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Networks and Teleology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Edwin Levy
Edwin Levy*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CanadaV6T 1W5
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Extract

In 1973 Niels Kaj Jerne announced an important new hypothesis about the immune system (‘IS’). That suggestion is based on several similarities between IS and the central nervous system. Jerne postulated that IS, like the nervous system, is a network.

I am convinced that the description of the immune system as a functional network of lymphocytes and antibody molecules is essential to its understanding, and that the network as a whole functions in a way that is peculiar to and characteristic of the internal interactions of the elements of the immune system itself: it displays what I call eigen-behavior. (Jerne [1973), 59)

This proposal has a number of implications, including some philosophical ones. Here I focus on the question whether the network hypothesis and subsequent developments shed any light on the use of teleological concepts in biology. In part one I present some of the background story of network ideas in immunology, including a reverse hypothesis to the effect that IS-Net could serve as a basis for modeling the brain. In part two I locate the teleological implications of IS-Net with respect to current mainstream discussions of teleology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 14: Philosophy & Biology , 1988 , pp. 159 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1988

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Footnotes

1

Acknowledgments: L. Angel, P. Apostoli, R. Bunn, M. Chandler, J. Collier, E. Diener, M. Feld, P. Hanson, W. Henry, G. Hoffmann, J. Levy, M. Matthen, M. Reimers

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