phenomenologically adequate results, simulations deviate from the assumptions of the theoretical model. Therefore the role of simulations in scientific explanation demands itself an explanation. This paper analyzes the relation between real-world system, theoretical model, and simulation. It is argued that simulations do not explain processes in the real (...)
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  7. Philosophical perspectives on organismic and artifactual functions.Ulrich Krohs & Peter Kroes - 2009 - In Ulrich Krohs & Peter Kroes (eds.), Functions in Biological and Artificial Worlds: Comparative Philosophical Perspectives. MIT Press.
     
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  8.  39
    Functions and fixed types: Biological and other functions in the post-adaptationist era.Ulrich Krohs - 2011 - Applied ontology 6 (2):125-139.
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  9. Structure and Coherence of Two-Model-Descriptions of Technical Artefacts.Ulrich Krohs - 2009 - Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 13 (2):150-161.
    A technical artefact is often described in two ways: by means of a physicalistic model of its structure and dynamics, and by a functional account of the contributions of the components of the artefact to its capacities. These models do not compete, as different models of the same phenomenon in physics usually do; they supplement each other and cohere. Coherence is shown to be the result of a mapping of role-contributions on physicalistic relations that is brought about by the concept (...)
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  10. The cost of modularity.Ulrich Krohs - 2009 - In Ulrich Krohs & Peter Kroes (eds.), Functions in Biological and Artificial Worlds: Comparative Philosophical Perspectives. MIT Press.
     
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  11.  28
    Darwin’s empirical claim and the janiform character of fitness proxies.Ulrich Krohs - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (2):1-23.
    Darwin’s claim about natural selection is reconstructed as an empirical claim about a causal connection leading from the match of the physiology of an individual and its environment to leaving surviving progeny. Variations in this match, Darwin claims, cause differences in the survival of the progeny. Modern concepts of fitness focus the survival side of this chain. Therefore, the assumption that evolutionary theory wants to explain reproductive success in terms of a modern concept of fitness has given rise to the (...)
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  12.  13
    Epistemic consequences of two different strategies for decomposing biological networks.Ulrich Krohs - 2009 - In Mauricio Suárez, Mauro Dorato & Miklós Rédei (eds.), EPSA Philosophical Issues in the Sciences: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer. pp. 153--162.
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  13.  36
    Can functionality in evolving networks be explained reductively?Ulrich Krohs - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 53:94-101.
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  14.  67
    Interdisciplinary Interconnections in Synthetic Biology.Ulrich Krohs & Mark A. Bedau - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (4):313-317.
  15. Co-Designing social systems by designing technical artifacts.Ulrich Krohs - 2007 - In Pieter E. Vermaas, Peter Kroes, Andrew Light & Steven A. Moore (eds.), Philosophy and Design: From Engineering to Architecture. Springer.
    Technical artifacts are embedded in social systems and, to some extent, even shape them. This chapter inquires, then, whether designing artifacts may be regarded as a contribution to social design. I explicate a concept of general design that conceives design as the type fixation of a complex entity. This allows for an analysis of different contributions to the design of social systems without favoring the intended effects of artifacts on a system over those effects that actually show up. First, the (...)
     
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  16. The changeful fate of a groundbreaking insight: the Darwinian fitness principle caught in different webs of belief.Ulrich Krohs - 2006 - Yearbook for European Culture of Science 2:107-124.
    Darwin’s explanation of biological speciation in terms of variation and natural selection has revolutionised biological thought. However, while his principle of natural selection, the fitness principle, has shaped biology until the present, its interpretation changed more than once during the almost 150 years of its history. The most striking change of the status of the principle is that, in the middle of the 20th century, it transmutated from an often disputed, groundbreaking insight into a tautology. Moreover, not only the interpretation (...)
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  17. Philosophie der Lebenswissenschaften.Susanne Bauer, Lara Huber, Marie I. Kaiser, Lara Keuck, Ulrich Krohs, Maria Kronfeldner, Peter McLaughlin, Kären Nickelson, Thomas Reydon, Neil Roughley, Christian Sachse, Marianne Schark, Georg Toepfer, Marcel Weber & Markus Wild - 2013 - Information Philosophie 4:14-27.
    This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.
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  18. Naturphilosophie. Ein Lehr- und Studienbuch.Thomas Kirchhoff, Nicole Christine Karafyllis, Dirk Evers, Brigitte Falkenburg, Myriam Gerhard, Gerald Hartung, Jürgen Hübner, Kristian Köchy, Ulrich Krohs, Thomas Potthast, Otto Schäfer, Gregor Schiemann, Magnus Schlette, Reinhard Schulz & Frank Vogelsang (eds.) - 2017 - Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck / UTB.
    Was ist Natur oder was könnte sie sein? Diese und weitere Fragen sind grundlegend für Naturdenken und -handeln. Das Lehr- und Studienbuch bietet eine historisch-systematische und zugleich praxisbezogene Einführung in die Naturphilosophie mit ihren wichtigsten Begriffen. Es nimmt den pluralen Charakter der Wahrnehmung von Natur in den philosophischen Blick und ist auch zum Selbststudium bestens geeignet.
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  19.  68
    A priori measurable worlds.Ulrich Krohs - unknown
    Part of the scientific enterprise is to measure the material world and to explain its dynamics by means of models. However, not only is measurability of the world limited, analyzability of models is so, too. Most often, computer simulations offer a way out of this epistemic bottleneck. They instantiate the model and may help to analyze it. In relation to the material world a simulation may be regarded as a kind of a “non-material scale model”. Like any other scale model, (...)
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  20.  57
    Philosophies of particular biological research programs.Ulrich Krohs - 2006 - Biological Theory 1 (2):182-187.
    There is a trend within philosophy of biology to concentrate on questions that are strongly related to particular biological research programs rather than on the general scope of the field and its relation to other sciences. Projects of the latter kind, of course, are followed as well but will not be the topic of this review. Shifting the focus to particular research programs reflects philosophers’ increased interest in knowledge of, and contribution to, actual biological research, which is organized in such (...)
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  21. The conceptual basis of a biological dispute about the temporal order of evolutionary events.Ulrich Krohs - 2005 - In Friedrich Stadler & Michael Stölzner (eds.), Time and History. Papers of the 28th International Wittgenstein Symposium. Österr. Ludwig-Wittgenstein-Gesellschaft.
    occurs first. The biological debate is conducted largely on a theoretical level. In this paper, I undertake to locate
    the reason for the difference in temporal ordering. The question is whether the difference depends on alternative
    interpretations of empirical data, on differing views about evolutionary mechanisms, or on different conceptual
    frameworks. It will turn out that the latter is the case and that discerning two different notions of novelty solves
    the apparent contradiction. Both concepts may apply to different cases in evolution. To settle the (...)
     
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  22.  26
    The Epistemology of Biomimetics: The Role of Models and of Morphogenetic Principles.Ulrich Krohs - 2021 - Perspectives on Science 29 (5):583-601.
    Form follows function, but it does not follow from function. Form is not derivable from the latter. To realize a desired technical function, a form must first be found that is able to realize it at all. Secondly, the question arises as to whether an envisaged form realizes the function in an appropriate way. Functions are multiply realizable—various different forms can bear the very same function. One needs to find a form of a technical artifact that realizes an envisaged function (...)
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