TY - JOUR
T1 - Molecular-biological machines
T2 - a defense
AU - Levy, Arnon
N1 - Funding Information: For comments on previous versions of this paper I thank Kelli Barr, Daniel Burnston, Laura Gradowski, Eleanor Knox, Ehud Lamm, Edouard Machery, John Mathewson, Dana Matthiessen, Sandra Mitchell, Meghan Page and Eörs Szathmáry. I am especially indebted to work by Daniel Nicholson, who has been a trenchant critic of machine analogies in biology. While disagreeing with Nicholson on some central points, working through his arguments has sharpened and focused my thinking. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2023/10
Y1 - 2023/10
N2 - I offer a defense, albeit a qualified one, of machine analogies in biology, focusing on molecular contexts. The defense is rooted in my prior work (Levy in Philosopher’s Imprint 14(6), 2014), which construes the machine machine-likeness of a system as a matter of the extent to which it exhibits an internal division of labor. A concrete aim is to shore up the notion of molecular biological machines, paying special attention to processive molecular motors, such as Kinesin. But I will also try to show how the division of labor account gives us guidance more broadly, both about where and why machine analogies can be expected to prove helpful and about their limitations.
AB - I offer a defense, albeit a qualified one, of machine analogies in biology, focusing on molecular contexts. The defense is rooted in my prior work (Levy in Philosopher’s Imprint 14(6), 2014), which construes the machine machine-likeness of a system as a matter of the extent to which it exhibits an internal division of labor. A concrete aim is to shore up the notion of molecular biological machines, paying special attention to processive molecular motors, such as Kinesin. But I will also try to show how the division of labor account gives us guidance more broadly, both about where and why machine analogies can be expected to prove helpful and about their limitations.
KW - Analogies in science
KW - Molecular machines
KW - Power-stroke versus Brownian Ratchet
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85170382528&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-023-09915-z
DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-023-09915-z
M3 - Article
SN - 0169-3867
VL - 38
JO - Biology and Philosophy
JF - Biology and Philosophy
IS - 5
M1 - 36
ER -