Implicaciones filosóficas de la biología post-genómica

Resumen

Here I revise the recent history of Biology since the discovery of the structure and function of DNA, until the completion of the HGP. This journey teaches us something important for philosophy: a successful reductionist approach, focusing on the genetic level, has come to reveal the limits of the ontological reductionism. Not everything is in the genes. So, we should look at the living beings from another point of view. We should not see them merely as vehicles for their genes, but as systems in their own right. This shift of paradigm in biology has interesting philosophical implications. Philosophers should help in defining the concept of biosystem, in deciding which units count as biosystems, and in considering a plural causality, with different directions and levels. I will argue for the characterization of biosystems by its internal relations, its history, differential development, complexity, functionality and identity. Consequently, the organisms will be presented as the entities that paradigmatically count as biosystems. The parts of organisms are also biosystems, but in a secondary sense, as well as other biological entities of higher level, such as families, populations or ecosystems. On the other hand, abstract entities, such as species, cannot count as biosystems at all. Finally, regarding causation, the new postgenomic perspective invites us to recognize in biology an inhomogeneous plurality of causal directions.