Green Sara
Centre for Science Studies, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2015 Oct;53:73-83. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.03.008. Epub 2015 Apr 19.
Concerns with the use of engineering approaches in biology have recently been raised. I examine two related challenges to biological research that I call the synchronic and diachronic underdetermination problem. The former refers to challenges associated with the inference of design principles underlying system capacities when the synchronic relations between lower-level processes and higher-level systems capacities are degenerate (many-to-many). The diachronic underdetermination problem regards the problem of reverse engineering a system where the non-linear relations between system capacities and lower-level mechanisms are changing over time. Braun and Marom argue that recent insights to biological complexity leave the aim of reverse engineering hopeless - in principle as well as in practice. While I support their call for systemic approaches to capture the dynamic nature of living systems, I take issue with the conflation of reverse engineering with naïve reductionism. I clarify how the notion of design principles can be more broadly conceived and argue that reverse engineering is compatible with a dynamic view of organisms. It may even help to facilitate an integrated account that bridges the gap between mechanistic and systems approaches.
最近，人们对在生物学中使用工程学方法表示担忧。我研究了生物研究面临的两个相关挑战，我将其称为共时性和历时性的欠定问题。前者指的是，当较低层次过程与较高层次系统能力之间的共时关系退化（多对多）时，与推断系统能力背后的设计原则相关的挑战。历时性欠定问题涉及对一个系统进行逆向工程的问题，其中系统能力与较低层次机制之间的非线性关系随时间而变化。布劳恩和马罗姆认为，最近对生物复杂性的见解使得逆向工程的目标在原则上和实践中都毫无希望。虽然我支持他们呼吁采用系统方法来捕捉生命系统的动态本质，但我对将逆向工程与天真的还原论混为一谈表示异议。我阐明了如何更广泛地理解设计原则的概念，并认为逆向工程与生物体的动态观点是兼容的。它甚至可能有助于促进一种综合的解释，弥合机械论方法和系统方法之间的差距。
