University Bordeaux Montaigne, Department of Philosophy and EA 4574 'Sciences, Philosophie, Humanités' (SPH) at University of Bordeaux, Allée Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Bâtiment B2, 33615 Pessac cedex, France.
Institute of Computational Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg 20246, Germany.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Apr 13;375(1796):20190314. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0314. Epub 2020 Feb 24.
Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organizational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, motivation and application of key concepts in biological network science, such as explanatory power of distinctively network explanations, network levels and network hierarchies. This article is part of the theme issue 'Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations'.
在过去的几十年中，基于网络的方法在神经科学、生态学、分子生物学和遗传学等多个生物学领域变得非常流行。虽然这些方法仍在快速发展，但它们的一些概念和方法方面仍需要一个编程基础。这一挑战尤其涉及到一个问题，即是否可以普遍应用于生物科学的网络的解释、组织和描述水平的通用解释。为此，本期高度跨学科主题特别关注生物网络科学中的关键概念的定义、动机和应用，例如独特的网络解释的解释力、网络层次和网络层次结构。本文是主题为“统一生物网络的基本概念：生物学见解和哲学基础”的一部分。
