January 24, 2024
To be honest, I had a really tough time understanding Woodward’s “Law and Explanation in Biology”. From what I did understand — he talks about the concept of invariance which is a biological pattern that remains constant even when change is involved. This is relevant because it allows us to make sense of biology in terms of categorizing rules under different circumstances. If we focus our efforts on comprehending invariance, strict categories or “laws of nature” may not be entirely necessary. This is because complexity is inherent to biology.
What Woodward is really saying is whether or not you call these generalizations laws, biology is full of the things that serve the same purposes of laws. In other words, they have the same qualities we are looking for when we inquire about laws. But let me break it down similarly to how we did as a class. We aim at generalizations that explain the role of laws. In order to explain the role of laws, we are trying to define some sort of causal relation. The relevant factor here has to do with interventions. For example if you intervene on X, Y will change. However, when it comes to invariance it is regarding the stability of generalizations under intervention. So even if you aim to change X, Y is not dependent on that. We used the “sweater example” to explain this concept, which was quite helpful for me. Let us say that X is a lot of people wearing sweaters and Y is the roads being icy. Those two are not causally related, but they are correlated in the sense that they both have to do with it being cold outside. Even when there is an instance in which X does cause Y, there is a range of degrees of invariance. For example if you can think about springs: the force with which a spring pulls back when extended is described by a regularity. That relationship is invariant for any given spring, but only over a limited range of interventions on X. If you intervene too far you risk ruining the relationship. A more specific example is you stretch your slinky a small amount, it still works, if you stretch a LOT it will stop “slinky-ing”. Therefore, invariance is what matters for explanation. Biology is full of invariant generalizations. All things considered, biology features generalizations that play the same role as laws whether or not we call them that! Full circle. The end.
I went into this class being more confused than I would’ve liked. New words like explanandum and explanans were making it hard to grasp Woodward’s points. However, once we broke down the background, premises, arguments, and conclusions, I felt more comfortable with Woodward’s ideas. However, I find that I more closely resonate with Smart’s ideas as they were more straightforward than Woodward’s. The way in which we dissect arguments makes it much easier to grasp new concepts like invariance, for example. I look forward to continuing to use these logical syllogisms to explore the intersection of philosophy and biology.
