Abstract
We characterize access to empirical objects in biology from a theoretical perspective. Unlike objects in current physical theories, biological objects are the result of a history and their variations continue to generate a history. This property is the starting point of our concept of measurement. We argue that biological measurement is relative to a natural history which is shared by the different objects subjected to the measurement and is more or less constrained by biologists. We call symmetrization the theoretical and often concrete operation which leads to considering biological objects as equivalent in a measurement. Last, we use our notion of measurement to analyze research strategies. Some strategies aim to bring biology closer to the epistemology of physical theories, by studying objects as similar as possible, while others build on biological diversity.
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Notes
Historically, the definition of a meter has first been theoretical, then it used a standard prototype. The current definition is again theoretical.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Ana Soto, Giuseppe Longo, Carlos Sonnenschein, Guillaume Lecointre, Matteo Mossio, Arnaud Pocheville and Véronique Thomas-Vaslin for their comments on previous versions of this article and helpful discussions. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their candid comments.
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Montévil, M. Measurement in biology is methodized by theory. Biol Philos 34, 35 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9687-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9687-x