The formal systems of logic have ordinarily been regarded as independent of biology, but recent developments in evolutionary theory suggest that biology and logic may be intimately interrelated. In this book, William Cooper outlines a theory of rationality in which logical law emerges as an intrinsic aspect of evolutionary biology. This biological perspective on logic, though at present unorthodox, could change traditional ideas about the reasoning process. Cooper examines the connections between logic and evolutionary biology and illustrates how logical rules are derived directly from evolutionary principles, and therefore have no independent status of their own. Laws of decision theory, utility theory, induction, and deduction are reinterpreted as natural consequences of evolutionary processes. Cooper's connection of logical law to evolutionary theory ultimately results in a unified foundation for an evolutionary science of reason. It will be of interest to professionals and
Advances in molecular biological research in the latter half of the twentieth century have made the story of the gene vastly complicated: the more we learn about genes, the less sure we are of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but the gene has also become curiously intangible. This collection of essays renews the question: what are genes? Philosophers, historians and working scientists re-evaluate the question in this volume, treating the gene as a focal point of interdisciplinary and international research. It will be of interest to professionals and students in the philosophy and history of science, genetics and molecular biology.
This book describes the signal processing aspects of neural networks. It begins with a presentation of the necessary background material in electronic circuits, mathematical modeling and analysis, signal processing, and neurosciences, and then proceeds to applications. These applications include small networks of neurons, such as those used in control of warm-up and flight in moths and control of respiration during exercise in humans. Next, a theory of mnemonic surfaces is developed and studied and material on pattern formation and cellular automata is presented. Finally, large networks are studied, such as the thalamus-reticular complex circuit, believed to be involved in focusing attention, and the development of connections in the visual cortex. Additional material is also provided about nonlinear wave propagation in networks. This book will serve as an excellent text for advanced undergraduates and graduates in the physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, medicine and life
This textbook is concerned with the mathematical modelling of biological and physiological phenomena for mathematically sophisticated students. A range of topics are discussed: diffusion population dynamics, autonomous differential equations and the stability of ecosystems, biogeography, pharmokinetics, biofluid mechanics, cardiac mechanics, the spectral analysis of heart sounds using FFT techniques. The last chapter deals with a wide variety of commonly used medical devices. This book is based on courses taught by the author over many years and the material is well class tested. The reader is aided by many exercises that examine key points and extend the presentation in the body of the text. All students of mathematical biology will find this book to be a highly useful resource.
This book provides a clear and concise summary of the fluid dynamics of the locomotion of living organisms. The biological phenomena described in detail range from the swimming of bacteria and fish to the flying of insects and birds. The breadth of treatment requires the study of two basic fluid-dynamical regimes. In the first case, that of small organisms, the viscosity of the fluid is paramount in deciding the most effective swimming strategy. However, for larger insects, birds, and most fish, the viscosity of the air or water may be treated as if it were zero, and resulting mechanisms of propulsion are very different. Both these types are studied, with emphasis on the unsteady character of natural movements. Written for the advanced student, this volume assumes familiarity with basic fluid mechanics, although some elementary topics are included. It will be readily accessible to students of applied mathematics and biologists who have engineering or physics backgrounds.
Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists.
In this book, Neven Sesardic defends the view that it is both possible and useful to measure the separate contributions of heredity and environment to the explanation of human psychological differences. He critically examines the view - very widely accepted by scientists, social scientists and philosophers of science - that heritability estimates have no causal implications and are devoid of any interest. In a series of clearly written chapters he introduces the reader to the problems and subjects the arguments to close philosophical scrutiny. His conclusion is that anti-heritability arguments are based on conceptual confusions and misunderstandings of behavioural genetics. His book is a fresh and compelling intervention in a very contentious debate.
Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution (evo-devo), an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology.
The purpose of this book is to elucidate the general principles underlying animal aggression. Aggressive encounters occur even in very simple organisms, and are at the roots of human conflict. A general framework is provided by dividing forms of aggression according to their function - protection of the individual, offspring defence and competition. Within each functional group, the principles underlying the variety of aggressive behaviour in different species, the sexes and different life-cycle stages, are considered, and this is followed by a discussion of the mechanisms through which animals achieve the various functional ends. Aggression is viewed as one possible solution to a recurrent set of problems animals encounter in their natural environments. In any one case, the control and form of aggression are seen as the result of the interaction of past evolutionary environments, developmental influences and current circumstances.
The massive research effort known as the Human Genome Project is an attempt to record the sequence of the three trillion nucleotides that make up the human genome and to identify individual genes within this sequence. While the basic effort is of course a biological one, the description and classification of sequences also lend themselves naturally to mathematical and statistical modeling. This short textbook on the mathematics of genome analysis presents a brief description of several ways in which mathematics and statistics are being used in genome analysis and sequencing. It will be of interest not only to students but also to professional mathematicians curious about the subject.
The debate over the relative importance of natural selection as compared to other forces affecting the evolution of organisms is a long-standing and central controversy in evolutionary biology. The theory of adaptationism argues that natural selection contains sufficient explanatory power in itself to account for all evolution. However, there are differing views about the efficiency of the adaptation model of explanation. If the adaptationism theory is applied, are energy and resources being used to their optimum? This book presents an up-to-date view of this controversy and reflects the dramatic changes in our understanding of evolution that have occurred in the last twenty years. The volume combines contributions from biologists and philosophers, and offers a systematic treatment of foundational, conceptual, and methodological issues surrounding the theory of adaptationism. The essays examine recent developments in topics such as phylogenetic analysis, the theory of optimality and
First published in 2000, this set of essays by some of the best names in philosophy of science explores a range of diverse issues in the intersection of biology and epistemology. It asks whether the study of life requires a special biological approach to knowledge and concludes that it does not. The studies, taken together, help to develop and deepen our understanding of how biology works and what counts as warranted knowledge and as legitimate approaches to the study of life. The first section deals with the nature of evidence and evolutionary theory as it came to dominate nineteenth-century philosophy of science; the second and third parts deal with the impact of laboratory and experimental research. This is an impressive team of authors, bringing together some of the most distinguished philosophers of science. The volume will interest professionals and graduate students in biology and the history and philosophy of science.
In this volume Smith examines the early modern science of generation, which included the study of animal conception, heredity, and fetal development. Analyzing how it influenced the contemporary treatment of traditional philosophical questions, it also demonstrates how philosophical pre-suppositions about mechanism, substance, and cause informed the interpretations offered by those conducting empirical research on animal reproduction. Composed of essays written by an international team of leading scholars, the book offers a fresh perspective on some of the basic problems in early modern philosophy. It also considers how these basic problems manifested themselves within an area of scientific inquiry that had not previously received much consideration by historians of philosophy.
How can the discoveries made in the biological sciences play a role in a discussion on the foundation of ethics? This book responds to this question by examining how evolutionism can explain and justify the existence of ethical normativity and the emergence of particular moral systems. Written by a team of philosophers and scientists, the essays collected in this volume deal with the limits of evolutionary explanations, the justifications of ethics, and methodological issues concerning evolutionary accounts of ethics, among other topics. They offer deep insights into the origin and purpose of human moral capacities and of moral systems.
Scientists often make surprising claims about things that no one can observe. In physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, scientists can at least experiment on those unobservable entities, but what about researchers in fields such as paleobiology and geology who study prehistory, where no such experimentation is possible? Do scientists discover facts about the distant past or do they, in some sense, make prehistory? In this book Derek Turner argues that this problem has surprising and important consequences for the scientific realism debate. His discussion covers some of the main positions in philosophy of science - realism, social constructivism, empiricism, and the natural ontological attitude - and shows how they relate to issues in paleobiology and geology. His original and thought-provoking book will be of wide interest to philosophers and scientists alike.
This book represents an effort to understand very old questions about biological form, function, and the relationships between them. The essays collected here reflect the diversity of approaches in evolutionary developmental biology (Evo Devo), including not only studies by prominent scientists whose research focuses on topics concerned with evolution and development, but also historically and conceptually oriented studies that place the scientific work within a larger framework and ask how it can be pushed further. Topics under discussion range from the use of theoretical and empirical biomechanics to understand the evolution of plant form, to detailed studies of the evolution of development and the role of developmental constraints on phenotypic variation. The result is a rich and interdisciplinary volume that will begin a wider conversation about the shape of Evo Devo as it matures as a field.
This introduction to mathematical methods that are useful for studying population phenomena is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and will be accessible to scientists who do not have a strong mathematics background. The material is graded in mathematical difficulty. The earlier parts of the book involve elementary diference equations while later chapters present topics that require more mathematical preparation. Models of total population and population age structure are first derived and studied, and then models of random population events are presented in terms of Markov chains. The last two chapters deal with mathematical methods used to uncover qualitative behaviour of more complicated difference equations. Each chapter begins with a simple model, usually of some historical interest, that defines the primary goals of the chapter. Exercises, for which solutions are provided, illustrate material in the text and also deal with models more advanced than those
This book reviews the origin, development, morphology, environment and ecology of the world's coastal lagoons. There are particularly extensive series of lagoons - areas of salt or brackish water separated from the adjacent sea by a low-lying sand or shingle barrier - along the eastern and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the USA, in Mexico itself, in Brazil, West Africa, Natal, southern and eastern India, south-west and south-east Australia, Alaska, Siberia and around the shores of the Mediterranean, southern Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas. In several of these areas they support important fisheries. This book summarises what is known of the formation and fate of lagoons, the lagoonal environment, lagoonal ecology, the strategies of lagoonal species, the human use of lagoons, besides containing a general introduction and a section on methods for the study of coastal lagoons.
In studying the dynamics of populations, whether of animals, plants or cells, it is crucial to allow for intrinsic delays, due to such things as gestation, maturation or transport. This book is concerned with one of the fundamental questions in the analysis of the effect of delays, namely determining whether they effect the stability of steady states. The analysis is presented for one or two such delays treated both as discrete, where an event which occurred at a precise time in the past has an effect now, and distributed, where the delay is averaged over the population's history. Both of these types occur in biological contexts. The method used to tackle these questions is linear stability analysis which leads to an understanding of the local stability. By avoiding global questions, the author has kept the mathematical prerequisites to a minimum, essentially advanced calculus and ordinary differential equations.
This book is an introduction to the study of mathematical models of electrically active cells, which play an essential role in, for example, nerve conduction and cardiac functions. This is an important and vigorously researched field. In the book, Dr Cronin synthesizes and reviews this material and provides a detailed discussion of the Hodgkin-Huxley model for nerve conduction, which forms the cornerstone of this body of work. Her treatment includes a derivation of the Hodgkin-Huxley model, which is a system of four nonlinear differential equations; a discussion of the validity of this model; and a summary of some of the mathematical analysis carried out on this model. Special emphasis is placed on singular perturbation theory, and arguments, both mathematical and physiological, for using the perturbation viewpoint are presented.
