PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY

Author: ARROYO SANTOS ALFONSO.
Year: 2004.
University: AUTÓNOMA DE BARCELONA [www.uab.es].
Place of defense: FACULTAT DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS.
Place of preparation: ESCUELA DE POSTGRADO.

Summary: In the present work introduces a concept of the theory itself for immunology. Our claim has been on the one hand, to present a concept of immunological theory that allows us to capture more of their characteristics empirical, epistemological, methodological and social rights, and secondly, that this analysis will help us better understand what is a theory in biology. Our main conclusions are: A theory of immunology is a device whose purpose is to interpret epistémico part of the world. That interpretation is an ontological commitment that guides scientific development to provide researchers with a cognitive framework which interpret, digest and verify the empirical data. The theory of immunology prevail while data can defend his vision of the world that have called Axiona Central, or until there is another theory capable of providing the corpus of scientific epistemological greatest strengths.

Author: GARCIA AZCONOBIETA TOMAS.
Year: 2004.
University: PAÍS VASCO [www.ehu.es].
Place of defense: FACULTAD DE FILOSOFIA Y CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN.
Place of preparation: FACULTAD DE FILOSOFIA Y CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN.

Summary: The central purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between evolution and biological organization. We offer a characterization of two visions, two ways antiéticas to understand biological organization, the internalista and externalista. The latter tends to understand the organization as a product of an adaptive process in which cad part of the body is the result of a forecast selectively. The prospect internalista, however, focuses on the relationship between the parties as property essential for understanding the evolution and takes life as a secondary aspect to his characterization. Both positions, we think, capture aspects of a more complex reality, why defend the need for a complementary approach. The Biological evolutionary standard, we maintain, has used a strategy explanatory esternalista and has adopted a model of biological organization driver, descomponible, which provides a causal almost unlimited power to natural selection and that promotes a vision of life passive, malleable to the expense of the environment. However, to do so, you grant alos gene properties "idealized" that only they are entitled in terms components of the organization of which he was a member. The evolutionary biology of development (evo-devo), we believe, can provide the basis for developing an alternative vision of the evolution, in which it is seen as a process both product and because of biological organization, an organization acting mechanisms for emerging integrated, that allow and encourage its evolucionabilidad.

Author: García Leal Ambrosio.
Year: 2005.
University: AUTÓNOMA DE BARCELONA [www.uab.es].
Place of defense: Departamento de Filosofia.
Place of preparation: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras UAB.

Summary: The naturalization of human sexual behavior and conflict between the sexes on the basis of justifications adaptacionistas that explained as the product of innate differences in the nature of biological males and females has been criticized by cultural anthropologists, but the objections of these critics are more ideological than scientific. Such criticism hardly affects the strictly Darwinian aspect of the speech sociobiológico, it has had little impact among professional biologists. The assumptions on the evolution of sexual reproduction, gender differences, the diversity of mating strategies and sexual behavior of males and females are laden with ideological prejudices, and this ideological causes undesirable biases in their justifications darwinistas. A main objective of this thesis is to reveal and correct ideological biases in evolutionary explanations of the male and female reproductive tactics without calling into question the program adaptacionista only with the use of more rigorous reasoning neodarwinista to show that explanations adaptacionistas ideologically biased rebutted by counter can also adaptacionistas.