Objetividad versus inteligibilidad de las funciones biológicas: la paradoja normativa y el autismo epistemológico de las ciencias modernas

Abstract

Finality, design and purpose have been excluded from the language of the natural sciences since the eighteenth century. Darwin succeeded in disallowing them from his theory of evolution appealing to a blind and mechanical natural selection. Today, the most usual definitions for the concept of biological function take for granted that these: 1) are not dependent on a goal; 2) are not dependent on observers, but only on nature; 3) are explicable in causal terms, either with reference to the causal history of the organ (etiological definition), or with reference to its present structure and causal capabilities (dispositional definition). However, such presuppositions cannot take into account the normative character of the concept of biological function. We show that a generalization of the concept of scientific objectivity can make us affirm that functions: 1’) are dependent on a goal; 2’) are dependent on both observers and nature; 3’) cannot be reduced to causality, nor break the laws of physics, and yet, 4) are truly objective.