PT111.S2.P3.Q18 > Analytics

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Philosophers of science have long been uneasy with biology, preferring instead to focus on physics. ███

Phenomenon · Philosophers of science prefer physics to biology

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Explanation · Because they mistrust uncertainty

Science is supposed to be about what is universally true. Hence, philosophers of science are interested in the fact that elephants and mice fall at the same rate but not why one is big and another small.

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Biologists 1 · try to emulate physicists by asserting that laws of biology are universal too

E.g., all DNA evolves at a constant clocklike rate

Biologists 2 · question whether biology is universal

Perhaps historical contingency is necessarily a part of biology.

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Illustration of Disagreement · "All planets move in ellipses" v. "All swans are white."

"All planets move in ellipses" is a truly universal claim. Its truth depends only on the laws of physics and hence apply to all planets that exist or could exist.

Biologists 1 · Universal interpretation

These biologists (determinists) claim that "All swans are white" is also universal. Because the laws of natural selection guarantee that outcome.

Biologists 2 · Non-universal interpretation

These biologists (nondeterminists) disagree. They interpret the claim as a matter of historical contingency, not as a necessary truth.

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Conclusion · History of evolutionary theory is the history of struggle between these two competing views

Passage Style

Critique or debate

18.

It can be inferred from ███ ███████ ████ ████████████ ██ ███████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ███████ ██

analogous to the ████ ██ ███████

Anti-supported. In P1, history is given as an example of a field that contrasts with science because of history’s lack of universal laws; we know that the philosophers of science are interested in universal laws.

difficult to apply ███████ ██ █████ ███████████

Anti-supported. In P1, we see that philosophers of science prefer physics to biology because of the uncertainty of biology. The passage doesn’t indicate that the philosophers of science see physics as uncertain.

applicable to possible ██ ████ ██ ██████ ██████████

This is supported in P1, where we see that philosophers of science think that scientific laws are always true, no matter the circumstances. The support for (C) also comes from the discussion of planets in P3––the laws apply to all possible planets, not just all the planets observed thus far.

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interesting because of █████ █████████████

Anti-supported. P1 tells us that philosophers of science prefer physics because it has laws that apply universally, as opposed to only in particular cases.

illustrative of the ███████ ██ ██████████ ███████████

Anti-supported. P1 specifies that the laws of physics avoid relying on historical contingency, so we can’t support the claim that the philosophers of science think that the laws of physics illustrate the problem of historical contingency.

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