3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

364 11 History and Philosophy of Biology—Mayr’s Third Synthesis
(1963k) which he ended stating “the new should supplement the classical and not
totally displace it.” Much to his surprise, it was published in the journal Science
and even reprinted in an Italian newspaper.
Mayr analyzed various philosophical topics including the dual nature of biology,
meaning its division into two areas, functional-physiological biology and evolutionary
biology (1961c). Advances in both of these fields characterize the progress
of a balanced biology. His emphasis of evolutionary biology and organismic biology
vis-à-vis chemistry/physics-oriented functional biology during the 1960s may
be seen, at least in part, as his strategy to counteract the pressure exerted by
molecular biology on organismic biology (partially “external causation” of Mayr’s
interest in this aspect of the philosophy of biology 6 ).
Autonomy of Biology
During the 1950s Mayr saw clearly that any approach to a philosophy of science,
essentially based on logic, mathematics, and physics rather than including also
the specifically unique concepts of biology, would be unsatisfactory. One cannot
talk about a philosophy of science when one only deals with the phenomena of
the physical sciences. Among the differences between biological and nonbiological
systems Mayr mentioned the enormous complexity of biological systems, the
historical nature of organisms and of their genetic programs, causality in organismic
and evolutionary biology is predictive only in a statistical sense, teleonomic
processes and behaviors, and population thinking versus essentialism. He began
to write a series of essays over the next decades which he expanded in part and
assembled in four volumes which make his contributions widely available (1988e,
1991g, 1997b, 2004a).
In his famous article on “Cause and effect in biology” Mayr (1961c) pointed
out that no biological phenomenon is explained until both its functional-environmental
(proximate) causations and its historical-evolutionary (ultimate) causes
are determined. A northern warbler starts its fall migration on a particular night
because of certain physiological-environmental (proximate) causes and because
of the general genetic disposition of the bird (ultimate or historical-evolutionary
causes). This is the basis of Mayr’s other central contribution to philosophy of
biology—that of “dual causation”—and is the major foundation for his correct
position of biology being an autonomous science, i.e., a science that is fundamentally
not reducible to the physical sciences. Other topics discussed were teleology
and the autonomy of biology. As to the latter Mayr emphasized the differences
between the inanimate, chemical-physiological world and the living world, where
time and history are legitimate components for a philosophy of biology. Other
biological aspects discussed were the frequent occurrence in biology of indeterminacy
in general and emergence in particular. “Emergence” is the emergence of
new properties at higher levels of integration in complex biological systems (the
whole is more than the sum of its parts). Although many of the topics of this article
6 As to Mayr’s use of the expressions “internal” and “external causation” see p. 349