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Footnotes on the Philosophy of Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ernst Mayr*
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

No other branch of the philosophy of science is as backward as the philosophy of biology. When physicists or philosophers “explain biology,” they not only tend to use wrong terminologies but they usually throw away that which is typically biological. This error is second only to the even worse one of adopting vitalistic interpretations. Vitalism is now dead, as far as biologists are concerned (it seems to survive in the minds of a few philosophers), and a biologist can now talk about the differences between the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology without being suspected of being a concealed vitalist.

Information

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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