William Bechtel
Biographic Data
| ID | 966473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Bechtel |
| GIVEN NAMES | William |
| FAMILY NAME | Bechtel |
| SIGNATURE | BECHTEL W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6370-5321 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 488 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Rediscovering Bernard and Cannon
Since Cannon, inspired by Bernard’s discussion of the conditions required for free and independent life, introduced the term homeostasis , many have embraced it as the main theoretical principle guiding physiology and medicine. Nonetheless, critics have argued that homeostasis is too limiting and have advanced a variety of alternative concepts such as heterostasis , rheostasis , and allostasis . We argue that the critics target a much narrower un…
Minding the gap
The neuron doctrine, according to which nerves consist of discontinuous neurons, presented investigators with the challenge of determining what activities occurred between them or between them and muscles. One group of researchers, dubbed the sparks, viewed the electrical current in one neuron as inducing a current in the next neuron or in muscles. For them there was no gap between the activities of neurons or neurons and muscles that required fi…
Figuring out what is happening
Research devoted to characterizing phenomena is underappreciated in philosophical accounts of scientific inquiry. This paper develops a diachronic analysis of research over 100 years that led to the recognition of two related electrophysiological phenomena, the membrane potential and the action potential. A diachronic perspective allows for reconciliation of two threads in philosophical discussions of phenomena-Hacking's treatment of phenomena as…
Organization needs organization
Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance o…
Discovering autoinhibition as a design principle for the control of biological mechanisms
Autoinhibition is a design principle realized in many molecular mechanisms in biology. After explicating the notion of a design principle and showing that autoinhibition is such a principle, we focus on how researchers discovered instances of autoinhibition, using research establishing the autoinhibition of the molecular motors kinesin and dynein as our case study. Research on kinesin and dynein began in the fashion described in accounts of mecha…
Discovering Control Mechanisms
Most accounts of mechanism discovery have focused on mechanisms that perform the work required to produce a phenomenon. These mechanisms are often subject to regulation by control mechanisms. Using the example of the molecular motor dynein, this paper examines one process by which such control mechanisms are discovered—the process by which researchers, after identifying additional components required to produce the phenomenon but not directly inv…
Active biological mechanisms
Unless one embraces activities as foundational, understanding activities in mechanisms requires an account of the means by which entities in biological mechanisms engage in their activities—an account that does not merely explain activities in terms of more basic entities and activities. Recent biological research on molecular motors (myosin and kinesin) exemplifies such an account, one that explains activities in terms of free energy and constra…
Explaining features of fine-grained phenomena using abstract analyses of phenomena and mechanisms
Model Organisms for Studying Decision-Making
This article explores the use of model organisms in studying the cognitive phenomenon of decision-making. Drawing on the framework of biological control to develop a skeletal conception of decision-making, we show that two core features of decision-making mechanisms can be identified by studying model organisms, such as E. coli , jellyfish, C. elegans , lamprey, and so on. First, decision mechanisms are distributed and heterarchically structured.…
Resituating cognitive mechanisms within heterarchical networks controlling physiology and behavior
Cognitive science has traditionally focused on mechanisms involved in high-level reasoning and problem-solving processes. Such mechanisms are often treated as autonomous from but controlling underlying physiological processes. I offer a different perspective on cognition which starts with the basic production mechanisms through which organisms construct and repair themselves and navigate their environments and then I develop a framework for conce…
From parts to mechanisms
Analysing Network Models to Make Discoveries about Biological Mechanisms
Systems biology provides alternatives to the strategies to developing mechanistic explanations traditionally pursued in cell and molecular biology and much discussed in accounts of mechanistic explanation. Rather than starting by identifying a mechanism for a given phenomenon and decomposing it, systems biologists often start by developing cell-wide networks of detected connections between proteins or genes and construe clusters of highly interac…
Network analyses in systems biology
The Importance of Constraints and Control in Biological Mechanisms
Research on diseases such as cancer reveals that primary mechanisms, which have been the focus of study by the new mechanists in philosophy of science, are often subject to control by other mechanisms. Cancer cells employ the same primary mechanisms as healthy cells but control them differently. I use cancer research to highlight just how widespread control is in individual cells. To provide a framework for understanding control, I reconceptualiz…
Explicating Top-Down Causation Using Networks and Dynamics
In many fields in the life sciences investigators refer to downward or top-down causal effects. Craver and I defended the view that such cases should be understood in terms of a constitution relation between levels in a mechanism and intralevel causal relations (occurring at any level). We did not, however, specify when entities constitute a higher-level mechanism. In this article I appeal to graph-theoretic representations of networks, now widel…
Investigating neural representations
Using computational models to discover and understand mechanisms
Can mechanistic explanation be reconciled with scale-free constitution and dynamics
Scientists’ use of diagrams in developing mechanistic explanations
We explore the crucial role of diagrams in scientific reasoning, especially reasoning directed at developing mechanistic explanations of biological phenomena. We offer a case study focusing on one research project that resulted in a published paper advancing a new understanding of the mechanism by which the central circadian oscillator in Synechococcus elongatus controls gene expression. By examining how the diagrams prepared for the paper develo…
Abstraction and the Organization of Mechanisms
Proponents of mechanistic explanation all acknowledge the importance of organization. But they have also tended to emphasize specificity with respect to parts and operations in mechanisms. We argue that in understanding one important mode of organization—patterns of causal connectivity—a successful explanatory strategy abstracts from the specifics of the mechanism and invokes tools such as those of graph theory to explain how mechanisms with a pa…
Why Do Biologists Use So Many Diagrams
Diagrams have distinctive characteristics that make them an effective medium for communicating research findings, but they are even more impressive as tools for scientific reasoning. To explore this role, we examine diagrammatic formats that have been devised by biologists to ( a ) identify and illuminate phenomena involving circadian rhythms and ( b ) develop and modify mechanistic explanations of these phenomena
From molecules to behavior and the clinic
Mechanism and Biological Explanation
This article argues that the basic account of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, involving sequential execution of qualitatively characterized operations, is itself insufficient to explain biological phenomena such as the capacity of living organisms to maintain themselves as systems distinct from their environment. This capacity depends on cyclic organization, including positive and negative feedback loops, which can generate complex dynamic…
Discovering Complexity
An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they id…
The cell
Explanation
Multiple Realizability Revisited
The contention that psychological states are multiply realizable in different substrates has been used to support the contention that neuroscience is not likely to be very useful in guiding an understanding how cognition works. But in the context of scientific research, how seriously should we really take this threat of multiple realizability? By examining how brain areas are identified in neuroscience (where the approach is comparative and emplo…
Abstraction and the Organization of Mechanisms
Proponents of mechanistic explanation all acknowledge the importance of organization. But they have also tended to emphasize specificity with respect to parts and operations in mechanisms. We argue that in understanding one important mode of organization—patterns of causal connectivity—a successful explanatory strategy abstracts from the specifics of the mechanism and invokes tools such as those of graph theory to explain how mechanisms with a pa…
Mechanism and Biological Explanation
This article argues that the basic account of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, involving sequential execution of qualitatively characterized operations, is itself insufficient to explain biological phenomena such as the capacity of living organisms to maintain themselves as systems distinct from their environment. This capacity depends on cyclic organization, including positive and negative feedback loops, which can generate complex dynamic…
Dynamic mechanistic explanation
Investigating neural representations
Can mechanistic explanation be reconciled with scale-free constitution and dynamics
From molecules to behavior and the clinic
Generalization and Discovery by Assuming Conserved Mechanisms
In many domains of biology, explanation takes the form of characterizing the mechanism responsible for a particular phenomenon in a specific biological system. How are such explanations generalized? One important strategy assumes conservation of mechanisms through evolutionary descent. But conservation is seldom complete. In the case discussed, the central mechanism for circadian rhythms in animals was first identified in Drosophila and then exte…
Explicating Top-Down Causation Using Networks and Dynamics
In many fields in the life sciences investigators refer to downward or top-down causal effects. Craver and I defended the view that such cases should be understood in terms of a constitution relation between levels in a mechanism and intralevel causal relations (occurring at any level). We did not, however, specify when entities constitute a higher-level mechanism. In this article I appeal to graph-theoretic representations of networks, now widel…
Why Do Biologists Use So Many Diagrams
Diagrams have distinctive characteristics that make them an effective medium for communicating research findings, but they are even more impressive as tools for scientific reasoning. To explore this role, we examine diagrammatic formats that have been devised by biologists to ( a ) identify and illuminate phenomena involving circadian rhythms and ( b ) develop and modify mechanistic explanations of these phenomena
The evolution of our understanding of the cell
Network analyses in systems biology
The Importance of Constraints and Control in Biological Mechanisms
Research on diseases such as cancer reveals that primary mechanisms, which have been the focus of study by the new mechanists in philosophy of science, are often subject to control by other mechanisms. Cancer cells employ the same primary mechanisms as healthy cells but control them differently. I use cancer research to highlight just how widespread control is in individual cells. To provide a framework for understanding control, I reconceptualiz…
Aligning Multiple Research Techniques in Cognitive Neuroscience
The need to align multiple experimental procedures and produce converging results so as to demonstrate that the phenomenon under investigation is real and not an artifact is a commonplace both in scientific practice and discussions of scientific methodology (Campbell and Stanley 1963; Wimsatt 1981). Although sometimes this is the purpose of aligning techniques, often there is a different purpose—multiple techniques are sought to supply different …
Two Common Errors in Explaining Biological and Psychological Phenomena
One way in which philosophy of science can perform a valuable normative function for science is by showing characteristic errors made in scientific research programs and proposing ways in which such errors can be avoided or corrected. This paper examines two errors that have commonly plagued research in biology and psychology: 1) functional localization errors that arise when parts of a complex system are assigned functions which these parts are …
Mechanisms in Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychologists, like biologists, frequently describe mechanisms when explaining phenomena. Unlike biologists, who can often trace material transformations to identify operations, psychologists face a more daunting task in identifying operations that transform information. Behavior provides little guidance as to the nature of the operations involved. While not itself revealing the operations, identification of brain areas involved in psyc…
Reconceptualizations and Interfield Connections
The discovery that some B vitamins are constituents of respiratory coenzymes led to the development of an interfield theory of the kind discussed by Darden and Maull (1977). In this paper it is shown that the development of a useful interfield connection was made possible by two reconceptualizations: (1) a re-conceptualization that united two then-distinct fields giving rise to the concept of vitamins as dietary substances; and (2) another reconc…
Active biological mechanisms
Unless one embraces activities as foundational, understanding activities in mechanisms requires an account of the means by which entities in biological mechanisms engage in their activities—an account that does not merely explain activities in terms of more basic entities and activities. Recent biological research on molecular motors (myosin and kinesin) exemplifies such an account, one that explains activities in terms of free energy and constra…
Pet
New research tools such as PET can produce dramatic results. But they can also produce dramatic artifacts. Why is PET to be trusted? We examine both the rationale that justifies interpreting PET as measuring brain activity and the strategies for interpreting PET results functionally. We show that functional ascriptions with PET make important assumptions and depend critically on relating PET results to those secured through other research techniq…
Organization needs organization
Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance o…
Analysing Network Models to Make Discoveries about Biological Mechanisms
Systems biology provides alternatives to the strategies to developing mechanistic explanations traditionally pursued in cell and molecular biology and much discussed in accounts of mechanistic explanation. Rather than starting by identifying a mechanism for a given phenomenon and decomposing it, systems biologists often start by developing cell-wide networks of detected connections between proteins or genes and construe clusters of highly interac…
Using computational models to discover and understand mechanisms
Natural deduction in connectionist systems
Figuring out what is happening
Research devoted to characterizing phenomena is underappreciated in philosophical accounts of scientific inquiry. This paper develops a diachronic analysis of research over 100 years that led to the recognition of two related electrophysiological phenomena, the membrane potential and the action potential. A diachronic perspective allows for reconciliation of two threads in philosophical discussions of phenomena-Hacking's treatment of phenomena as…
Two Common Errors in Explaining Biological and Psychological Phenomena
One way in which philosophy of science can perform a valuable normative function for science is by showing characteristic errors made in scientific research programs and proposing ways in which such errors can be avoided or corrected. This paper examines two errors that have commonly plagued research in biology and psychology: 1) functional localization errors that arise when parts of a complex system are assigned functions which these parts are …
The evolution of our understanding of the cell
Reconceptualizations and Interfield Connections
The discovery that some B vitamins are constituents of respiratory coenzymes led to the development of an interfield theory of the kind discussed by Darden and Maull (1977). In this paper it is shown that the development of a useful interfield connection was made possible by two reconceptualizations: (1) a re-conceptualization that united two then-distinct fields giving rise to the concept of vitamins as dietary substances; and (2) another reconc…
Psycholinguistics as a case of cross-disciplinary research
Beyond the exclusively propositional era
Connectionism and the Mind
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Connectionism and the Mind: an Introduction to Parallel Processing in Networks. By William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamson. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Pp xiv + 349. Price £37.50 hbk, £\ 1.95 pbk.) David Pickles David Pickles University of Dundee Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 42, Issue 166, January 1992, Pages 101–103, https://d…
Natural deduction in connectionist systems
The Cells of the Body
Pet
New research tools such as PET can produce dramatic results. But they can also produce dramatic artifacts. Why is PET to be trusted? We examine both the rationale that justifies interpreting PET as measuring brain activity and the strategies for interpreting PET results functionally. We show that functional ascriptions with PET make important assumptions and depend critically on relating PET results to those secured through other research techniq…
Multiple Realizability Revisited
The contention that psychological states are multiply realizable in different substrates has been used to support the contention that neuroscience is not likely to be very useful in guiding an understanding how cognition works. But in the context of scientific research, how seriously should we really take this threat of multiple realizability? By examining how brain areas are identified in neuroscience (where the approach is comparative and emplo…
Explanatory Pluralism and Heuristic Identity Theory
Explanatory pluralism holds that the sorts of comprehensive theoretical and ontological economies that microreductionists and New Wave reductionists envision and antireductionists fear offer misleading views of both scientific practice and scientific progress. Both advocates and foes of employing reductionist strategies at the interface of psychology and neuroscience have overplayed the alleged economies that interlevel connections (including ide…
Aligning Multiple Research Techniques in Cognitive Neuroscience
The need to align multiple experimental procedures and produce converging results so as to demonstrate that the phenomenon under investigation is real and not an artifact is a commonplace both in scientific practice and discussions of scientific methodology (Campbell and Stanley 1963; Wimsatt 1981). Although sometimes this is the purpose of aligning techniques, often there is a different purpose—multiple techniques are sought to supply different …
Explanation
Top-down Causation Without Top-down Causes
Mechanisms in Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychologists, like biologists, frequently describe mechanisms when explaining phenomena. Unlike biologists, who can often trace material transformations to identify operations, psychologists face a more daunting task in identifying operations that transform information. Behavior provides little guidance as to the nature of the operations involved. While not itself revealing the operations, identification of brain areas involved in psyc…
Mental mechanisms
Generalization and Discovery by Assuming Conserved Mechanisms
In many domains of biology, explanation takes the form of characterizing the mechanism responsible for a particular phenomenon in a specific biological system. How are such explanations generalized? One important strategy assumes conservation of mechanisms through evolutionary descent. But conservation is seldom complete. In the case discussed, the central mechanism for circadian rhythms in animals was first identified in Drosophila and then exte…
Discovering Complexity
An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they id…
The cell
Dynamic mechanistic explanation
Mechanism and Biological Explanation
This article argues that the basic account of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, involving sequential execution of qualitatively characterized operations, is itself insufficient to explain biological phenomena such as the capacity of living organisms to maintain themselves as systems distinct from their environment. This capacity depends on cyclic organization, including positive and negative feedback loops, which can generate complex dynamic…
From molecules to behavior and the clinic
Abstraction and the Organization of Mechanisms
Proponents of mechanistic explanation all acknowledge the importance of organization. But they have also tended to emphasize specificity with respect to parts and operations in mechanisms. We argue that in understanding one important mode of organization—patterns of causal connectivity—a successful explanatory strategy abstracts from the specifics of the mechanism and invokes tools such as those of graph theory to explain how mechanisms with a pa…
Why Do Biologists Use So Many Diagrams
Diagrams have distinctive characteristics that make them an effective medium for communicating research findings, but they are even more impressive as tools for scientific reasoning. To explore this role, we examine diagrammatic formats that have been devised by biologists to ( a ) identify and illuminate phenomena involving circadian rhythms and ( b ) develop and modify mechanistic explanations of these phenomena
Scientists’ use of diagrams in developing mechanistic explanations
We explore the crucial role of diagrams in scientific reasoning, especially reasoning directed at developing mechanistic explanations of biological phenomena. We offer a case study focusing on one research project that resulted in a published paper advancing a new understanding of the mechanism by which the central circadian oscillator in Synechococcus elongatus controls gene expression. By examining how the diagrams prepared for the paper develo…
Computer Science (38 works) · Epistemology (36 works) · Psychology (33 works) · Cognitive science (31 works) · Philosophy (30 works) · Artificial Intelligence (20 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (17 works) · Artificial Intelligence (16 works) · Biology (14 works) · Neuroscience (14 works)