by Laws, Models, and Theories in Biology Within a Unifying Structuralist Interpretation: A General Explication and An Account of the Case of Classical Genetics, in Abreu, C. (ed.), Philosophy of Science in the 21st Century. Contributions of Metatheoretical Structuralism, Florianópolis: NEL-UFSC, 2023, pp. 189-258.
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The aim of this article is to present the explication of these concepts, and of their relationships, made within the framework of Sneedian or Metatheoretical Structuralism,5 and of their application to a case from the realm of biology: Classical Genetics. The analysis carried out will make it possible to support, contrary to what some philosophers of science in general and of biology in particular hold, the following claims: a) there are “laws” in biological sciences, b) many of the heterogeneous and different “models” of biology can be accommodated under some “theory”, and c) this is exactly what confers great unifying power to biological theories.
To begin with, the structuralist explication of the concepts of law, model and theory will be presented successively, which will be preceded by an introduction to the subject, followed by its application to Classical Genetics. Next, the relevance of the previous analysis to the issues of the existence of laws in biological sciences, the place of models in theories of biology, and the unifying power of biological theories will be stressed. Finally, the article will conclude with a discussion of the presented analysis.
