Explanations in biology

I discuss the nature of explanation in biology, with particular attention to functional explanations. I argue that functional explanations can be explicated nonteleologically in two ways: descriptively and explanatorily. At the macro-level of gross anatomy, Larry Wright's nonteleological translation of functional statements, which incorporates an etiological component, is sufficient in providing a descriptive account of function. Wright's account contributes to a way of formalizing current examples of functional explanation. This account captures the object-level of talking, and avoids the traditional problems associated with functional explanation. Explanatorily, Robert Cummins' two strategies as delineated in his dispositional model can account for functional explanation by analyzing functional objects into subsystems or molecular structure at the micro-level of certain microscopic biological objects.;After establishing this analysis, I will defend Carl G. Hempel's Deductive-Nomological model of scientific explanation. In the end, I will argue that some explanations fall directly under the D-N model in virtue of laws (such as Mendel's Laws) that are formulated and applied as deterministically as Newton's Laws, and antecedent conditions. In just this way, Cummins' two strategies and Hempel's model are complementary to one another, since Cummins' dispositional model reduces complex teleological systems into constituent sub-systems or molecular structure that, after a certain level of analysis, are amenable to explanation through Hempel's D-N model. Somewhat surprisingly, Cummins' account in fact provides a critical defense of Hempel's D-N model and bears out Alexander Rosenberg's claim that, at some level, functional analysis disappears from explanation.