How Science Works
Choosing Levels of Explanation in Biological Sciences

Area 11 – Scienze storiche, filosofiche, pedagogiche e psicologiche

This volume is a programmatic contribution towards a clarification of how and why science works. In these decades, in fact, there is a particular focus on how science works in practice and there is also interest in the epistemology of scientific explanations. Marta Bertolaso takes up the gauntlet of this philosophical trend, and provides in this volume some theoretical grounds for her viewpoint. The case studies are taken from cancer biology and cancer research. Limits and possibilities of reductionist and systemic models of cancer are thus explored from the point of view of the structure and features of their explanatory accounts. Advantages of an integrative approach in biological sciences are, at the end, highlighted in order to account for the specific dynamics of the complex biological processes.

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