Philosophers of science have long been uneasy with biology, preferring instead to focus on physics. At the heart of this preference is a mistrust of uncertainty. Science is supposed to be the study of what is true everywhere and for all times, and the phenomena of science are supposed to be repeatable, interested in how elephants and mice got to be such different sizes in the first place.
Philosophers of science have not been alone in claiming that science must consist of universal laws. Some evolutionary biologists have also acceded to the general intellectual disdain for the merely particular and tried to emulate physicists, constructing their science as a set of universal laws. In formulating the notion of a universal life, and they have raised the possibility that historical contingency is an integral factor in biology.
To illustrate the difference between biologists favoring universal, deterministic laws of evolutionary development and those leaving room for historical contingency, consider two favorite statements of philosophers (both of which appear, at first sight, to be universal assertions): “All planets move in ellipses” and “All swans are white.” The former is truly universal necessary consequence of the laws governing the motion of objects in a gravitational field.
Biological determinists would say that “All swans are white” is universal in the same way, since, if all swans were white, it would be because the laws of natural selection make it impossible for swans to be otherwise: natural selection favors those characteristics that increase the average rate of offspring production, and of evolutionary theory has been the history of the struggle between these two views of swans.
What this question is testing
Topic
The author is comparing how philosophers think about physics vs. biology — and explaining why physics has been the favorite.
Framework
Present Debate. The author shows you the preference, traces it, and then surfaces the recent biology-side pushback.
Main Point
The simpler version: philosophers of science love physics because physics deals in big, universal "this happens everywhere, always" laws. Biology is messier — it has history baked into it. Some biologists tried to make their field look more like physics, but lately others have started saying,
P1: The preference, explained
Philosophers want science to be about universal, repeatable stuff. So they're fascinated by physics laws (everything falls at the same rate) but bored by biology questions (why are mice and elephants different sizes?). They distrust history.
P2: Two kinds of biologists
One kind tried to copy physics — looking for biology's "law of gravity" (a universal struggle for existence, constant DNA evolution rate). The other kind, more recently, asks whether biology really runs on universal laws or whether contingency is part of the deal.
P3: A real universal law
"All planets move in ellipses" really is universal. It applies to planets that don't even exist yet — the laws of gravity force the shape.
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