Abstract
We address the identity of biological organisms at play in experimental and modeling practices. We first examine the central tenets of two general conceptions, and we assess their respective strengths and weaknesses. The historical conception, on the one hand, characterizes organisms' identity by looking at their past, and specifically at their genealogical connection with a common ancestor. The relational conception, on the other hand, interprets organisms' identity by referring to a set of distinctive relations between their parts, and between the organism and its environment. While the historical and relational conceptions are understood as opposed and conflicting, we submit that they are also fundamentally complementary. Accordingly, we put forward a hybrid conception, in which historical and relational (and more specifically, organizational) aspects of organisms' identity sustain and justify each other. Moreover, we argue that organisms' identity is not only hybrid but also bounded, insofar as the compliance with specific identity criteria tends to vanish as time passes, especially across generations. We spell out the core conceptual framework of this conception, and we outline an original formal representation. We contend that the hybrid and bounded conception of organisms' identity suits the epistemological needs of biological practices, particularly with regards to the generalization and reproducibility of experimental results, and the integration of mathematical models with experiments.
Highlights
Scientists often describe biological organisms as exquisitely complex objects
We argue that biology requires combining genealogical and relational conceptions, with the support of an appropriate theoretical framework
To the extent that organizational closure is a distinctive feature of biological organisms, this relational conception of organism identity seems to be more suitable because it avoids the first possible drawback of biophysical ones, i.e., the fact of leaving aside biological aspects
Summary
Scientists often describe biological organisms as exquisitely complex objects. The adjective “complex” has various meanings, and one points to a difficulty in providing an adequate account of their identity, notably in modeling and experimental practices. Genealogical strategies, we argue, enable scientists to consider whole organisms as identical without, making explicit the domain of validity of experimental results It is unclear how much variation a set of genealogically connected organisms can undergo (during ontogenesis and across generations) while maintaining a relevant identity for a given experimental purpose. One could argue that the relational conception is the most fundamental one; its limited validity would be the mere effect of our (current) lack of theory and empirical knowledge An example of the latter attitude ( not addressing experimental practices) is Goodwin and Webster’s relational theory of form changes that they take as a requirement to ground phylogenetic reasoning (Webster and Goodwin, 1996). The validity of identity classes for experimental practices is inevitably limited in time and space, which draws a fundamental difference between biology and other natural sciences, in particular physics and chemistry
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