Cómo y por qué de lo viviente
Resumen
How and why of the living
Ernst Mayr has always insisted in presenting the sciences of life divided into two general dominions of inquiry: functional biology, devoted to study experimentally the proximate causes which, acting at the level of the individual organism, explain the how of vital phenomena; and evolutionary biology, which intends to reconstruct, through comparative methods and historical inferences, the ultimate or remote causes that, acting at the population level, would explain the why of such phenomena. Admitting such distinction, the author nonetheless takes the liberty to suggest that these two dominions of inquiry may be thought of as following two different methodological maxims, each one of which, it will be stated, establishes a different mode to question the living.
Thus, we will refer to a function principle, which would rule over functional biology, and an adaptation principle governing evolutionary biology. The idea is that, by defining a type of questioning or an explanatory aim for each sphere of inquiry, these maxims also establish the model or pattern of explanation that will operate as the correct answer to the type of question put forward in either sphere: the function principle gives rise to that which is often called functional explanation or analysis, and the adaptation principle gives rise to that which has sometimes been called selective explanation.
The contrast between these two explanatory models will allow us to grasp no only the difference existing between what Mayr calls proximate causes and ultimate causes, but also the existing difference between the notion of [physiological] function, inherent to functional biology, and the notion of [adaptive] function, inherent to evolutionary biology. Thus, partially adopting a doubtless widely-spread posture, we will state that, whereas the core feature of functional biology is causal analysis, in which a notion of function akin to that proposed by Cummins is assumed, evolutionary biology involves a different notion that, no doubt, is at least kindred to the one proposed by Wright.
Nonetheless, the author will not conclude that both principles have the same epistemological statute; based on our analysis, only one of them, the adaptation principle, has a statute analogous to the principle of causation; the other one, the function principle, will be thought of as a subordinate to the latter. And such difference, closely linked to the different forms of teleology that, as we hope to demonstrate, are presupposed in either dominion of biology, may also be useful to recognize the different degree of autonomy that evolutionary biology and functional biology have in regard to physics and chemistry.
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