Biology needs philosophy, but what philosophy?

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Abstract

Philosophy of biology has the potential to contribute to biology by improving scientific reasoning. However, this potential is largely unrealized because of the lack of awareness by most biologists of what philosophy can offer, because of deficits of biological expertise among most philosophers, and because of adherence to disciplinary norms in philosophy that render much work in philosophy of biology irrelevant to biologists. We believe that philosophy of biology will contribute little to biology without a change of practice. We provide guidelines ("comments" sensu Slobodkin 1975, "commandments" sensu Kornberg 2000, 2003, Francis et al. 2007) for how biologists can better engage with philosophy and for how philosophers can better engage with biology so as to create a "philosophical biology" that improves our biological understanding.